This policing via popular media — comparing women’s outfits, judging their beach bodies and speculating as to how and why they were or weren’t pregnant — served as a warning for less famous women: See what can happen when you leave the house? The idea was that any woman who puts herself out there was asking to get whatever she wanted. Fame was not free of disgracement. That not all of these women sought or desired fame didn’t seem to matter.
Carolyn Chernoff is a sociologist who studies women and popular culture. She said that this media scrutiny seemed worse in the 1980s, possibly as a result of feminist gains. “More and more women are in the workplace, are getting more power, are working visibly in powerful jobs,” she said. This led to what she called a “correction,” with the media coming after any woman perceived as too famous, too powerful, too exposed.
Ironically, the feminist gains of the ’80s and ’90s weren’t even particularly sturdy. “We had Sally Ride going to space and Toni Morrison winning the Pulitzer,” said Allison Yarrow, the author of “90s Bitch: Media, Culture and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality.” “But what I realize now is that it was one woman per industry who can succeed.”
According to Yarrow’s analysis, famous women who found themselves in the news were the targets of negative coverage. Worse, she said that the narrative was that women deliberately created negative coverage to gain personal gain.
Cindi Leive, a former editor of the women’s magazines Self and Glamour, said that, in the late ’90s, “there was definitely a sense in general of celebrity watching as sport.” (The magazines she edited weren’t as brutalizing as the tabloids, but they did reaffirm some of the same biases.) “There’s an element of dehumanization that crept into all of our coverage — the industry broadly,” Leive said.
If you flipped through certain magazines at this time you could be forgiven for thinking that there was no right way to be a woman, only wrong ones — bimbo or frump, slut or prude, shrew or doormat. The line seemed impossible to walk, especially in heels — although being pretty, white, thin and rich typically gave you a leg up. Women who broke the hegenomic norm in another way faced much more difficult challenges, but not necessarily the public eye.
Source: NY Times