Sextapes, gossip blogs, and Paris Hilton: How the noughties went toxic
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 26 October 2023
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week Britney Spears released her new memoir, and is the latest celebrity to open up about the trauma of being a young famous woman in the 2000s. Post-MeToo and the Russell Brand allegations, there has been a collective re-evaluation of how stars like Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan were treated. So why did we want to see them humiliated? And why did so many of us think it was normal?
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Toxic: Women, Fame and the Noughties by Sarah Ditum (Fleet £22). Buy at timesbookshop.co.uk. Discount for Times+ members
Guest: Sarah Ditum, writer for The Sunday Times, and author of Toxic: Women, Fame and the Noughties.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Book extract: Being Britney Spears: inside the teen dream that turned toxic: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/britney-spears-book-the-woman-in-me-justin-timberlake-jhnhgcxd6
Stories of our times episodes:
- Russell Brand accused of rape: https://pod.fo/e/1eeeb0
- Russell Brand investigation: What happened next:https://pod.fo/e/1f03f7
Clips: BBC Woman’s Hour, CBS, MTV VMAs, 60 Minutes/9Now, Channel 4 News, I am Paris, CBS News, …Baby One More Time/Britney Spears/SME, Blurred Lines/Robin Thicke, T.I., Pharrell/UMG, CNN, KRON4, BBC News, Pop Idol/ITV, The Simple Life/Fox, Saturday Night Live/NBC, This is Paris/YouTube.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm John Curtis, and I'm Rachel Wolf. |
| 0:05.2 | We want to tell you about our new podcast, Trendy from Toy Toys. |
| 0:09.6 | It's all about what people think and why politicians do what they do. |
| 0:14.1 | Each week we're going to look at the most important social, political and economic trends, |
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| 0:23.0 | New episodes will be available every Thursday morning. |
| 0:25.9 | Search for Trendy, wherever you get your podcast. |
| 0:40.0 | The Naughties. |
| 0:41.7 | A decade when the world changed and changed again, with 9.11 and then the financial crash. |
| 0:50.3 | It was a decade when tech was exploding. |
| 0:54.8 | But the Naughties was also a decade that was obsessed with the cult of celebrity. |
| 1:03.4 | Every time I left my house, it was 50 cars waiting outside, helicopters, people jumping over fences, |
| 1:10.0 | paparazzi getting in fights with each other to try to get the shot. |
| 1:12.5 | It was just constant every single second. |
| 1:16.0 | At the time, it was assumed that celebrities enjoyed being packed and gossiped about. |
| 1:22.0 | It was what made them famous. |
| 1:24.3 | But looking back now, a lot of it was just deeply, deeply disturbing. |
| 1:30.8 | The biggest train wreck of 2008 as voted by my readers is Amy Winehouse. |
| 1:37.5 | Hey, at least she's still alive. |
| 1:39.7 | Have you seen Britney's kids? |
| 1:42.0 | Oh my god, they are the most adorable mistakes you'll ever see. |
| 1:49.1 | Somehow, back then, it seemed normal to see women regularly demeaned and humiliated in the name of entainment. |
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