So ahead of your time! It makes me sick to think how fashionable it was to hate and mock young women. The vitriol towards Britney, Paris, and Lindsay was everywhere. I was a very young woman myself at the time, watching all that go down, and I got the message loud and clear.
That’s neither here nor there. Are you totally unaware of the misogyny of the times? The way grown men were talking to these young women in interviews? An old gray-haired man asking a very young Britney Spears about her breasts or her virginity? I’m glad you were well-behaved, but even if you weren’t, the way the media was mocking these women and their mental health issues was sick and it’s nice to see there were people calling them out at the time. I believe it says at the top this piece was first published in 2007?
Ugh, everything I wanted to forget about pop culture in general and 2007 in particular in one celebrity vertigo-inducing article. I'll have Dramamine and vodka, please.
Yikes. Did Paris ever respond to this “pat on her back”? Oh, and I love this:
“In an information-saturated age, no publicity is good publicity, but there is enormous money to be made in disgrace. Fame is made of quantity of attention, not quality. More attention (positive or negative) means ... you win, even if you're incarcerated.”
That’s the Trumper right there…
I tried to remember this time, only to discover that I’d repressed it all.
you are fairly breathless and exhilarated here and one suspects it is made up of equal parts (and i love this about you) nostalgia for a time and not that long ago pre-Trump bizzarro culture you could utterly go off with studied Marxist logic on the GOP overlords' cynical violent manipulation of our credulity and somehow find rebellious allegiance with "dirty debutantes" like Paris....now we live in a place where L.A. Times sportswriters or former demcratic political operatives their huge crimes being white and male are made to kneel on the pavement slurping sewer water for the least bit of self expression
furthermore i wrote my latest thing in partial response to another imagined quote you had NOT tossed out : "wanna play with FIRE scarecrow!!??%$@#!?" heeeheee
So appropriate for then and now. Republicans were up to their tricks then as they are now- nothing new. And good to point out even the cool kids supported "get the hooker" distractions.
Paris is a monument to self promotion. I love that she's still at it, still hustling, never paying the price. What she was most adept at was exerting her powers of persuasion to get people around her to gin up publicity. It's a sometimes deadly game and we fail to notice that she never really made friends. Everyone was safely at arm's length and easily dropped. She even had some poor wretch to bear her baby. No stretch marks for her. The Hilton empire survives.
Your single letter substitution from the mansplaining Rick's speech at the end of Casablanca is the cleverest and most economical bit of brilliance I've ever seen. Honor is due.
Ugarte: "You despise me, don't you?"
Rick: "If I gave you any thought, I probably would."
“Is it true that when you posed for that famous calendar photograph, Miss Monroe, you had nothing on?”
“No,” said our Marilyn, “I had the radio on.”
Whether apocryphal or not, we are prepared to believe that Marilyn could have quipped as quoted. We're in on the gag, we know she's merely playing at being a dumb blonde, and that's she's really quite witty and literate. In the case of Paris Hilton, her vapidity seems entirely unfeigned. She seems unacquainted with self-reflection, though she knows how to use a mirror.
The conversation from Casablanca leads with Ugarte imposing himself on Rick ("Too bad about those two German couriers") but ends in a kind of redemption and grudging respect when it is revealed that Ugarte is the one who helped the couriers take their place among the honored dead. My impoverished imagination can't see a way out for Paris. She's a tragic figure, unable to rise above her origin, incapable of escaping her destiny. Hate? How is it possible to hate someone who evokes such pity and sadness?
You have this incredibly colorful way of saying all of the things that we are secretly thinking but are too afraid to say. I lived every word of this essay
So ahead of your time! It makes me sick to think how fashionable it was to hate and mock young women. The vitriol towards Britney, Paris, and Lindsay was everywhere. I was a very young woman myself at the time, watching all that go down, and I got the message loud and clear.
It was like the Scarlet Letter, for real. We've always been thissclose to being in A Handmaid's Tale.
But it isn't against "young women." I mean, I wasn't pulling any of that shit, and therefore I got no vitriol.
you were merely invisible.
Indeed, I've always been invisible. I've gone about my life unaffected by sexism. Now, ageism, that I've experienced. But sexism passed me by.
That’s neither here nor there. Are you totally unaware of the misogyny of the times? The way grown men were talking to these young women in interviews? An old gray-haired man asking a very young Britney Spears about her breasts or her virginity? I’m glad you were well-behaved, but even if you weren’t, the way the media was mocking these women and their mental health issues was sick and it’s nice to see there were people calling them out at the time. I believe it says at the top this piece was first published in 2007?
I don’t think Jesus got $200K for 20 minutes at a party, and he turned their water into wine.
The right people don't get paid.
Ugh, everything I wanted to forget about pop culture in general and 2007 in particular in one celebrity vertigo-inducing article. I'll have Dramamine and vodka, please.
Sorry baby didn't mean to harsh your buzz
.....taking notes..."dramamine... vodka"
"pantybiotics" hahahahaha!
Yikes. Did Paris ever respond to this “pat on her back”? Oh, and I love this:
“In an information-saturated age, no publicity is good publicity, but there is enormous money to be made in disgrace. Fame is made of quantity of attention, not quality. More attention (positive or negative) means ... you win, even if you're incarcerated.”
That’s the Trumper right there…
I tried to remember this time, only to discover that I’d repressed it all.
you are fairly breathless and exhilarated here and one suspects it is made up of equal parts (and i love this about you) nostalgia for a time and not that long ago pre-Trump bizzarro culture you could utterly go off with studied Marxist logic on the GOP overlords' cynical violent manipulation of our credulity and somehow find rebellious allegiance with "dirty debutantes" like Paris....now we live in a place where L.A. Times sportswriters or former demcratic political operatives their huge crimes being white and male are made to kneel on the pavement slurping sewer water for the least bit of self expression
sorry to digress....you little witch!!! 😉🤣
I'll get you, my pretty....and your little dog, too!
furthermore i wrote my latest thing in partial response to another imagined quote you had NOT tossed out : "wanna play with FIRE scarecrow!!??%$@#!?" heeeheee
i should only be so lucky 😉
So good.
Grazie Sir
A complete triumph! I laughed, I cried and now I am utterly depressed. One of my favorites yet!
So appropriate for then and now. Republicans were up to their tricks then as they are now- nothing new. And good to point out even the cool kids supported "get the hooker" distractions.
Brill
Paris is a monument to self promotion. I love that she's still at it, still hustling, never paying the price. What she was most adept at was exerting her powers of persuasion to get people around her to gin up publicity. It's a sometimes deadly game and we fail to notice that she never really made friends. Everyone was safely at arm's length and easily dropped. She even had some poor wretch to bear her baby. No stretch marks for her. The Hilton empire survives.
Your single letter substitution from the mansplaining Rick's speech at the end of Casablanca is the cleverest and most economical bit of brilliance I've ever seen. Honor is due.
Ugarte: "You despise me, don't you?"
Rick: "If I gave you any thought, I probably would."
“Is it true that when you posed for that famous calendar photograph, Miss Monroe, you had nothing on?”
“No,” said our Marilyn, “I had the radio on.”
Whether apocryphal or not, we are prepared to believe that Marilyn could have quipped as quoted. We're in on the gag, we know she's merely playing at being a dumb blonde, and that's she's really quite witty and literate. In the case of Paris Hilton, her vapidity seems entirely unfeigned. She seems unacquainted with self-reflection, though she knows how to use a mirror.
The conversation from Casablanca leads with Ugarte imposing himself on Rick ("Too bad about those two German couriers") but ends in a kind of redemption and grudging respect when it is revealed that Ugarte is the one who helped the couriers take their place among the honored dead. My impoverished imagination can't see a way out for Paris. She's a tragic figure, unable to rise above her origin, incapable of escaping her destiny. Hate? How is it possible to hate someone who evokes such pity and sadness?
lol... ' #lesmotsjuste '...
You have this incredibly colorful way of saying all of the things that we are secretly thinking but are too afraid to say. I lived every word of this essay
I actually had AI do that for me, in my style. It wasn't half bad.