Megan Stielstra's Blog

On the cover of Newsweek is a photo of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton looking very drunk and trashy (shocking!). The accompanying article is called Girls Gone Bad and it poses some interesting questions about how these celebrities (?) are shaping our culture.

This is the thing: I’m fascinated by celebrity culture, and I'm not talking about the good stuff, in which so-and-so has their own charity and so-and-so won at Sundance. I'm talkin' the CRAP, the trash, the Who Passed Out at the Ivy. Christopher says, “You are part of the problem!” when I come home with US magazine and he’s right, he’s right, I KNOW he’s right, but I CANNOT STOP. I know who’s getting divorced and who’s screwing who and who’s knocked up (alledgedly, ‘cause you know half those stories aren’t true) and honestly, it really BOTHERS me that I know all that! Just saying it makes me want to launch into a whole discussion about Twentieth Century Western Literature so y’all will know I am halfway intelligent. I want to name-drop all the indie bands in my music library: Here’s the Dresdon Dolls, the Flaming Lips, Hot Chip and Imogen Heap and Sleater-Kinney and Radiohead! Here! Here! Here is my subscription to Venus, to Punk Planet! “You know what I did last night?” I want to tell you, “I went to a play it was in a theater I go to the theater a lot I’m cultured!” as if to counteract the horrible admission that, yes, I know A. who Nicole Ritchie is currently dating (Joel Madden) B. who he dated before Nicole Ritchie (Hillary Duff) and C. what Hillary Duff said about Nicole Ritchie (she’s a “skank”) (in my defense, I’m not sure who Joel Madden is. And I know Duff is one of the little blonde ones but I’m not sure what she does. And Nicole Ritchie really is a skank, but I mean that not in relation to her sexual prowess but because she got a million dollar book contract [uhm, why? Because Dancing on the Ceiling was a really good SONG?] and I hate it that the publishing industry is going that way [although, didja know that her publisher, Judith Reagan, was the same one who just went down in flames for the whole heinous OJ Simpson hypothetical murder confession book? The same Judith Reagan told to suck it in the acknowledgments section of Hairstyles of the Damned? I CHEERED when that woman hit rock bottom; I cracked a bottle of f’ing champagne!]). When I was still waiting tables, I did this thing to pass time where’d I’d ask all my customers one question a day, sort of an informal survey: “What’s your favorite Eighties song?” “How many times has your heart been broken?” And, “What’s your guilty pleasure?” While my favorite answer was, “Judge Judy,” the most popular answer by FAR was, “Celebrity Culture.” So, it’s not just me, right? Do you read those magazines? Do you sneak a peak at People.com? Are you affected by trash media? I’m interested in articles like Girls Gone Bad because they try to look at not only WHY we’re so affected, but also what EFFECT that affection might have on our culture.

Okay, Britney and Paris. And Lindsay and Nicole and the rest of you. Here we go.

My first thought: where are their parents? If I paraded around like these girls do my mother would’ve slapped me into boarding school so fast I wouldn’t have time to pack and my dad—My DAD! I SHUDDER to imagine my father waiting in line for groceries and seeing a such a photo of me on Newsweek!—would just lock me up on the island (if you’re new to this blog, my dad lives on a small island in the middle of the Gulf of Alaska, on which there is only one grocery store, but there are still trash magazines at the counter. Trash magazines, it seems, can travel anywhere. You can probably get US magazine in Darfur, no matter that they can’t even get medical supplies). I’m thinking of all the novels where the girls do something bad and their parents send them to the convent except maybe that’s not a great example ‘cause usually those girls came out of the nunnery wilder than when they went in. Here’s the thing, though: when I read those novels, I always feel a great sense of injustice that those girls are being locked up. I think the parents are very old fashioned and behind the times and cruel to not let their daughters live and love and express their independence. I think, thank GOD the world has changed—

Sidebar: this is where I say I feel very lucky to live in this country, where women’s rights HAVE changed because it certainly isn’t the case everywhere. I just finished Reading Lolita in Tehran and was amazed by the things I take for granted. For example, I teach at a University, and I can just WALK IN! TO MY OFFICE! Through the same door as my male colleagues and male students! Women in Iran (students AND faculty) have to walk through a little side door where they are “inspected” before being allowed to attend classes:

“’I would first be checked to see if I have the right clothes: the color of my coat, the length of my uniform, the thickness of my scarf, the form of my shoes, the objects in my bag, the visible traces of even the mildest make-up, the size of my rings and their level of attractiveness, all would be checked before I could enter the campus of the university, the same university in which men also study. And to them the main door, with its immense portals and emblems and flags, is generously open’” (Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran, pg. 29).

Ladies, imagine: walking into the 623 S. Michigan Building of Columbia College and having to go through a different door than the guys, and having your person checked before you’re allowed to attend class? This is just one example, but it stuck with me ‘cause EVERY DAY I walk through that door.

I was talking with a friend about this and she said, “I had no IDEA! Why don’t they tell us things like this?”

“Who is ‘us’?” I asked her. “And who is ‘they’?” The Iranian government? Iranian women? American journalists? Is CNN going to report the little day-to-day goings on when there are bombs exploding all over the damn place? Here’s my theory: fiction should be the news and the news should be fiction. Seriously, I read a novel and learn about the world. I turn on the news, or look at the cover of Newsweek, and there’s A. Britney B. Anna Nicole Smith (drugs! Problems with her weight! Who’s the father of her child!) and C. (my favorite) MARRIED MOTHER-OF-THREE ASTRONAUT (Yes! Astronaut! One of NASA’s FINEST!) DRIVES CROSS-COUNTRY WEARING ADULT DIAPER (so she wouldn’t have to pull over to use the bathroom!) AND PEPPER-SPRAYS (!!!!) THE ROMANTIC INTEREST OF ANOTHER ASTRONAUT THAT SHE HAS A CRUSH ON!! Do you all realize that I could’ve written that story? That’s something that I would make up in my crazy brain and tell over cocktails ‘cause it’s just so goddamn hilarious!

Where was I?

Here: when I read novels about girls getting locked up by their parents, I feel a great sense of injustice. When I see Britney and Paris parading around, tossing around underwear and money and money and money and MONEY, clogging around the airways with shitty music (Dear Bloodshy and Avant, producers of Britney Spears’ song TOXIC: That is a really good song. You did well. It’s not your fault that she’s so sucky. You keep making good music but please find niftier people to perform it. Thank-you), I want somebody to ground them both for the next twenty years—no internet, no Blackberries, no boys. I don’t care where, just let there be decent supervision, positive role models and a limited line of credit, and if that means a nunnery, then fine, get thee to it.

This brings me to my second question: am I just getting old? ‘Cause I’m sure my mother said similar things about Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, both of whom, I feel, are great artists who made great musical contributions, and I’m sure my grandmother said similar things about Nina Simone with her song, “I want a little sugar in my bowl,” (which is a kickass number if you’ve never heard it).

ALSO: in the photo montage accompanying the Girls Gone Bad article, they compare Britney and Paris to other “Bad Girls” who have influenced pop culture. Some examples: MARY MAGDALENE (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) Catherine the Great (!!!!) Mae West (!!!!) Ingrid Bergman (!!!!) Betty Paige (!!!!) Marilyn Monroe (!!!) Eartha Kitt (!!!!) and I’m like, are you people SERIOUSLY comparing Paris f’ing Hilton to Catherine the GREAT! TO MARY MAGDALENE! Many of those women are attributed with individual and/or sexual liberation, women who, were I to see them in a bar, I’d be all, “Mary Magdalene, you paved the way for a lot of the freedoms I enjoy today. Can I buy you a Makers and water?” whereas if I were to see Paris in a bar, I’d probably roll my eyes and ask for the check (if I ran into Britney in a bar, I’d say: “Go home to your children, missy, and also put some clothes on! And also wash your face! And did I mention go home to your children? GO HOME TO YOUR CHILDREN!”) bringing me to my third question: is individual/sexual freedom now being pushed too far? Where is the line between pushing the envelope (Mae West doing nudey shows in a time when women weren’t allowed to acknowledge they were sexual beings) and abusing the privilege (Paris Hilton doing [what exactly does she do?] in a time when naked women wash cars in string bikinis in order to sell hamburgers [oh yes! THAT’S what she did!]).

I read an article a couple days ago called Why Should We Care About Anna Nicole (‘cause I wanted someone to explain to me why I do), which pointed out the American fascination with beauty and dysfunction. I can buy into that. I’m certainly fascinated with beauty and dysfunction, but there has GOT better ways to go about it. For example, Anna Karenenna--in my opinion, the greatest story EVER!--is as beautifully dysfunctional as they get, but also she’s waaaay more interesting than any of these celebrity bubble gum princesses, maybe because with Anna K. we get the whole dirty, complicated, wild, tragic story with all its honesty and intesnity and emotional layers and with Anna N.S. we’ll only ever get the surface: the drugs, boobs and Trimfast. Maybe the difference is how much we’re willing to commit to their stories: we think we know NS after seeing one photo, or a slurred awards appearance on YouTube, but to get to know Anna Karenenna you’ve got to get through some 400 pages of history which, in the end, is the only way to really know the truth: read the whole goddamn story. NOT a paragraph in some glossy mag, but the whole story. The little day-to-day things. What they have to go through to walk through a door.

In the Girls Gone Bad article they discuss the thousands of teenage girls who are influenced by Britney and Paris. Someday (in the very near future if not, like, tomorrow) those girls will be sitting in my classroom.

Question number four: what on Earth do I say to them?

I don’t have answers for any of these questions, except for the obvious: the only way Britney and Paris and all this bullshit will go away is if I stop reading about them. It’s my choice, and I’m choosing: starting now, I’m going on a one-month hiatus from celebrity culture. A test-run, if you will: no magazines, no internet, no Entertainment Tonight.

Maybe the real question is: is that even POSSIBLE?