OFFICIAL LIVEBLOG – Room of Your Own 1: Women Writing In The Age Of Britney: Pop Culture & Gossip & Feministy Stuff, Oh My

In an age when Octo-Mom, Sarah Palin, LOST, Britney Spears, Twilight and Brangelina dominate the headlines on a near-daily basis, it’s about time we asked: What is the state of pop culture writing (writing about TV, movies, magazines, music and celebrity gossip) among women, and what good is it doing us? Is it a genre that empowers women as writers and readers – even as feminists? – or does it keep us locked in old stereotypes about women as gossips and consumers of soap operas and morning shows? 

Join the ladies of MamaPop – Tracey of Sweetney, Amy of Amalah and Catherine of Her Bad Mother – to weigh in on whether pop culture writing online is currently one of the best forums for really intelligent and thoughtful musings on the place of women in society, or if women’s writing should be focused elsewhere.

Talking about gossip:

It's very easy to forget Spidey's humanity. This is an actual person. Some of us, as much as we are public figures, we have still experienced events where people have not recognized our humanity. People have written things or said things about us that were so derogatory. We have feelings. That's something that we're always thinking about.

Catherine: Gossip has always been thought of as as something that has always been thought of as a woman thing, but today, the biggest gossip sites are run by men. Women are as fully capable of snark as men are. It would be interesting to to talk about whether gossip is something that is unique to woman. What's the pop culture writing and what's the gossip. Is any writing about a celebrity gossip? Are pop culture sites like MamaPop elevating gossip? Reclaiming gossip? Or is it just being repackaged in a more acceptable way?

Amy: I think it can be elevated. When was the last time you read the comments on Perez Hilton? Other sites to raise the discussion. I love reading the comments on Jezebel. There's discussion.

Audience: What is gossip? Discussion includes that history is gossip because it’s one person’s idea.

Catherine: Is it gossip if we’re talking about Sarah Palin? Must of history is gossip. We’re just calling it gossip if women are doing it or if we’re talking about someone we’re jealous of.

Audience: Anytime I’m talking about something I heard about someone else, I try to add something to it or elevate it. If you’re seeing something that makes you sad or disappointed. I don’t think you always have to be nice, but you have to add something to the discussion.

Tracey The people we select to write for the site are unique inviduals with unique perspectives. We try not to regurgitate the same thing in different words. It’s important to us that we’re adding something. Even if it’s something completely surreal, like someone’s individual take on it. We don’t say the same thing over and over again.

Audience: Gossip is a really big struggle for me. I get pitched nasty stuff all the time. I write about celebrities all the time, but I don’t write gossip. US magazine write what it does for us. We perpetuate this whole gossip-centric existence. If we’re writing as feminists (which is how I write), we shouldn’t perpetuate that. The press wants us to, but we can’t.

Catherine: Why do I dislike Gwenyth Paltrow so much? I’ve written about it on MamaPop. If I’m writing about who she’s sleeping with, that would be gossip. If I’m writing about why I dislike her so much, I think that’s okay. Do I really have to be really supportive of every woman out there? Can we talk about celebrities, male and female, without being gossipy.

Audience: On your About page, you don’t use the f-word, but I’m wondering why it’s not right at the top of the page.

Catherine: I consider myself a feminist, but I don’t wear the badge on my blog. I think we assume that it is.

Amalah: We’ve written posts about Kelly Clarkson, when she said “I’m not a feminist because I don’t like that word.” We’ve never said that MamaPop is the feminist gossip blog because we just don’t feel like we need to.

Tracey We’ve tried to distinguish ourselves from Jezebel. We’re not just about women or for women. It’s parents. The men and women who write for the site come from the feminist gossip mindset, but I’m very uncomfortable putting any kind of label on it. It’s clear when you read the site who we are and what we think and that we are very opinionated women and men-
Catherine: -- who don’t like Gwenyth Paltrow.

Audience: Gossip doesn’t have to be mean. I think it’s just that gossip could be untrue. I have to remember that these people are human beings. I try to remember that. I can attack their work, but they are still human beings. I’ve noticed, especially at Perez Hilton, that there’s a headline like “Chris Brown apologizes” but then when you click on it, it takes you somewhere else. I met someone last night who writes a gossip site, but it’s fun. It’s not down and dirty gossip.

Tracey There are some that seem to aggregate other posts, but they don’t  really write anything of their own.

Amy: I’ve tried to find an actual meaty source, but I don’t get it. There’s a rush to get stories within five minute or within fifteen minutes so they get the big Google rush, but there’s no “there” there.

Tracey One of the things that we’re trying to do is make it about the writing. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with us or not or whether you like what we’re saying or not, it’s still high quality writing that’s great and interesting and funny. It has substance.

Catherine: It automatically makes MamaPop different from other sites like TMZ. There’s a currency around getting stories about celebrities. It translates into revenue. There are so many sites that are just headlines because they post the rumor as soon as it’s out there. When you’re actually thinkng about pop culture to reflect on the issues, it becomes something more interesting.
There’s a related thing that we can talk about when we’re thinking about this whole rumor thing. There’s this whole bump watch about celebrities. People want to know when did so so get pregnant? When will she have her baby?

Audience: Jon and Kate. So they had this big issue with how they exploited their children. I said those things, and I judged it that way. I’d never seen the show, but I saw the people magazine. I couldn’t stop my hand from picking it up and reading it and talking about it on my blog and talking about it blog talk radio and all the news was talking about it all day long. And then I saw the words on the tv that said “Family in Turmoil” and that turned it around for me. I thought “How could I write about this family when I’ve screwed up?”

Catherine: Pop culture can really force you to reflect on yourself. I admitted that I had judgements about Kate and I got slammed. I don’t want to be judged that way. I hate when people attack me for not being tongue in cheek enough, but then I judge her. I think their marriage is falling apart because of our attention. I had to back away.

Amy: It’s like Britney’s meltdown. I thought she was punking us, and I wanted to say “Hey, get it together!” But then there was a time when the pieces fell into place and I realized that every photo we posted and every story was really contributing

Audience: Craig Ferguson said “This is a woman in turmoil and I’m not going to talk about her.” That’s the difference. If you’re writing gossip to be hurtful, that’s bad. I think we should all try to be more like Craig.

Amy: For every photo of Suri Cruise skipping in the park, there’s another one of a photog with a camera shoved into her face, and she’s crying and terrified.

Catherine: There’s lots of stuff about Britney and Sarah Palin that bring issues into light about parenting and mental health and different topics that might not otherwise have been discussed.

Tracey I wrote a post about Jon and Kate. I watched their very special episode, and I was mortified that they were still continuing to go on. I guess it’s a contract, but there’s a degree to which you have to make boundaries to protect your family and your children. I had a really hard time with them going on and knowing that their children are going to be watching it some time.

Catherine: And are we responsible for those boundaries or are they responsible for them?

Tracey And then there was that article where she hit her kid. I felt so bad for her. You know what? I’ve come this close to hitting my kid.

Catherine: If someone had a camera on you all the time, what would they see?

Tracey If you had to answer for everything you do, you know?

Audience: I think what we’re circling around is that it all comes down to intention. What do you want to get out of it? We all have this inherent desire to feed off of other people’s drama. Like Sugar Jones just said, “No one loves a train wreck more than me.” If the end purpose is just to feed off the drama, then it’s gossip. But if the end purpose is ot have a discussion about feminism or parenting or values or something, then it’s beneficial. Intelligent conversations about pop cultre should be the goal.

Amy: How many people bought a gossip magazine on the way here?

Audience:I think we have to remember that watching something we didn’t create is not the swame thing as creating something. I find that this is just a sort of check and balance that I have. I try to imagine myself as a professional on tv or in a magazine. If my main goal is to get something out there fast, it’s probably not going to be so great. I try to write the second day story. If you can do something bigger with it, like build it into a discussion about something, then it’s so much more helpful.

Catherine: iOn those sites, there’s no sense of longevity. There’s nothing there that someone will want to return to in a year. It’s not thoughtful. It’s just cranking out the content versus actually having something to say.

Audience: Celebrities, whether they’re noble souls or the most horrendous people that walked the face of the earth, they’re the vanguard of our culture. They’re being watched all the time now. That will be us one day. We exchange massive amounts of talk and data and images. We need to elevate the discourse because eventually, we’re all going to be watched like that.

Audience: I read all of your posts about Jon and Kate, and I wrote my own posts. I related scarily sadly to them. I had bad hair days in the middle of my divorce. I had comments from single moms who said “You know what? I got it, too.” Sometimes we’re yelly mommy. On another site, it quickly deteriorated to “OMG I hate her!” or “OMG! I hate him!” How involved do you want to get?

Tracey We get those comments, too. When MJ died, we had those comments, too.

Catherine: There’s a really good sicussion in the comments. It can be as good or better than what was written. You can see the discussion being elevated.

Amy: We don’t moderate comments. We have a policy where the comment gets posted unless it’s hate speech or something. People go where they want to go.

Tracey The Michael Jackson thng was different because people went there. The comments were all so very different. People talked about their experiences with bad things that happened to them. That kind of discussion was not happening on other sites.

Audience: There was something that came up in the Palin discussion yesterday that I’d like to hear your thoughts on. What do you do when a woman does something that sets women back? Where do you draw the line?

Amy: I call them on it. It’s not like Paris Hilton is going to come to my house.

Catherine: I don’t think it sets women back to be critical of each other. It is dangerous if you’re being snarky or mean or wether it’s really going to set us back. Where do you go with a strong woman on one hand or that some of her policies do set women back? If we’re talking about what impact women can have.  It’s not helping if we point fingers at other women and say “You’re not appropriate.” If you’re really self reflective about why and what you’re talking about… It’s better to go forward and be reflective than to stay at a stop and worry.

Audience: I had a question related to an earlier question. Increasingly, our lives are defined by communities that aren’t local. What top 2 or three tips would you give to people who are formal entertainer bloggers or just casual ones that don’t want to deteriorate into gossip.

 
Amy: You know bad gossip when see it.

Catherine: If it's for sake of being mean or something that wouldn't say to neighbors.

Amy: There's a luxury of not having to get it out early. You. Can leave it for a while and think about it.

Catherine: On one extreme you have serious mean snark. But on other side you have stuff that's so fawny. If it's too adoring and fawning, it's uncritical. Uncritical can be as bad as mean snarkiness. You know it when you see it.

Audience: I put celebrity pictures on my blogs? Do I need to purchase them or is it okay to post them?
Audience: celebutopia is good.
Audience: Aly at Cheaper than Therapy http://alymartell.com said see me and I can give you some tips. I have lots and lots of them.
Audience: Picapp is an aggregator who is pairing with BlogHer.
Audience: Part of this is being fueled by the youth. Yet get every single detail of celebs are out there to read.

Audience: I think that just age thing. When I was a teen I was so into all that.

Audience: I think there's a little bit of a difference. There has been a cultural shift. Gossip is about person. Work is productive. Jon and Kate dissolved the line between work and life because she IS her work.

Amy: Bloggers want people to judge our work not our lives but we write about our life in our work. The line is blurry.

Catherine: It becomes difficult to tease it apart. There is so much useful discussion that comes out of Jon and Kate. Or about celebrities and their families. The increase in discourse about parenting is good. But you're really getting close to a tricky boundary. There's so much gray area.

Tracey: The boundaries about what were share change so much. When your life is happy, you share a lot. When it's not happy, you don't share so much or you think about what you share so much more. The weight of the future is on every post. I wrote a post about how we told our daughter that we were separating. It had to be best post I ever wrote or I wouldn't have posted it.

Audience: My 7yr old is on Twitter and following Miley. There are celebs who do it differently. Some stay out of the gossip and some don't.

Audience: Try to make women understand how to treat other women. Women are held to a higher standard. We have to remember that women work twice as hard to be half as good. Shouldn't women be able to be as mediocre ad men but they can't. W need to understand that and use our purchasing power.

Audience: Pol forget that there are twety celebs who do get followed ard. But most of them don't. Of they go to certain restaurants they're going to be photographed. There's be snarky and then there's bring creil thanks for trying to maintain the line.

Audience: In the past studios had behavior contracts w celebs. Wasn't a problem then. Spmftimes publicists feed those nasty photos to get attn.

Audience: Shadenfraud – isn't that the term for taking pleasure in the misery if others? I don't mean to lack compassion, but there's a cultural role for celebrities. They are part of our culture, and they are supposed to elicit a purely emotional response.

Summary: We felt a discussion was important because it is suggested that women's writing is dismissed as gossip. We get defensive. Why? Why do we feel so defensive that we have to say "We are not just snark. What we are writing is important and valuable."

I'd like to specially think Kelly Delaney from http://kdiddy.org who rescued me by allowing me to use her laptop to type when my laptop battery died.

(Unedited. Will edit ASAP)

Posted by Tara from Feels Like Home