‘This is not how cancer looks’: Celebrity diagnosis and death in the tabloid media

Public stories and audience understandings

We wanted to find out about the ways in which the OK! reader related to, made sense of and formed an opinion about these exclusive stories in relation to cancer, celebrity and the gossip sector. Kerry Ferris makes the point that ‘much social scientific writing on celebrity is partially or entirely theoretical’ and that, ‘authors often use personal impressions and observations to be selective and unsystematic’ (2007: 374). With this in mind, we adopted a grounded theory approach (Dey, 1999; Glaser and Strauss, 1967) to move beyond ‘preconception and conjecture’ (Glaser, 1978) to address how coverage of Goody’s death could provide context to how individuals make sense of their health concerns. The influence of symbolic interactionism on grounded theory (Blumer, 1969) was evident in this research, with the concern for exploring interpretative processes and personal actions and responses based on social meanings. The public and social meanings associated with Goody’s illness and dying were constructed across a range of media forms and texts (Kavka and West, 2010; Walter, 2010), and this research sought to explore how these social meanings were made meaningful, or not. We held a series of focus group discussions with OK! readers a year after the death of the reality television star, and, although in some respects this led to sketchy recollections, our timing allowed for a range of attitudes to emerge (see Thomas, 2008). In many cases, it was not a ‘correct’ or ‘literal’ reading of the magazine that was important or significant, but the potential mis-memory or altered recollection that was of significance here. Therefore, we are not interested in the magazine per se, but in the ways in which the young female reader responds to, recollects and reconsiders the narratives played out in the celebrity publication.

The discussion was not made up of random members of the public, nor of a representative sample of more general magazine subscribers; rather, it comprised those long-standing OK! readers who have an interest and an investment in the publication. After all, ‘individuals who are invited to participate in a focus group must be able and willing to provide the desired information and must be representative of the population of interest’ (Stewart and Shamdasani, cited in Hansen et al., 1998: 265). More importantly, for this sake of the particular research project, it is worth noting that these young female readers were, in some cases, also the same group of women who would most identify with Goody’s socio-economic status and thus her personal narrative. Indeed, it is relevant to note that ‘the impact of celebrity illness is believed to be greatest among subpopulations most demographically similar to the affected celebrity’ (Kelaher et al., 2008: 1327). Therefore, those young women who were readily able to identify with Goody were most likely to seek medical assurance. Indeed, it is precisely Goody’s age, and working-class background that appealed to ‘the hard-to-reach lower socioeconomic groups’ (Sikora, cited in Elliott, 2009), who are not only difficult to reach through routine leafleting or television advertising, but who are, partly due to their low take up of cervical screenings, actually most at risk of cervical cancer (Elliott, 2009).

Through a range of personal and professional contacts we held 10 focus group discussions with a total of 44 female participants aged between 18 and 26 from the South West region of England at a number of public venues ranging from cafes and libraries to teaching rooms and community centres. In order to discover the ways in which the OK! reader relates to, makes sense of and interprets the celebrity cancer story, it is necessary to promote the group dynamic and encourage the sense of social interaction that is said to structure their everyday experience of the text. In order to further facilitate group discussion and solicit a ‘relaxed’ (Kitzinger and Philo, 1999) dialogue amongst participants, our focus group discussions were with existing social groupings of higher education students, primary school teachers, community group members, and family. All focus groups were facilitated by both authors in order to establish consistency and reliability over the different groupings, with each discussion lasting approximately one hour. The focus group schedule asked participants to consider and discuss what they remembered about the diagnosis and death of Jade Goody within and beyond the pages of OK! magazine. A schedule for semi-structured interviews was developed and we asked participants what they remembered about Goody as a public figure, her role in the tabloid and gossip sphere, and if they could recall any health messages about cervical cancer on the back of her public diagnosis and death as they were exclusively covered in OK!. Following this, magazines were used as a prompt for group discussion. Findings from the 10 focus groups drawn on in this article where part of a larger data set: The questions for an initial series of focus groups (1–3) were developed with reference to the specific media texts (magazines and newspapers) in which messages circulated, to discover what was remembered from these. Further focus groups were then conducted in two sets with the authors (4–10) and a research assistant (11–24) maintaining the focus on these three areas. Further focus groups (25–32), in response to a storyline in the BBC soap opera Eastenders, shifted to a wider focus on the occurrence of cervical cancer stories in the media and were used to situate responses to the coverage of Goody more widely. These focus groups were recorded, transcribed and coded so that we were able to identify key themes and significant frames of reference as they emerged from participants. The three broad interview categories were used throughout data collection, and a coding scheme for analysis emerged during the focus group data rather than through the interview categories or any pre-conceptualizations. The findings and discussion are presented here in relation to the coding themes ‘ordinary celebrity’, ‘health attitudes and actions’, ‘connections with personal experiences’, ‘public understandings’, and ‘imagery’.

Goody: Ordinary, available and accessible celebrity

During the course of the discussions, several participants suggested that Goody’s public diagnosis was of little importance, but rather it was her death in the media spotlight that presented itself as an opportunity to speak to young women about the reality of cancer in general and of the need for smear test screening for cervical cancer in particular. Moreover, it was precisely Goody’s status as an ‘ordinary’ working-class woman that was seen to be the key to making her cancer narrative meaningful to the young female population. We are told that:

For a whole demographic, she is someone who people can relate to, she is only a few years older than us, she has had a hard life, her life is not out of the realm of our possibilities, her life is achievable, and therefore, she is more approachable to our generation, and this is useful for how her story gets across to us. (FG6: 22)

Likewise we were told that:

I remember Jade from Big Brother and although I know she looked a bit slow and stupid because she didn’t know basic geography she always came across as really honest and open and that is why I think that I liked her and always wanted to see what she was doing next in the magazines. (FG4: 17)

Participants on several occasions began to talk about Jade as a figure that they could identify with, in part because of her accessibility as a Big Brother reality contestant and in part because of her subsequent media exposure through the tabloid and celebrity press.

Goody: Health attitudes and actions

Participants across all focus groups made the point that not only did they remember Goody’s coverage within OK! magazine, but that the coverage of her diagnosis made them think seriously about their own health. While one respondent told us that on the back of seeing the tribute issue ‘I’ll go and get it [her overdue smear test] done’ (FG4: 15), another suggested that ‘there must some people who could have picked up on her story, even just one person [and] it could have saved her life’ (FG4: 12). Another young woman told us of her friend’s recent diagnosis, and although she made the point that she felt it right and respectful to maintain a sense of dignity and thus privacy during this time, she suggested that she was pleased that Goody brought her own diagnosis and death to public attention, saying that:

I can definitely see it as a positive thing to have it out there, my friend went to the doctors not long after the Jade diagnosis, it is quite scary to go to the doctors, the only reason she went was because she felt a little bit more empowered to go and ask to be checked out, she wanted a second opinion, Jade’s story gave her the confidence to go back to the doctors, so in this way, I’m glad this [Jade’s public diagnosis and death] has happened. (FG3: 8)

Another woman, who had watched her own young friend die from cancer earlier that year made that same point that although she respected her friend’s private diagnosis and dignified death, she went on to say that:

It is good to have it [Goody’s diagnosis] covered, it took Jade a few cover photos to get people to pay attention to the disease when 1000s of people have already passed away from it, God knows how many telling us that young women should have ‘listened to Jade while she’s got the media hyped up’. (FG2: 6)

In short, there seemed to be a general consensus among these young loyal OK! readers that irrespective of their like or dislike for Goody, irrespective of their interest or otherwise in this woman as a talented, talentless or media-hyped figure and irrespective of their overriding sense that the diagnosis and death of a loved one should be understood as a private, intimate and dignified event, these women could see the possible benefits of making such a diagnosis and untimely death public. For these focus group participants, such visibility could help to remove the myth that young women are not at risk of cancer, challenge the taboo of talking about dying, death and the grieving process and encourage young women to look to their own health. Extant literature on the sociology of death has noted that, until recently, death had been largely invisible from public discourses and display. Indeed, we are told that even the ‘contemplation of death is routinely tabooed, if not excluded, from public consciousness and debate’ (Willmott, 2000: 660). With this in mind then, we can understand why these young female readers found Goody’s public diagnosis and later death to be potentially useful to the health of the young female demographic, because this reality television celebrity was in a position to draw attention to an otherwise taboo topic that they felt demanded public attention.

Goody: The unrealistic and unacceptable face of cancer

These readers are openly and unapologetically invested in the glossy world of celebrity style and star glamour that dominates the magazine in question, and they clearly see Goody’s diagnosis and death as potentially positive in sending a health message regarding the potential threat of cervical cancer and the need for screenings. However, what is fascinating here was the ways in which these self-same readers, who were normally inspired by Hollywood fashions and celebrity bodies were less invested in and deliberately critical of Goody’s glamorous performance of death.

One participant commented that this depiction of Goody was ‘less an inspiration [and] more a burden, living up to her version of death’ (FG10: 44), and another mentioned that ‘if people are going to read this for the sake of being able to recognize what happens when someone is ill they won’t be able to identity with her […] this is not how cancer looks’ (FG2: 4). In this same way another respondent made the point that ‘Jade still looks like Jade, dare I say it, she looks really good because she is tanned, thin and smiling’ (FG9: 36). The young woman who had seen her own friend die of the same cruel cancer made the point that ‘you’d see the glamorous images of Jade and feel terrible about yourself’ (FG2: 6). The respondents were well aware that, in their words ‘you wouldn’t get the nitty gritty truth from the magazine [just] all the glamourized stuff’ (FG1: 1), this was of course in keeping with the ethos and entertainment criteria of the text in question. And although these young women all formed a consensus when they talked about Goody’s bravery to not wear a wig or hair piece in these professional images, they also acknowledged that ‘she doesn’t look like a cancer patient’ because she had ‘still got make-up on’ (FG9: 38). Tony Walter makes this point when he tells us that ‘pictures of her face – often the only part of her body exposed – did not fit common stereotypes of the gaunt, skeletal person in end-stage cancer, nor of the steroid-induced overweight patient’ (Walter, 2010: 856).

The point here is simply that Goody’s public diagnosis and death was seen as an opportunity to bring media attention to the potential threat of cervical cancer to a group of young women who themselves could be at risk, but that, rather than use this very public and prolific forum to talk to the reader about the illness in question, the potential health message was lost amidst the glamorous styles, glossy fashions and beautiful appearances of the woman in question, as it befits the ethos and agenda of this reverential celebrity gossip publication. Misha Kavka and Amy West make this point when they suggest that:

… [o]n one hand […] Jade Goody, like anyone else who is ‘losing the battle’ against advanced cancer, was visibly in the grasp of real death. On the other hand, the celebrity persona is always a battleground between manufacture and authenticity. (Kavka and West, 2010: 228)

Even the forms of expertise or authority that Goody’s body could provide were seemingly contested in the light of her celebrity status and history because participants formed a consensus when they noted that she had been afforded, or rather been able to afford, forms of physical ‘beautification’ that they, their friends or their family would not.

Indeed, participants suggested that they gained little awareness of the symptoms, screening processes, or causes of cervical cancer from the numerous headlines, cover stories, interviews or editorials that featured Goody during her diagnosis and terminal illness. Indeed, it has been suggested that Goody’s diagnosis was itself in question because she continued to look beautiful, radiant and active, rather than gaunt, passive or in pain, all of which they had previously associated with the illness. The fact that Goody looked so slim, tanned, beautifully styled and smiling meant that her physical appearance merely blended in with the narrow spectrum of celebrity bodies seen throughout the publication. As such, there were some questions regarding her terminal diagnosis, and a number of participants admitted, albeit it with some embarrassment, that they ‘did not believe that she was actually going to die’ (FG7: 27) and wondered if the cancer narrative that was being played out in the media spotlight was merely another ‘publicity stunt’ (FG7: 25) from a young attributed celebrity who was desperately trying to re-work her, at the time, damaged public image for the sake of media interaction and economic advantage.

It is perhaps with reference to OK! that Woodthorpe argues that ‘the reporting of her dying almost entirely shielded the consumer of her story from the reality of bodily deterioration that can accompany cancer’ (2010: 289). Another participant suggested that:

I kept looking at the magazine, and I know that she was meant to be dying, but I didn’t believe it, she spends so much time trying to get media attention and finding new ways to sell a story or get another television series that I thought it was just another gimmick. I thought that she might have cancer but that it was treatable and that she’s come back in a couple of months and sell the story of her dramatic fight with cancer, her brave battle with the disease, you know, like when celebrities get divorced or something, and you follow the whole story through with the happy ending […] except this didn’t have a happy ending, I was really shocked when they had said she died because I was just waiting for her next cover telling us that she is in remission and happy to have survived. (FG5: 18)

This disconnect between personal experiences and media coverage has also been discussed by Armstrong-Coster who notes, ‘the voices of my focus group suggest that a shortfall exists between this idealized version of dying and the actual truth of the experience’ (2001: 303). Although Goody’s cancer battle was played out in the full glare of the celebrity gossip sector, the last few days of her life were private, hidden away from the camera and the celebrity circuit. In this way, Goody continued to present an orchestrated and airbrushed image for as long as she was able, and when she was no longer able to realize and control this constructed performance, she withdrew from the media spotlight. In this way, ‘the moment of her death was entirely concealed from public view’, with all coverage focusing instead on her relationships, her strength and her bravery, all of which actually served to cover up, or what Woodthorpe refers to as masking, ‘the reality of dying from cervical cancer’ (2010: 289).

Goody: The reality and responsibility of public diagnosis

Participants tended to agree that there was a missed opportunity here, in the presentation of Goody’s diagnosis and death in the celebrity gossip sector, and several women went as far as saying that they learned very little, and in some cases, nothing, about cervical cancer throughout this very public diagnosis and death. One respondent told us that:

I didn’t know anything about cervical cancer […] I didn’t learn anything from the magazines […] I didn’t learn one thing […] I didn’t know what it was before or even when she did have cancer, even when she was terminally ill. (FG4: 15)

Another made the point that the ‘front page [of the magazine] doesn’t even say that she has cancer […] there is nothing that actually says it, rather [it is about her] wedding, christening, her boys but not [her] death’ (FG10: 41). Likewise, another told us that:

If the magazine did say anything about cervical cancer I don’t remember it, it was a while ago now, but I still remember the front cover images of her wedding, her dress and her boys dressed in suits vividly, but I couldn’t tell you anything about cervical cancer that I didn’t already know, and to be honest, that is not much. (FG6: 22)

This voice was echoed when we heard that:

Perhaps they did put something in about cervical cancer rates or risks or something but I don’t remember actually seeing it anywhere, it certainly wasn’t a key feature of the stories, and I don’t remember Jade saying anything about it in her interviews, she was just talking about her friends and family and looking after her boys, Freddie and Jack. (FG9: 38)

The presentation of Goody’s diagnosis and death is understandable and perhaps inevitable in light of the agenda of the magazine and the profile of the readership in question. Reverential celebrity publications such as OK! invest in the surface glamour and physical attractiveness of the female celebrity, and the young female readers are drawn to the publication precisely because of this editorial agenda. In short, the reality of a cancer diagnosis, terminal illness and death are simply not in keeping with the wider remit of the features, advertising or editorial on offer in the publication, whereas Goody’s presentation of cancer is not entirely at odds with the surface gloss of the title in question. Several readers made this point when they talked about the link between the way in which Goody was being presented, her exclusive deal with OK! and the nature of the magazine in question. One participant told us that:

She has the deal with them so she is not going to do the ‘real’ story with the close up of her on her death bed, looking like she has cancer, that would be too hard hitting, so it’s all pretty and calm and makes Jade look in control. (FG1: 3)

Control indeed, something that is both feared and at odds with the terminally ill body and the death narrative.

Goody: Celebrity airbrushing or tabloid imagery

The respondents were overwhelmingly critical of exactly the airbrushed and heavily orchestrated images that they previously tended to invest in. In most cases, these young women had witnessed the devastating effects of cancer among close friends and family members, and it was precisely this awareness that jarred with the media representation on offer in the celebrity weekly here.

Many focus group participants agreed that, when faced with a less positive, and by positive they meant less radiant, image of the celebrity in pain, leaving hospital or unable to walk, these images were more shocking and disturbing than anything presented in their own celebrity weekly. For example, we are told that ‘when I saw Jade in The Sun I couldn’t believe it was her because she was in a wheelchair looking pale and gaunt, she looked ill which I had not seen in the celebrity magazines’ (FG8: 34), and likewise one participant commented that ‘she looked really really ill when I saw her the newspapers, and it was the first time that I believed that she actually had cancer because she didn’t have any make-up on and looked in pain’ (FG8: 35). In this same way we find that:

Seeing Jade in the tabloids was a real shock, quite scary really because she looked like she was alright when I read about her in OK! […] seeing pictures of her coming out of hospital in a wheelchair made me realize that she was really dying. (FG6: 22)

What the focus group participants are picking up on here of course is the fact that there are currently two very different types of celebrity reporting in existence; those media organizations who require celebrity images for sales, and those who do not, and the way in which Goody’s diagnosis was presented in these two spheres said as much about the differences in the magazines as they did about their different reporting of the celebrity in question. And although we are not suggesting that audiences are necessarily naïve to these distinctions, and in many cases they enjoy the ability to expose the production process behind the celebrity system, it does not mean that they do not find pleasure, meaning and entertainment from within these orchestrated discourses and airbrushed images.

OK! magazine, like Hello! before it, appeals to the young female reader by exposing a myriad of star stories and celebrity images, be it Hollywood weddings, small screen christenings, the holiday hotspots of the rich and famous, the arrival of a celebrity baby or in this case the tragic death of a reality television star. We are told that magazines such as OK! ‘serve as promotional outlets for carefully managed and produced publicity’ (Gamson, 1994: 105). Indeed, the way in which the publication presents star previews, celebrity puff pieces and a carefully orchestrated set of promotional stories ‘is the only institutional arrangement that will allow them such constant access to celebrities’ (1994: 105). Magazines such as OK! happily relinquish control of their celebrity coverage in order to gain easy and routine access to a range of film, television, music and sporting stars (1994: 97). According to Turner’s work on mass market celebrity magazines, we are told that ‘OK! […] and Hello! woo their readers by offering positive pictures and gossip features about celebrities’ (2004: 73).

On the other hand, tabloid newspapers are said to ‘break the rules of the information economy’ by seeking out and publishing pieces of star gossip and celebrity trivia ‘without offering the payment of controlled publicity to the celebrity’ (Gamson, 1994: 106, italics in original). To put it more simply, tabloid newspapers are ‘commercial-entertainment journalism at its most pure and free: acting in opposition to publicists by pursuing “dirt,” on particular performers’ (Gamson, 1994: 106). With this in mind then, the coverage of Goody in OK! magazine differed from that seen in British tabloid newspapers such as The Sun: while the former had an exclusive deal with the celebrity in question and therefore played to the airbrushed and orchestrated image of the reality television star, the latter merely sought out candid images of the star in hospital gowns being wheeled out of her local NHS hospital, or offered close-ups of a face clearly in pain and without the prerequisite make-up.

Since the emergence of magazines such as Heat and the celebritization of tabloid news journalism, readers have become increasingly familiar with the brutal depiction of both physical and fashionable imperfections exposed by today’s stars. According to Su Holmes’ recent work on the construction, circulation and consumption of fame in Heat magazine, such unapproved features are ‘based upon the “capturing” of the celebrity through a more explicitly unflattering lens’ (2005: 26). Indeed, one might go as far as to suggest that these tabloid texts take particular pleasure in revealing those physical imperfections that the celebrity has unwittingly exposed to the camera. After all, journalist Caspar Llewellyn-Smith tells us that the guiding principle of celebrity gossip magazines is to show famous figures ‘off-guard, unkempt, unready, unsanitized’ (2002: 120). In short, magazines such as Heat and tabloid newspapers such as The Sun resist and subvert those carefully choreographed images and post-produced photo-shoots that allow today’s celebrities to appear picture-perfect.

Extant literature tells us that ‘celebrity gossip offers a forum for the negotiation of standards of women’s bodies that is dominated by ideas of a “correct”, “feminine”, “curvy”, and most of all, controllable body’ (Tomrley, 2008) and likewise, we are informed that ‘gossip functions by scrutinising the celebrity body, offering critique, suggesting improvements’ (Tomrley, 2008) and yet OK! tends to depict rather than deconstruct the carefully orchestrated and airbrushed image and carefully edited interviews with contemporary celebrity. Therefore, the way that Goody was presented from week to week, as a beautiful (albeit bald) bride, as a radiant mother and attractive wife may not speak to the reality of cancer, but rather they speak to the audience interest in and the magazine’s investment in airbrushed rather than candid celebrity images.