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Why Do We Hate Famous Women So Much Harder Than Famous Men?
Celebrity ladies have long inspired a special brand of intense and irrational loathing.
In 1972, John Lennon released a single called “Woman Is the N****r of the World.” It was an unfortunate title for a song written by an ex-Beatle whose well-documented abusive tendencies toward the women in his life made him a huge part of the problem.
Sadly, so are the rest of us. In recent years, discussions of the subjugation of women have focused largely on sexual harassment and assault as well as sexism in the workplace, but the general public is more guilty of misogyny than we like to admit. I’ve covered celebrities and pop culture for decades, and I’ve noticed a glaring double standard in the way we critique famous women vs. how we critique famous men.
A famous man has to be branded a sex offender to get the complete pariah treatment (see Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, Matt Lauer, and Woody Allen). Famous women just have to rub us the wrong way.
The double standard goes way back. In 1936, when Britain’s King Edward VIII abdicated the throne, his future wife, Wallis Simpson, was cast as the primary villain of the royal scandal, a role she continues to play posthumously. While she was being blamed for cheapening the crown, he was cavorting with Adolph Hitler — yet she’s the one whose name has gone down in infamy.
In the late ’40s and early ’50s, Ingrid Bergman’s affair with Roberto Rossellini, who was just as married as she was, led to her being denounced on the floor of the US Senate. It temporarily derailed her career but not his. To this day, slut-shaming remains a dishonor reserved for famous women who cheat or get too sexy when performing Super Bowl halftime shows. (See the uproar over Jennifer Lopez in 2020 and 2004’s “Nipplegate,” which effectively ended Janet Jackson’s platinum run while for her costar Justin Timberlake, the best was yet to come.)
In the ’90s, Hillary Clinton was shamed for forgiving her cheating husband, a tarnishing from which her reputation has never fully recovered. Monica Lewinsky, the other woman, also received more damming coverage than Bill Clinton. The president was hardly fit for the cover of Men’s Health…
