Abstract
Andrea McDonnell explores the nature of the pleasure and guilt that readers of gossip magazines feel when consuming this kind of literature. Despite being labeled by its readers as ‘trash,’ gossip magazines are able to capture people’s attention, and even to generate discussions on the main topics, such as beauty, pregnancy, love, and adultery. The apparent contradiction between the low esteem in which they are held, and the pleasure that readers feel by consuming them produces a sense of culpability. The main question that McDonnell addresses in her book is: Why do we feel guilty for something that makes us feel good?
By positioning herself as a reader of gossip magazines, she tackles the issue from the point of view of the insider, and her methodology allows her to encompass both the production and consumption processes involved in the industry. She interviews a group of women whom she defines as ‘the Cube women,’ from the name of their workplace, and she also interviews a group of editors who work in the industry. Moreover, she conducts several visual analyses on the magazines to support her ideas, therefore providing an overview of the relationships among the readers, editors, and protagonists (i.e., the celebrities) of the magazines.
McDonnell defines celebrity gossip magazines as a gendered type of literature specifically aimed at women. However, as the statistics that she quotes show, and as some of her interviewees admit, men also read this kind of literature, and they share with their female counterparts the same feeling of pleasure. Despite this, gossip magazines are defined as feminine literature, and placed alongside similar media products such as soap operas and romance novels. By rendering this kind of literature typically feminine, the result is to endorse and reinforce the divisions between men and women. Furthermore, the consequent androcentric bias against these magazines produces a mass-culture critique that ultimately critiques women themselves.
Being defined as women’s texts, the magazines’ content is therefore constructed in order to appeal to women’s everyday concerns. The use of celebrities, who obviously lead extraordinary lives, to portray ordinary daily activities, is paradoxical yet engaging for the readers. This ‘humanizing’ process, which allows readers to view a celebrity as a ‘normal’ person, serves the purpose of creating in the readership a sense of belonging to the same group or community. In this relationship, the magazine positions itself as the mediator between the celebrity and the reader.
The motif of ‘the ordinary’ that permeates gossip magazines is constructed along the lines of the moral idea of ‘appropriateness.’ Those who go off the rails are condemned whereas those who comply with the rules imposed by the magazine’s set of moral codes are praised. The stories narrated are therefore moralizing tales for the 21st century, where sexual behavior is scrutinized, romantic affairs are disapproved, and excessive body fat is condemned unless it is the result of pregnancy.
Despite the evident will to instruct the readers on the rules of normalcy, McDonnell’s interviewees condemn this attempt and are constantly suspicious of the magazines. Their sense of guilt probably arises from their disagreement with the themes the moral tales perpetuate, but their pleasure has other sources. One of these is a feeling that the author defines with the German word Schadenfreude. It is the malicious, albeit human, pleasure produced by other people’s misfortunes. Given the unattainable image that celebrities represent, exposing the flaws in their lives allows the audience to overcome their own frustrations, and to enjoy (for a moment) a sense of ‘power and control’ over their famous counterparts.
Moreover, the pleasure felt when reading gossip magazines lies in the opportunity for dialogue. The readers can compare and contrast their own behavior, or the behavior of those around them, and discuss with friends and relatives topics that would otherwise be overlooked. For example, when one of these magazines showed a story of domestic abuse lived by a celebrity, McDonnell’s informants not only assessed the behavior of the abuser and the reaction of the abused, but they also used this story to create and articulate their own personal opinions on the topic. In other words, the women who enjoy reading gossip magazines are not simple passive receptors of the stories, but are able to rework the meanings of these tales and to find in them sparks for conversations and debates among their peers, contesting and challenging the moral codes implied in the narratives.
The final kind of pleasure lies in the ability to detect fake news. The sources of the stories at the core of gossip magazines are often not only based on information, but also on rumors and speculations. The ambiguity opens up different interpretations that are entirely left up to the reader. Thus, the pleasure is the product of the authority that the reader has over the text, having acquired the power to decide whether it is true or false. Unlike other news publications, here the reader is the one who has the authority to judge the reliability of the information presented. Gossip readers are therefore active participants in the debates generated by the magazines.
The book’s originality lies in its sympathetic approach to the study of this kind of literature. The author does not condemn the readers or the editors because, as she acknowledges at the end of the book, ‘the purpose of the popular is not always to encourage resistance, but to help us find joy in our day-to-day lives’ (p. 136). Reading gossip magazines, even if labeled by their own readers as a trashy kind of literature, becomes for McDonnell an empowering hobby for women, who discover that even celebrities share their preoccupations and anxieties, and are therefore pushed to reflect upon and discuss social issues regarding womanhood.