Whether re-assessing the trauma endured by Britney Spears at the height of her fame or the agonies suffered by the late Amy Winehouse, we have a tendency to throw up our hands and insist that the treatment of famous women 20 years ago would never fly today.
But it did fly—and even thrive—and we’re still contending with that, as proven by the new book Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Tabloid 2000s. Written by Sarah Ditum, it digs deep into the particularities of the decade that made public recognition so excruciating for the women who dominated headlines and the collective consciousness at the time. What was it that made Paris Hilton, so rarefied and rich, also so digestible to the teeming masses? What was the most frustrating part of watching teen queen Lindsay Lohan destroy herself?
Ditum largely remixes and reframes pre-existing narratives in her book, but the insights she brings to the forefront are startling in their starkness. The chapters about singer Aaliyah—who died in a plane crash before the world could confront her about her relationship with R. Kelly—and Janet Jackson—whose Super Bowl gaffe destroyed her carefully cultivated image of sexual confidence—are particularly galling. Below, see more of the biggest highlights from Toxic, which hits bookstores today.
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Paris Hilton is perhaps the smartest survivor of the aughts, and a master of crafting her story.
In recent years, the hotel heiress has opened up about her alleged experience of being abused at Provo Canyon, a Utah boarding school where, she says, she was abused as a wayward teenager.
In the 2020 documentary This is Paris, Ditum writes, “the director asks her why she didn’t disclose her Provo Canyon experiences until now. ‘I wanted to do something,’ says Paris, “but I was like, this is going to hurt my brand.’ Implicitly, for her to reveal it at this point, she must have understood that it would now be good for her brand. If that suggests that Paris is capable of supreme cynicism, it should also be noted that her judgment was absolutely correct.”
“In the aughts, victimhood won no consideration,” Ditum concludes. “The more she hurt, the greater the entertainment... Fans today want to see their idols talk about their pain and celebrate their bravery in overcoming terrible experiences. It is certainly an improvement on the aughts’ theater of cruelty, though it’s impossible to evade the fact that female suffering continues to be the product.”
Justin Timberlake directly contributed to the downfalls of Britney Spears and Janet Jackson.
Spears fans are already aware, per the pop star’s 2023 memoir The Woman in Me, that her ex Timberlake allegedly impregnated and abandoned Spears after she had an abortion, and later dragged her through the mud via the process of his solo pop star reinvention.
Toxic explores the particularities of how Timberlake went about making Spears into a public whipping post. In his music video for “Cry Me a River,” Timberlake stalks a Spears lookalike through her home as an unseen intruder. The song, of course, insinuates that Timberlake’s former paramour had cheated on him, and the video implies that this transgression affords him the right to violate her personal space in return.
“Director Francis Lawrence had previously pitched the ‘Cry Me a River’ concept to other artists (without, obviously, the Britney angle), but always came up against concerns about damaging the artist’s image,” Ditum reveals in her book. “Justin, though, was at a point in his career when damaging his image was the best thing for him.”
A few years down the road, Timberlake was paired with Jackson for the Super Bowl halftime show, where he ripped off her bodice—Jackson insisted that it was just supposed to be a semi-reveal, not a full reveal—and exposed her breast to the entire world. As we know, Timberlake essentially got off scot-free, while Jackson was blacklisted and her career went into a free fall.
“People made jokes about Timberlake’s imperviousness—he was called ‘the Teflon man’ (because nothing seemed to stick), and ‘the Houdini of pop’ (because he got out of everything)—but there was never any serious prospect of his being held responsible [for Nipplegate],” Ditum writes. “In press coverage, he became mysteriously invisible.”
Gawker played a huge role in inventing, and perpetuating, toxic tabloid culture.
NYC media-heads will always worship the memory of the once-formidable blogging network. But Gawker and its offshoots, Ditum shows, perpetuated virulent misogyny in one hand while upholding feminist principles in the other (via the site Jezebel).
Fleshbot, one of Gawker’s blogs, “routinely published upskirt pictures of celebrities and maintained a conveniently cynical attitude toward its subjects,” Ditum writes. “‘We always had a suspicion that when Britney, Lindsay, Paris, et al., ‘accidentally’ flash their lady business to the paparazzi that it’s a lot more calculated than their publicists would want you to believe. After all, there’s no easier way to get your attention than to show some hoohah to your adoring public,’ declared a 2007 post.”
Dina Lohan, Lindsay’s mother, had aspirations of becoming a beloved momager figure in pop culture, à la Kris Jenner.
Dina, who managed the careers of Lindsay and her siblings, had an idea for a reality show called CEO of Household that would center around her—but it never materialized.
“When something like CEO of Household did appear, it was called Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and it was built around the altogether more commanding figure of Kris Jenner,” Ditum writes. “Dina’s plan to make herself famous for being a stage mother had been a good one; it was just that she seemed to lack the skills to make her idea a success. There was an undeniable, and unappealing, feeling of desperation about her.”
Aaliyah died keeping her secrets about her time with R. Kelly, who she met when she was only 12 years old.
Years later, in court, people finally heard firsthand accounts of what had gone on between the late singer and Kelly, who is now serving 30 years in prison for sex trafficking.
“The trial heard testimony that he had been seen having sex with Aaliyah when she was thirteen or fourteen,” Ditum writes. “Perhaps most horribly, Kelly’s tour manager testified that he and Kelly’s accountant had conspired with Kelly to obtain a fake ID for Aaliyah to enable the two to marry. There was no romance here. Kelly was moved not by love but by fear that she was pregnant. The marriage was intended to circumvent the risk of a statutory rape charge while obtaining an abortion.”
Ditum comes to many dark conclusions in her book, but her work concerning the “Rock the Boat” singer may be the darkest. She writes that Aaliyah’s death in 2001, as tragic as it was, “shielded her from the brutal scrutiny aughts fame would have inflicted: she never had to contend with public recognition that she had been the child bride of the man in the pee tape.”
