Who's next to be 'Woman'd'?
"waiting for the day everyone decides to start hating on Sabrina Carpenter"
✿⊰𖡼𖥧𖤣❀ BEL CHIMES IN ❀𖤣𖥧𖡼⊱✿
This newsy is written by the refreshing-as-a-house-chardonnay-on-a-steamy-day (and co-author of our debut book Make It Make Sense) Bel Hawkins. Each week Bel comes here to chime in about the things she’s been loling at, yearning for, or totally mystified by. Luckily for us, she also writes our Sunday advice column ‘Wait, But What?’ for all our paying supporters who want to make sense of the world!! Upgrade your plan to get her newsy here!
Who's next to be 'Woman'd'?
Luce and I have been talking a lot lately about this Tiktok that's like 'Waiting for the day everyone decides to start hating on Sabrina Carpenter' (note: peep her chic response, which is simply 'delete this').
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It points to a wider cultural phenomenon internet writer Rayne Fisher Quann recently coined as being 'Woman'd', which she describes as the "depressing inevitability" of female celebrities being discarded like plastic — tossed away in a cycle of finding the hot new thing within a fast, ruthless cycle that generally follows the below stages:
1. Adoration - “omg hot new thing how sexy fun cool i'm obsessed!!”
2. Idolisation - “no seriously she's iconic”
3. Overexposure - “idk i'm kinda sick of her tbh she's a bit of a pick me don't you think”
4. Being discarded - “i'm really over her and never liked her stuff anyway”
5. Potential redemption - via a documentary or a more serious tell-all that paints them in a different light and "people work out whether she's still hot"
It's pushing women further into this splinter of having to appear perfect on screen/stage and then hyper-human in how they appear off them (I'm thinking of Pamela Anderson going make up free at Paris Fashion Week last year, or any celebrity that feels like they have to do a piece to camera with greasy hair and in a hoodie to prove they have a life outside perfection).
The effect is forcing the designed obsolescence of Apple products (the way their products are designed to need to be upgraded, or new models require different chargers, etc, so you have to constantly keep buying new) onto female celebrities, and it's so bleak.
I wrote about the fucked up endless hunger of the algos last week (not a hot take, I know, but something I think we should all be consciously thinking about in our own lives before we lose our subconscious altogether), and I wonder if there's a push back we'll see in the coming years to linear living.
Where people are listening to full albums front to back the way they were designed, artists aren't releasing sugar rush singles to explode on TikTok to make money quickly and become famous fast, and female artists don't feel this insane pressure to have a book club, a cookstagram, a clothes swap platform and an astrology service all just to stay relevant, out of fear they'll be forced into phase 4 in an instant. A girl can dream. In the meantime, see you this weekend to answer more angst! Love u! xox
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It’s barely worth mentioning but Apple had to change their chargers due to EU regulations. It’s so phones etc will have universal UCB C charging.
I was JUST talking about Hollywood’s revolving door. It feels like in the past few years the pressure to remain relevant has been exacerbated and almost impossible to achieve.
New talent and stars emerge out of thin air almost daily, only to exit stage left just as fast as they entered. Talent has become watered down to meet the expectations of consumers which as we know, is finicky. This leads to every music, film, book, etc to feel repetitive, bland, and mainstream. True talent and art is lost with the hopes to make it big and make it fast. Artists now fit in a neat box ready to be shipped away the second the crowd gets bored.
Long gone are the days of the elusive celebrity, think Monroe and Prince. Now, every celeb is hyper present and available online, creating a sense of familiarity as they give us a glimpse into their lives.
Celebrity adoration and idolization has been replaced with cancel culture creating vultures out of consumers, waiting for one slip up to end a career and diminish social standing.
So what does this say about the future of the celebrity?
Have they finally become our equal, now fully dependent on our attention and acceptance?
Have they become obsolete with tiktok stars rising to fame and standing next to them on the coveted met steps?
Where will they go from here? Does it even matter?