The unfortunate case of Anne Hathaway, or why we hate some female celebrities for no reason | Culture

On June 23 of this year, Canadian writer and activist Rayne Fisher-Quann tweeted a warning that Ottessa Moshfegh, the writer who rose to worldwide fame after publishing her book My Year of Peace and Relaxation in 2018, was about to , “to be a woman ‘d”.

Ottessa Moshfegh is about to be a woman, I can feel it (a woman I call it when everyone stops liking a woman at the same time)

— Rayne Fisher-Quann (@raynefq) June 22, 2022

On June 23 of this year, Canadian writer and activist Rayne Fisher-Quann tweeted a warning that Ottessa Moshfegh, the writer who rose to worldwide fame after publishing her book My Year of Peace and Relaxation in 2018, was about to , “to be a woman ‘d”.

Fisher-Quann defines womanhood, a term she coined herself, as a situation where everyone simultaneously stops liking a woman and starts criticizing her, especially on the internet. In a subsequent article for the magazine iD, the author expanded her concept. She explained that high profile women’s online fame often has a very specific life cycle of being elevated and then destroyed. Fisher-Quann observed that this process was repeated over and over again with different female celebrities.

It all begins with a woman’s rise to success. She could be a singer, an actress, or any other public figure: a politician, writer, film director, etc. At first, the newcomer looks young and refreshing, and her image becomes synonymous with money. Her face on a magazine cover boosts sales, a post about her gets far more “likes” on social media than any other, and she’s been compared to stars of the past: the new Audrey Hepburn, Amy’s heiress Winehouse…her fans are growing exponentially, spurred on by the media. Everything she does or says — from a funny video on TikTok to the book she has on her bedside table — is well received and helps cement her fame.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when that will change, but something inevitably happens eventually, usually at the peak of the star’s popularity. Maybe she accidentally makes a mistake, like not greeting a kid waiting for her at the door of her concert (probably because she doesn’t even see it), or she posts an unfunny joke on Instagram. It could be someone on social media pointing out that she walks weird, or that she had mental health issues, or just that “she was way cooler when she wasn’t THAT famous.”

Then people turn their backs on the woman and criticize her for no apparent reason. The media, which previously praised her, reports that people on social media now hate her. To illustrate their fall in popularity, they post a selection of the funniest tweets addressed to them, further adding to the criticism. The former star has just fallen out of favor; in other words, she just became female.

If that doesn’t permanently end her fame, maybe in time a documentary about her career will rekindle her former fans’ love for her, or nostalgia will overcome all else and she’ll make a triumphant comeback.

By now many readers will have identified several examples of women who have gone through this process. Britney Spears’ rise to fame and subsequent destruction (and later comeback) is perhaps one of the best examples of this phenomenon, but there are many more.

Thanks to movies like The Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada, Anne Hathaway was one of Hollywood’s most popular actresses during the first decade of the 2000s. But one day, after garnering a slew of accolades for her role as Fantine in Les Misérables (2012), people started criticizing the actress for sounding too fake in her Oscar acceptance speech, saying she had cried when she saw herself screen. The vitriol started as a whisper, then exploded, going global and even creating a hashtag to mark posts that got the actress high: #Hathahate. In 2013, The New York Times even ran an article entitled “Do We Really Hate Anne Hathaway?” In the play, the actress’s haters commented that they loathe her because she’s “so perfect she’s not a normal person” and called her “insufferable” for calculating her every move. Then, after being temporarily bereft of the love of her former fans, Hathaway’s spectacular performance at the Cannes Film Festival last May brought her back into the favor of media and fans alike.

Millie Bobby Brown, who became a precocious international star at age 12 with her portrayal of Eleven on Stranger Things, is another example. As a child, she appeared on magazine covers and became hypersexualized in the media. Social media users started hating her when she was only 14 years old. They attributed homophobic tweets to her that she didn’t write, while a growing number of YouTubers began uploading content that criticized her without good reason. They said she’s posted too many videos of herself singing while driving, that she “cringes” and that she’s been making too much money too fast. Simply put, it seemed like hating Millie Bobby Brown had gone viral.

Being a woman is different from being criticized Fisher-Quann’s article contains an important caveat: being a woman is different from being criticized. Any woman who is a public figure can receive well-reasoned negative criticism without this posing a problem from a feminist perspective. Indeed, women deserve to have their work judged by the same standards as all other artists, regardless of gender identity. The problem is that rational criticism is often used to justify harsh and unwarranted criticism. An essential element of being a woman is that one is never judged rationally.

In Fisher-Quann’s initial tweet, poor reviews of Ottessa Moshfegh’s new work Lapvona seemed to give the impression that “if this thoughtful article reviews it, it must be wise to hate it.” In Moshfegh’s case, legitimate criticism led to baseless contempt. Any author can publish a bad book, but that shouldn’t inspire general hatred of the author as an individual.

So being a woman results from a trap that is almost impossible for women to avoid. Additionally, the intensity and persistence of the hate on social media and the demands on high-profile women to achieve unattainable perfection make this even more likely.

Hatred of women is an epidemic on social media

We’re so used to seeing successful female performers and professionals face hate and harassment on social media that it seems inevitable. The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) conducted a study titled Hidden Hate: How Instagram Fails to Act on 9 in 10 Reports of Misogyny in DMs, in which it analyzed thousands of direct messages received from five well-known women on Instagram were: actress Amber Heard, TV presenter Rachel Riley, activist Jamie Klingler, journalist Bryony Gordon and creator of South Asian culture magazine Burnt Roti, Sharan Dhaliwal.

A total of 8,717 direct messages were examined. 1 in 15 violated Instagram’s rules prohibiting misogyny, homophobia, racism, nudity or sexual activity, graphic violence, and threats of violence. Worse, 90% of the time, Instagram has done nothing to prevent or penalize these posts.

An impossible standard to achieve

Alongside the brutal hate women face on social media, a particular form of dehumanization leads us to believe that female icons are perfect, almost divine, women who can do no wrong, that at some point they stop being absolutely sublime.

Because of this, many famous women have chosen to reveal their imperfections before being knocked off their sockets. This is both shocking and unnecessary. After all, man has never been known to be a perfect creature. Women’s prior admission that they will make mistakes in the future is just as ridiculous as admitting that a woman sometimes eats or goes to the bathroom.

women as objects of consumption

The main reason behind such robust online harnesses towards famous women is not surprising. By “womanizing” them, they become objects of consumption to serve an industry that exploits them: first for their success, then for the contempt shown to them.

In the past, such falls sold millions of newspapers and magazines; They filled hours of television that viewers around the world happily devoured. With the advent of the internet, such women are now appearing in gossip blogs and digital publications. Eventually, they reach social media, where the ads mean big profits for big multinationals like Meta, Google, and Twitter.

Until someone acts, women who excel in any field always run the risk of being a woman trapped in a horrific fantasy from which it is difficult to escape. Your real assets and weaknesses won’t matter much. You will have no choice but to wait for a possible redemption someday.