‘Reading the story today makes me cringe’: Female stars and the media machine of the early 2000s
On July 2, 2004, Lindsay Lohan turned 18. It was a date obsessed over by men who were much older than 18, who flocked to early Internet forums and shock-jock radio shows to mouth-breathe about how they couldn't wait until it would be legal to do what they were obviously already doing: fantasize about having sex with a teenager who first found fame as a child in Disney's remake of "The Parent Trap."
Less than a week after Lohan's birthday, Rolling Stone contributing editor Mark Binelli met the "Mean Girls" star to profile her for the cover of the magazine's "Hot List" issue. His article begins with Lohan's assurance that her breasts are real; he writes that he discerned as much through "reporting" that consisted of "discreet visual fact checking" and "a goodbye hug." In the life of any girl who begins her career under Mickey Mouse ears, he writes, there comes a point at which she is as appealing to adults as she is to children, and that for Lohan — "or, more accurately, for Lindsay Lohan's breasts" — that moment had arrived. "It became socially acceptable to note that the redheaded child actress was hot."
In 2021, these sentences are objectively disgusting. But they fit right in with the media of that moment. As Binelli remembered via email to The Washington Post, news coverage of Lohan in the months leading up to his interview "had fixated on the teenager's breasts to such a crazy degree that she brought the topic up, wholly unprompted, during our interview."
Look up old profiles of young female celebrities from that time and you'll consistently find something that, if it were published today, would be captured and shared across Twitter and ripped to shreds. But 20 years ago, a leering tone was the industry norm, whether the subjects were actresses, models, reality stars or one of pop's ascendant blondes: Jessica Simpson, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore or, the girl who set the mold, Britney Spears.
Spears is the subject of a new documentary, "Framing Britney," which has sparked a reexamination of media treatment of the era's female celebrities. Many of them entered public life as minors yet were regularly interrogated about their developing bodies and sex lives.
It was not unusual to find a teenage Spears fielding inquiries about whether she was a virgin, if her breasts were real or fake, or if she was dressing in a way that made her an unsuitable role model for her young fans. Male counterparts were handled quite differently, from their attire — the 'NSync guys wore a lot of turtlenecks — to their behavior. If young male stars talked about having sex it was a cause for celebration.
An issue of Details magazine with a freshly liberated from 'NSync Justin Timberlake on the cover makes a prominent appearance in "Framing Britney," with the accompanying text forgiving him "for all that sissy music" because "at least he got into Britney's pants." (Across the top of that same cover: "Forget feminism: Why your wife should take your name.")
"It was a horrible time for young women in popular culture," Binelli said. Though he's sure his Lohan story received zero pushback from his editors or his readers and "seemed funny and edgy to me at the time," he no longer finds it so. "Reading the story today makes me cringe and I deeply regret writing it and any other ways in which I participated in the rampant misogyny of the media landscape at the time."
"However much I'd told myself I was making some kind of meta-commentary on the sexist culture of the day," he said. "I was very clearly also perpetuating it."
What exactly was going on in the early 2000s?
From one vantage point, it was an encouraging period for young women, a real you-go-girl time in entertainment. All-female acts like TLC and Destiny's Child climbed the charts with anthems about kicking scrubs and cheating exes to the curb. Smart, plucky heroines led box office hits like "Erin Brockovich," "Bend it Like Beckham" and "Legally Blonde," while "Buffy," "Dark Angel" and "Alias" duked it out on TV. It seemed like a pretty good time to be a girl, considering the alternative (all of human history up to that point).
But it was also the era of "Girls Gone Wild" and MTV Spring Break live-streaming wet T-shirt contests from Daytona Beach. Terms like "slut-shaming" and "victim-blaming" had yet to enter the lexicon and "revenge porn" was neither a concept nor a criminal offense, though sex tapes released without the consent of their participants (like Paris Hilton's) were treated as major news and entertainment events.
"There was a lot of talk about the word 'raunch,' " said Vanessa Grigoriadis, who, as a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, spent the 2000s profiling celebrities, including Simpson and Spears. "What is raunch culture and why is it taking over America? Why are people interested in Jenny McCarthy and Jessica Simpson and Jenna Jameson and Anna Nicole Smith? . . . I think everybody thought this was a real moment in American pop culture history where we had reached the bottom."
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