When Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande appeared together on the Wicked: For Good press tour, they were ostracised for being too close, too clingy, and too affectionate. Erivo was satirised as monstrous and overbearing, and cartoons of Grande depicted her completely helpless. Beyond the blatant misogynoir and the racist stereotyping of Erivo, the absolute barbaric way the public treated these women for simply expressing their closeness in the public eye exposes a much darker side of celebrity culture. We are so unbelievably quick to send female celebrities to the stake for stepping slightly outside the public’s expectations.
We can contrast this with the general response to the recent Heated Rivalry press tour featuring its male leads, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie. The two have often been seen hugging or holding hands in public, just as Erivo and Grande were, and yet these men have not been attacked in the same way. If anything, they have been praised for unabashedly exhibiting a more sensitive form of masculinity to their predominantly young audience. And rightfully so. But I cannot help but notice the complete irony in how these celebrities have been treated, with the only tangible difference being their genders.
This ‘babygirlification’ of grown men seems to be a growing epidemic; think Pedro Pascal, Cillian Murphy, or even Jimmy Fallon. There doesn’t seem to be one clear explanation for this attitude. I, however, wager that in an increasingly hostile world for women and girls, we often feel the need to categorise men as either safe or unsafe, good or bad, on ‘our side’ or not. This not only removes the multifaceted humanity of celebrities by projecting a binary existence, but also excuses the ‘better’ men from being capable of any wrongdoing.
With Timothée Chalamet’s recent controversy regarding his demeaning comments about opera and ballet, young female fans online have responded with nostalgia rather than disappointment. I have seen countless edits of Chalamet from a few years ago, back when he had longer hair and an affinity for working with Greta Gerwig. The captions read, “I miss the old Timothée” or, my personal favourite, “I miss when he was French.” This desire for the past excuses his words and damaging rhetoric.
We can even look at situations where male celebrities are widely acknowledged to be bad people, such as Kanye West or Chris Brown. Yet they still face no accountability or real-world repercussions for their actions. It seems to me that this lack of holding men accountable in the public eye, from both their own fans and others, is just a new, parasocial iteration of ‘boys will be boys’.
Photo by Nine Stars on Openverse.