Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Tabloid 2000s

by Sarah Ditum

Overview

A scathing reexamination of the lives of nine female celebrities in the 2000s—Britney, Paris, Lindsay, Aaliyah, Janet, Amy, Kim, Chyna, and Jen—and the sexist, exploitative culture that let them down

Paris Hilton's 11:11 Media has optioned Toxic as a docuseries. Hilton said: “When I discovered Toxic, I was immediately taken by the depth of Sarah’s dedication, research, and writing. Sarah’s work inspired me to envision Toxic as a documentary series where we can provide a platform for similar stories of those who had to navigate intense public scrutiny, so they can reclaim their narrative from a time when they had little control.”

Welcome to celebrity culture in the early aughts: the reign of Perez Hilton, celebrity sex tapes, and dueling tabloids fed by paparazzi who were willing to do anything to get the shot.

The internet was still the Wild West: slut-shaming, fat-shaming, and revenge porn were all fair game, and celebrity was seen as a commodity to be consumed. And for the famous women of this era, they were never as popular—or as vulnerable—as when they were in crisis.

In Toxic, journalist Sarah Ditum tells the stories of nine famous women who defined this era and explores how they were devoured by fame, how they attempted to control their own narratives, and how they succeeded or (more often) failed.

Whatever you think you already know, leave it at the door. Toxic reveals these women neither as pure victims nor as conniving strategists, but as complex individuals trying to navigate celebrity while under attack from a vicious and fast-changing media. It’s time to come to terms with how these iconic women and their experiences living under the public gaze shaped the way we see ourselves, our bodies, our relationships, and our aspirations. We are all products of the toxic decade.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781419763113
Publisher:	Abrams Press
Publication date:	01/23/2024
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	335,841
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Sarah Ditum is a freelance writer and literary reviewer who contributes to the Times, the Guardian, the Observer, the Spectator, Mail on Sunday, and Unherd. She writes a monthly column on pop music for Critic magazine and is also a contributor to Graydon Carter’s Airmail. Ditum is featured regularly on radio and TV as a commenter, with appearances on Woman’s Hour, The Today Programme, and Newsnight, among others. She has recently completed extensive broadcast interviews on Britney Spears’s conservatorship and written for the Sunday Times on Spears’s rise and fall. She lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

11/06/2023

Journalist Ditum debuts with a damning indictment of tabloids’ treatment of female celebrities in the early 21st century. The rise of digital cameras in the early aughts, Ditum argues, provided tabloids with “more shots than ever before,” while the internet opened opportunities for gossip bloggers willing to publish stories even tabloids wouldn’t touch. Examining how these cultural forces affected perennial paparazzi targets Aaliyah, Jennifer Aniston, Chyna, Paris Hilton, Janet Jackson, Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and Amy Winehouse, Ditum suggests Spears’s 2007 decision to shave her head was a revolt against the sexualized femininity she “had been groomed to perform” since she was a teen. Elsewhere, Ditum excoriates the media’s sexist coverage of Jackson’s 2004 Super Bowl performance for falsely claiming the musician “deliberately” bared her breast while sparing Justin Timberlake, who exposed Jackson after an apparent misunderstanding about a costume reveal. Ditum’s sympathetic treatment of her subjects contrasts with the enraging accounts of tabloid sexism and overreach, demonstrating how such coverage obscured and trivialized hidden hardships (after Paris Hilton revealed in 2020 that she been sexually abused at a psychiatric treatment center when she was 16, Ditum writes, “the slutty attention seeker of the aughts was suddenly, obviously no such thing: Paris had been a damaged child acting out”). Readers will rethink what they thought they knew about some of the most publicized celebrity stories of the early 2000s. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"Ditum’s prose is never overwrought, and she treats pop culture with a rare seriousness. She is right to do so. . . .Toxic, Ditum’s reframing of an era, suggests that the uproar. . . may have been just the beginning of a reckoning."

"The best books of the week" Financial Times

Living through the ’00s, I never realized how casually cruel they were—how cruel we were— to famous women. Toxic is an incendiary page-turner that will make you reconsider the price of fame. . . and your opinion of Kim Kardashian. It’s a Molotov cocktail hurled at the feet of celebrity culture.

writer at the Atlantic and author of Difficult Wom Helen Lewis

Brilliant . . . [Toxic] really made me realize how no one has pulled back and given an overall story to the last twenty years . . . It’s clever because it makes me think about now.

filmmaker Adam Curtis

A necessary and incisive feminist reckoning with the aughts. Insightful, exhilarating—and horrifying. What were we thinking?

author of Invisible Women Caroline Criado-Perez

"When I discovered Toxic I was immediately taken by the depth of Sarah's dedication, research and writing."

Paris Hilton

"Ditum’s prose is never overwrought, and she treats pop culture with a rare seriousness. She is right to do so. . . .Toxic, Ditum’s reframing of an era, suggests that the uproar. . . may have been just the beginning of a reckoning."

—Financial Times, "The best books of the week"

“Top-notch pop-culture commentary—a smart and entertaining look at female celebrity during a decade of immense change.”—Kirkus, starred review

“Readers will rethink what they thought they knew about some of the most publicized celebrity stories of the early 2000s.”—Publishers Weekly

“A necessary and incisive feminist reckoning with the aughts. Insightful, exhilarating—and horrifying. What were we thinking?”—Caroline Criado-Perez, author of Invisible Women

“Living through the ’00s, I never realized how casually cruel they were—how cruel we were— to famous women. Toxic is an incendiary page-turner that will make you reconsider the price of fame. . . and your opinion of Kim Kardashian. It’s a Molotov cocktail hurled at the feet of celebrity culture.”—Helen Lewis, writer at the Atlantic and author of Difficult Women

“Brilliant . . . [Toxic] really made me realize how no one has pulled back and given an overall story to the last twenty years . . . It’s clever because it makes me think about now.”—Adam Curtis, filmmaker

"When I discovered Toxic I was immediately taken by the depth of Sarah's dedication, research and writing."—Paris Hilton

From the Publisher

12/15/2023

Literary reviewer and pop music critic Ditum relies on the writing and interviews of others to showcase the trials and tribulations of nine of the most famous women of the early 2000s in this study of the misogynistic and racist celebrity coverage which created, celebrated, and demonized the women throughout their careers. She focuses on the salacious aspects of the lives of the most provocative headline-grabbers, including the obsession with Britney Spears' virginity, the public disintegrations of Lindsay Lohan and Amy Winehouse, the rise of influencers Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, and the victimization of Aaliyah, Janet Jackson, and pro wrestler Chyna. Some of the events of the book are placed in historical context, but readers might find the contextualization to be a bit convoluted, with frequent references to 9/11, the rise of bloggers such as Perez Hilton, the #MeToo movement, and the ascent of Donald Trump. Ditum's extensively researched book ends by discussing the tabloids' fixation on the fertility of Jennifer Aniston. VERDICT This meticulously researched title devotes all of its attention to the sleazy ways in which women celebrities have been treated throughout contemporary history. It's meticulously researched.—Lisa Henry

Library Journal

★ 2023-10-24
A social critique in nine essays, each profiling a female star of the early 2000s.

London-based journalist Ditum begins with Britney Spears, whose debut album “…Baby One More Time” was released in 1998. The pop star’s appeal, the author argues, hinged on her combination of sultriness and innocence, as a former Mickey Mouse Club cast member who wore a purity ring. The issue of her virginity dogged Spears, culminating in a bizarre interview with Diane Sawyer in which she was reduced to tears on the subject of the number of people she’d had sex with. As the author writes, “intercourse was treated as a grave and somber matter for which she owed the nation an apology.” Ditum differentiates among celebrities such as Spears and Lindsay Lohan, who became famous before the digital revolution; Paris Hilton, who became a star during it; and Kim Kardashian, who rose to prominence after smartphones and internet pornography were commonplace. In the second essay, Ditum looks at Hilton, the heiress who burst on the scene in 1999 as a bubbly socialite with a famous last name. The author paints a portrait of an enterprising, flexible young woman who understood that “her role in public life…[was] to stand for privileged nothingness.” As for Kardashian, the author writes, “because she began to seek fame later in the decade, she was able to harness the internet rather than merely be ambushed by it.” Ditum is an engaging writer, and she wrings new insight from these well-known biographies. She is equally eloquent arguing that the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 created a need for both “idols and scapegoats” as she discusses the Black community’s evolving response to R. Kelly’s abuse of its young women.

Top-notch pop-culture commentary—a smart and entertaining look at female celebrity during a decade of immense change.

Kirkus Reviews