I think we truly take for granted the ease at which we view famous people. I can scroll through Florence Pugh's Instagram all the way to its inception until I hit the bottom (figurative and literal). I can listen to Anna Faris' podcast on the treadmill. The Kardashians give birth on television. Oprah snaps photos of her vegetable garden. Jaden Smith tweets "I Brought Sunscreen To The Club Tonight" between sips of seltzer water.
Before, we relied on red carpet appearances and candid paparazzi shots in front of Kitson or on the patio at The Ivy. Pixelated glimpses caught on a flip phone or with a hi-res camera placed strategically in a bush half a mile from the private beach.
If you will allow the analogy, the animal by-product has not changed, we still crave bacon, but the techniques at the processing plant have changed, advancing, sterilizing, making it easily accessible on a grand scale.
2005. My safe space was Myspace. I listened to Colbie Caillat's "Bubbly" three thousand times. I scrolled through the Post Secret blog every Sunday. I flipped through celebrity magazines to see what Mischa Barton was wearing. Was she dating her co-star, Benjamin McKenzie? Where did Rachel Bilson and Hayden Christensen spend their holiday? Was Lindsay Lohan fighting with her mother, again? I needed the distraction of cultivated glamour, and there was one site that stood out above the rest.
Perez Hilton is the stage name of Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr., a failed actor who had a knack for getting close to it-girls and digging up the scummy gossip at the bottom of club room floors in pre-Instragm LA. He was uplifting to celebrities he admired, but more importantly, he was unabashedly cruel to celebrities he did not.
We did not have influencers at this time. Despite what you might feel about that emerging market, influencers at least hold some power, or appearance of power, over their lives. They have chosen a perfume or lipstick or clothing brand or vacation that they want to share with their audience and through a very strategic lens advertise that lifestyle. In 2005, we had it-girls which does not have the same sense of direction. It-girls don’t do anything. They appear seemingly out of nowhere. The name alone is patronizing. It. Girl.
Perez Hilton loved an it-girl. The lives of messy women were his bread and butter.
Time has not been kind to his invasive and unethical form of "reporting", but at its height, at the midpoint of the decade, PerezHilton.com was one of the most successful celebrity news sites, if not the most memorable. According to Mr. Hilton, the site had over 8 million views per day in 2008. Its success can be attributed to the speed at which he could cycle celebrity news, updating multiple times per day, encouraging the readers to refresh the site over and over.
The site had a very distinct style. Bubble gum pink background and taunting, white doodles to accompany the paparazzi shots.
His laser focus on starlets was often cruel, and he weaponized his site against personal slights. It is a case study in inadequacy.
Why did we let a cyber mean girl dictate our perception of the very narrowed world of Hollywood? I don't think I need to clarify who we is, but, maybe, I do. We is teenage girls. Me. The very subject he taunted, ridiculed, stalked.
Youth is prone to idealization. Lives looking for direction, taste. When I was fourteen, there was nothing more glamorous in this world than a twenty year old actress on the cover of Teen Vogue, rare birds who still hold the brightness of youth but have obtained a unique and expansive perception of the world.
Life is very singular at that age. It’s easy to latch on to the lives of others.
These stars were vessels of fascination. We showered them with adoration until they were ready for sacrifice (i.e. South Park's "Britney's New Look" episode), but unlike the Romans, we do not cheer at the gladiators. It is instead the blank stare of someone reading a blog post, the click of a mouse farther down the rabbit hole.
Celebrities are not people but changes in weather. A twenty-something tv actress with a pill problem sitting at a booth in Les Deux was like a hurricane heading for coastline. It was coming no matter what, and we waited with equal measure of fear and pleasure. We already knew her story; we are just waiting for the publication.
We followed the tide of the news, gentle yet strong waves carrying us to murky depths. We followed Britney Spear's breakdown and the end (and resurrection) of Bennifer because we loved mess. The mistakes of these sparkling, troubled people were not just personal blemishes but a scab for the reader. We liked to pick at it. People and sites like Perez Hilton approved this destructive behavior.
PerezHilton.com became instinct, but, at some point, I stopped all together. I like to think that I acquired some moralistic standard, but that would not be the whole picture. Social media satiates a lot of that ravenous paparazzi culture.
Celebrities, in someways, took back some of the power. This isn't to say that mistakes aren't made (scroll through a Twitter profile and find the problematic word vomit), but, if anything, the news cycle of celebrities has only increased as niche internet personas blow up in different corners of the internet. The pressure to report is now heavily on the subject to stay relevant.
We loved Perez Hilton because he could curate a breakdown in real time, but adulthood has its own breaks and downs to contend with. I don’t have the time for meanness on that scale anymore. Maybe its the fully formed frontal lobe or that I am over a decade older than the type of scarlet I once idolized, but I just don’t have it in me to care. Call it, maturity? I’m not so sure.