Thank you! I know it's been a long day. You ready to gossip? Little bit? Today at TED you've been inspired
by life coaches and sociologists and scientists and culinary entrepreneurs
and marine biologists so you might think what I do isn't so distinguished or cerebral.
You might think that what you're about to hear is a little bit dirty. Yeah.
I gossip. I am a professional gossip. My name is Laney and I talk shit for a living.
So maybe my mother should have given birth to a piece of barbecue pork. While some of today's
speakers were this week in the lab dividing atoms, I spent my time
investigating whether or not Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, is
pregnant
(not yet). I followed up on whether or not Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel
were getting married in Italy (they did). And oh, I watched Jennifer Aniston talk
about her nipples in an interview about her engagement and I also looked into
whether or not Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj are still calling each other nasty
names backstage at American Idol (yes, and it's totally awesome). Movie sets, movie
premieres, the red carpet at the Oscars, the after party? That's my
workplace. That's my lab and that's where I observe celebrities in their habitat.
Think of modern celebrity as an ecosystem. Let's call him Tom. Tom the celebrity
cannot exist in a vacuum. He needs a team of people assisting him with his career.
Publicist. Agents. Makeup artist. Hair stylist. They're there to help him with
his career because talent is not enough these days.
Tom has to be likable. He's gotta be marketable. Tom is for sale to the movie
studios and the TV networks so Team Tom sells Tom by engaging the media and also
the paparazzi. Yes, those paparazzi are a vital part of this ecosystem too
because they take the pictures and the press delivers the pictures to the fan.
That's you. You are a critical part of this ecosystem because you create the
celebrity. The celebrity depends, Tom depends, on you to secure his status as a
celebrity. So you see, the fan, Tom, the paparazzi, the publicist... all these
components function together concurrently like an ecosystem to
support modern celebrity. You take one element away and it all falls apart. So
why is this ecosystem important?
Why do we care about Tom? My job as a professional gossip is to study the
celebrity ecosystem the way a scientist might study the marine ecosystem to
understand how organisms react to one another and how those relationships
impact our environment. I study the celebrity ecosystem to understand social
culture. To understand social behavior. To understand humanity. To understand ourselves.
That is the function of gossip. Gossip then, is good. Gossip is knowledge. Gossip
is immortal. Gossip is historical. Egyptian hieroglyphics are widely believed to be
the oldest written language. You did not expect me to go there. So researchers at
California's Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum have been studying hieroglyphic content
that they found to be remarkably similar to what you might be reading at the
newsstand waiting to pay for your bananas at the grocery store.
One five thousand year old text tells the story of a king who would check in on one of
his army generals in the middle of the night quite often. They were not
discussing military strategy. The text specifies that the king resided in a
home where, quote, "there was no wife" so let me spell it out for you.
The king and the army dude were allegedly having sexual relations. You
could sub in John Travolta and a Masseur into that story and no one would know the
difference.
Another really juicy piece of ancient gossip is found from the drawings around
the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut.
Rumor has it the queen enjoyed an intimate relationship with one of her advisers.
Now, it was never confirmed whether or not they were having an affair but
hieroglyphics found in the servants' area of the archaeological site depicted a
royal female engaged in
unmistakable physical contact -
erotic contact - with a non-royal male. So it's kind of like did Brad and Angelina
have an affair on the set of Mr and Mrs Smith? Ask the crew. The crew always knows.
So you see, those old Egyptians? They loved talking shit too. They loved talking
shit so much they carved it in stone. And this kind of ancient storytelling is
everywhere. It's in tablets, and old scrolls, its on papyrus, and pyramid walls,
and we learned about the ancient Egyptians through their hieroglyphics.
Many many years from now, our successors will learn about us through our
hieroglyphics: the tabloids. They too tell a story.
Celebrity gossip is storytelling and as we've seen from the hieroglyphics
those stories are valuable in providing future generations with an understanding
of who we are and with us with an understanding of where we are right now.
Okay. So then why are we so ashamed of gossip? Why are we so embarrased? Why does my friend tuck her copy of Us Weekly
inside the New York Times? No one feels shame when they're watching a hockey
game. No one feels embarrassed when they're reading up on football statistics,
but gossip? Celebrity gossip? It's regarded as a distraction
for degenerates. A frivolous preoccupation that has no merit when perhaps it's more
important to the study of our social culture than any sport because at the
heart of it
celebrity gossip isn't just about celebrities. As we saw from those
hieroglyphics, they were a reflection of popular morals and ethics of that time
and right now the gossip conversation is like any conversation. It is an
information exchange. Here's the really interesting thing about gossip. You can't consume it
without bias. You can't consume gossip without filtering it through the prism of
your own experience.
In filtering gossip through the prism of your own experience, what inevitably
comes out the other side is a pretty definitive declaration about what we
believe, what we expect, what we reject, and how we process. Gossip allows us to
communicate a behavioral code to others.
Gossip allows us to set a standard of conduct.
Let's take a closer look. One of the biggest gossip stories of 2012 was the
Kristen Stewart cheating scandal. Quick background because I know you guys know
anything about that. Kristen Stewart is the star of a mega movie franchise
called Twilight. She plays a teenage girl called Bella who finds the perfect
man. He's a vampire and he's a hundred years old. He's rich, he's hot, he's chaste,
he says the right things and Bella gives up her life to be with him. People were possessed by this story.
So much so, they were so obsessed, that they transferred their attachment
to the real-life actors playing these parts.
Robert Pattinson played Edward and in a classic case of life imitates art,
Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart fell in love, making the story of Bella
and Edward even more real. Until Kristen Stewart was caught cheating on
him with the married director of one of her other movies. This was the cover of the
New York Daily News when the story broke.
Trampire! Stewart was compelled to offer a public apology for a private decision.
She was subsequently slut shamed across the internet,
she went into hiding for awhile and she reportedly lost a few movie roles.
Meanwhile, that director with whom she was caught in flagranti? He not only kept his
job, he was offered even more film opportunities. So does infidelity carry a
double standard? Last year Ashton Kutcher was caught cheating on his then wife
Demi Moore on the eve of their sixth wedding anniversary. There is a blonde, it
was a hot tub, it was in San Diego. In the aftermath, in the aftermath Kutcher was offered a
contract extension on the show Two and a Half Men, making him the highest paid
actor on television.
Two and a Half Men consistently ranks as one of the most watched TV shows on
television. So, you're watching. People are watching. Do we reward a cheater if
he's male and punish her if she's female? To further explore the relationship
between fidelity and gender, Stewart's biggest crime may not have been that she
cheated on her boyfriend but that she violated a female code of conduct and in
doing so broke the dream of girls who are raised since birth not to aspire to the
White House, but to find the perfect guy. Isn't that the story of Twilight? She got
the fantasy guy Bella did. Every girl that got the fantasy guy got him to fall in
love with her and that was the dream. Really, for people watching that movie, that's
the dream of millions of women everywhere.
So, Kristen Stewart, how dare she betrayed that fantasy? How dare she turned her
back on that dream. When we were gossiping about Kristen Stewart then, we
were not just talking about an actress cheating on her boyfriend. Participants
of that gossip conversation were sharing with each other their
moralistic views on marriage and fidelity and
and the social expectation of females in relationships. What else can gossip tell
us about the social expectation of the female in a relationship? Recently, one of
the most read stories on the web site for People Magazine had the following
headline: "Drew Barrymore Can't Wait to Meet Her Baby." It was as if no pregnant
woman was ever excited to meet her baby. It was as if Drew Barrymore had the exclusive
on prenatal excitement. I mean don't get me wrong.
Motherhood is enriching and rewarding but I think it's not a new thing, right?
I'm pretty sure pregnant women have been excited before Drew Barrymore to meet
their kid, but for some reason women cannot get enough of other women having
babies. Celebrity websites... the most popular sections on them oftentimes are
the celebrity baby section. It's the same reason why Jennifer Aniston has already
been pregnant eight times this year.
Being a mother of a baby has never been more interesting. Jessica Alba has a baby and
suddenly she's an authority on baby food. A c-list reality show celebrity has a
baby and everybody wants to interview her. Snooki from the Jersey Shore has a
baby and suddenly she's not the girl who peed on a dance floor in a dance club,
she's a new Madonna floating on a cloud of hairspray and South Tanner. Motherhood
is the ultimate whitewash. Motherhood in the celebrity ecosystem right now is a grand
slam. It is the most newsworthy and often redeeming accomplishment a woman can
achieve. So, like is this new, this reproductive system thing or what?
No. But for some reason, we seem to be fixated on celebrities having moms -
becoming moms. Doing something that women have been doing forever. Now is this just
gossip? Or is it a reflection of a greater social trend? Outside of Hollywood,
mommyhood has never been more popular. The mommy blogger is an actual
profession now. So when we gossip about celebrities becoming moms and when we
reward them for becoming moms, what does that say about the attitudes about women
in our society? What does that say about the roles that we're most comfortable
seeing women occupy in our society? And what does that say about our society
that the guy who did this? He went on to top the Billboard charts. That's sales. And
win a Grammy this year and get his girlfriend back. It's been three years since Chris
Brown assaulted Rihanna. Apparently they're hooking up undercover and
thinking about reconciling and coming out in public again. It's a big story. Is this
just a gossip story, their reconciliation? Or is this reconciliation of theirs a
reflection of society's attitude about violence towards women? Many women go
back to the men who abused them. Rihanna's story is not unique, and Rihanna is not the
only person who's forgiven Chris Brown. The recording industry has forgiven
Chris Brown. He just won a Grammy. The fans are supporting Chris Brown. He's selling
records, they're seeing his shows, they're watching his videos, they've elevated
him to a level of fame that he's never had before. Who are they, these fans? You know them. They're your
sons and daughters and granddaughters, neighbors, nephews...
They're people you live with in your community, they're people you raise... they are
us. So in five hundred years when they see that we turned this into this, will we be
judged as the society that celebrates a guy who beats a girl or will we
be celebrated as a society that forgives the guy who beat a girl? And if we are a
society that forgives a guy who beat a girl, do we have the same level of
compassion for a guy who secretly wants to have sex with another guy? Let's go
back to that five thousand year old text and the story about the Pharaoh and his
army general and their midnight visits. The modern equivalent? Magazine cover after
magazine cover this year alleging that John Travolta for years was hitting on
male massage therapists. this is Vinnie Barbarino. This is Danny Zuko. This is
Tony Manero. This is the badass criminal in Pulp Fiction, Vincent Vega. He shoots
guns, he flies planes, he swaggers. John Travolta has made a career out of
conventionally masculine roles and the fear in Hollywood is that for actors
like Travolta who fit traditional male stereotype... should they come out as
homosexual? We the audience would have a harder time believing them in their roles.
Is this really about John Travolta or is this about us and our definition of
masculinity as it relates to sexual orientation? Is a male actor less
convincing as an action hero if he's not sharing a bed with a woman? Is a man less
of a man if he would rather sleep with a man? Would we rather a man put a fist to
a girl's face that his mouth to another man's mouth? To gossip about John
Travolta
is to search for the answers to these questions. And the way that you answer
these questions
tells me more about you than it does about John Travolta. In the last 15
minutes we've talked about marital convention, fidelity, feminist regression
or progression, social violence, and sexual orientation. We just got real, yo.
And all within the context of celebrity gossip. How then can gossip not be
considered academic? Gossip is anthropology. Celebrity gossip is the
conversation that exposes who we are.
Celebrity gossip is a reflection of modern human behavior in culture. It is a
reflection of a current standard of morality and in observing the changing
nature of morality, gossip is the play-by-play of our social evolution,
just like the hieroglyphics where a play by play into an ancient world. That's why
I crusade for gossip. That's why I'm here today to tell you that the next time you
want to talk about Tom Cruise and whether or not scientology brainwashed
him, or if you leave here and you say to yourself, "that bitch does that for a
living?"
Great! Go! Gossip about that.
Know that you are carrying on a human convention that's been around for
thousands of years and will continue for even more in providing valuable insight
into who we are and where we're going. Go forth and gossip.
thank you