“It’s no longer as culturally acceptable to do it openly,” says Ford. “I don’t doubt that it’s still happening behind closed doors but it’s no longer culturally acceptable to openly ridicule someone for mental health struggles. I think,now,we would characterise that Letterman interview as quite abusive.”
And it isn’t just journalists,says Ford,who are no longer able to get away with (publicly) asking such abusive questions,but audiences,too,who now largely respond differently.
“It’s not just that David Letterman sat on that stage and sort of made jokes about Lindsay Lohan,it was that everyone in the audience laughed,” says Ford. “And everyone at home laughed. What has shifted is that no one is laughing now. ” (The Letterman interview has copped a massive amount of backlash on Twitter and TikTok for being “misogynistic”,“horrifying”,and perpetuating the “stigma” of addiction.)
Partly,says Ford,this is because the current generation of young women — she teaches 18-year-olds — “are more cynical,in a good way,they’re more critical and more aware of the fact that we’re operating within a system that is set up to disadvantage large swathes of the population”.
And they,in addition to celebrities who are being targeted,all have access to social media channels that enable them to call out abuse.
“There’s a consequences culture[now],and the consequence is if a journalist asks a stupid or sexist comment now,it’ll get called out,and it can go viral,” says Dr Lauren Rosewarne,senior lecturer in the University of Melbourne’s School of Social and Political Sciences. “There’s a counter-narrative that comes through social media,that’s the big difference now compared to when this happened in the mid-2000s,when social media was only in its infancy.”
Indeed,the same day that the Spears documentary aired,Taylor Swift tweeted to call out a joke about herself on the show,Ginny&Georgia,in which one character says:“You go through men faster than Taylor Swift.”
Swift tweeted:“2010 called and it wants its lazy,deeply sexist joke back. How about we stop degrading hard-working women by defining this horse shit as FuNnY.” (More than 670,000 people liked Swift’s tweet.)
Actors includingThe Good Place star Jameela Jamil andMad Men star January Jones regularly call out misogynistic treatment of themselves,and other women,on their Instagram accounts.
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As Rosewarne points out,there is still no “male equivalent” to the young women who are “framed as a slut”,as Swift,Spears and other young female stars have been in the media once their singing-and-dancing Disney star days are over. While NRL stars who become embroiled in scandal because of drug or domestic abuse,says Rosewarne,are “framed as someone who has made a poor decision… it’s very different to the ‘damaged goods narrative’ that women get.”
And,for all the reports that young women growing up now are better equipped than their late-’90s counterparts to call out abuse and exploitation,they are still – especially in the entertainment industry – operating within a system largely aimed at depicting them in a sexual way,and then punishing them for that image.
“The more we empower young people,irrespective of whether they’re celebrities or not,to have authority and agency over their own bodies,their own lives,the more we can prevent exploitation,” says Ford.
She knows,though,that that’s a long game. So,until then,she has another idea. “It might be a start to not let 15-year-olds go onThe Voice,” she says. “I mean,you can’t play in the NRL unless you’re 18.”
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