Opinions: Women: Put down People and pick up Business Week

 by Sarah Maschoff
 published on Tuesday, February 19, 2008

As a student worker on campus, a good portion of my day is spent making copies, running errands and playing on the Internet. This is a guaranteed side effect to hours of sitting at my small desk with nothing to do.

Therefore, this free time allows me to browse everything that the Internet has to offer, including entertainment news. Now, I am pretty sure that the majority of the planet is unbelievably sick of hearing about the loves, losses and all-around good times of Hollywood's young starlets or star wannabes, which, for the sake of our gag reflex, will remain unnamed, but you know who they are. So don't worry, this article is not about them.

I want to talk about the men. Hundreds of articles have been written on the lives and loves of young women in entertainment. Even as far back as the 1950s, stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe have been center stage for America's salacious appetite for celebrity gossip. But there is a group of people missing from this gossip pool, a group whose problems are not being covered as annoyingly as these women's. When it comes to these gossip rags, men are rarely mentioned when they are not associated with a woman. As in the case of Heath Ledger, the coverage of his actual death has begun to lessen in favor of his former girlfriend's reaction to it.

A recent AOL article brought this particular subject to my eyes, and it caused me to think back on all the hours spent at my little desk prowling over pictures, stories and news blurbs about the lifestyles of the rich and famous. I honestly cannot remember any stories that seem to concentrate on a man, unless it dealt with a breakup, marriage or birth with a just as famous woman.

This is an interesting turn of the tables on the traditional view of men, whose relevance to women was always substantial, but never defining. So then I must ask why. Why are the lives and loves of celebrity men seen as less interesting than those of women? It is no secret that women are the primary consumers of this cesspool of entertainment gossip, myself of course included. So I began to think if I, as a consumer, would be at all interested in reading about a man's journey through fame, fortune and everything else that goes along with life.

My immediate thought was yes, I would be very interested in reading about them; however, according to the aforementioned article, the numbers just don't add up. In the simplest terms, women sell more gossip magazines than men.

The issues of men in the political and business arena are always front and center on any magazine of actual journalistic credibility. And these magazines, of course, primarily target men. Therefore, the simple answer must be that women enjoy reading about other women, and men enjoy reading about other men. However, this extremely simplistic answer did not suffice, because it raised a larger issue of women are solely targeted for petty, mind-numbing garbage like celebrity gossip.

Women and men need to begin to care about the lives and issues of each other. Women need to look past their distractions and once again march full force into their own lives, loves and losses. Only then can women continue to find their way to absolute equality.

So women, my call to you is to put down that copy of People magazine and grab the latest Business Week, and let's all begin to gossip about what direction the Dow will move or what the best way to start your own business is. Anything but "those who will not be named."

Send any comments to Sarah at: sarah.maschoff@asu.edu.