Medusa's stare: celebrity, subjectivity and gender

Abstract

This article posits the argument that celebrity culture is gendered both in its production and consumption of fame and that this has, historically at least, been rather neglected within studies of celebrity. A key problematic within this is the role of subjectivity and the ways in which contemporary celebrity culture is both sold to and consumed by the sexes rather differently. This rests initially on a re-reading of Marxist analyses of object-based commodity fetishism but turns on a more Foucauldian understanding of subjectivity within contemporary celebrity culture. A content analysis of three leading celebrity magazines in the UK – heat, Hello! and OK! – is offered, demonstrating a clear demarcation of topics deemed to be of interest to the target young female reader and a narrow remit for their subjective engagement centred on looks, fashion and relationships. David and Victoria Beckham are also compared for the ways in which they also reaffirm this sense of demarcation of gendered difference, despite their positioning within a similar mediatised celebrity world. The relative paucity of empirical research on how men and women consume celebrity is something that needs to be addressed, yet the need to highlight gendered difference in the production and consumption of contemporary celebrity culture remains.