Extraordinarily Ordinary: Us Weekly and the Rise of Reality Television Celebrity PDF
Preview Extraordinarily Ordinary: Us Weekly and the Rise of Reality Television Celebrity
EXTRAORDINARILY ORDINARY Q EXTRAORDINARILY ORDINARY Q Us Weekly and the Rise of Real ity Tele vi sion Celebrity Erin A. Meyers rutgers university press new brunswick, camden, and newark, new jersey, and london Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Meyers, Erin A., author. Title: Extraordinarily ordinary : Us weekly and the rise of reality television celebrity / Erin Meyers. Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical refrerences and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019016324 | ISBN 9780813599427 (paperback) | ISBN 9780813599434 (cloth) | ISBN 9780813599441 (ePUB) | ISBN 9780813599458 (mobi) | ISBN 9780813599465 (web PDF) Subjects: LCSH: Reality television programs—Social aspects—United States. | Celebrities—United States. | Television personalities—United States. | Us weekly. Classification: LCC PN1992.8.R43 M49 2020 | DDC 791.45/750922—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019016324 A British Cataloging- in- Publication rec ord for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2020 by Erin A. Meyers All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www . rutgersuniversitypress . org Manufactured in the United States of Amer i ca C O N T E N T S Introduction 1 1 The Ordinary and the Extraordinary: Unpacking the Celebrity Image 18 2 The L abor of Ordinariness: Famous for Being Yourself 39 3 Celebrity Lifestyle Labor: Making the Ordinary Extraordinary 64 4 Lauren Conrad: Us Weekly and the Extraordinarily Ordinary Celebrity 91 Conclusion: The F uture of the Extraordinarily Ordinary Celebrity 112 Acknowl edgments 1 25 Notes 127 References 131 Index 1 41 EXTRAORDINARILY ORDINARY Q INTRODUCTION The notion of “celebrity” has infiltrated every part of twenty- first- century popu- lar and media cultures. Like a train wreck— a meta phor tellingly used to describe those celebrities whose excessive be hav iors are regularly featured in main- stream and entertainment news outlets—it is hard to look away from the ongo- ing sagas of celebrities as their private lives are exhaustingly documented across mass media. Celebrity gossip weeklies line the grocery store checkout lines and airport kiosks, enticing readers with glossy photos and sensational headlines that promise an inside look at the “real” person behind the celebrity facade. This obsession with the real and the increased competition among gossip weeklies to bring audiences the inside scoop have transformed celebrity culture by expand- ing the range of individuals whose real lives fascinate us. According to the Wall Street Journal, “ people who owe their fame to real ity TV accounted for about 40% of the covers of the six major celebrity weekly magazines in 2011” (Adams, 2012, p. D1). From Teen Moms to Real House wives to, of course, the Kardashians ( sisters Kim, Khloé, and Kourtney and their m other, Kris, from Keeping Up with the Kardashians)— who in 2011 w ere “the subject of about one of e very six celebrity weekly stories” and w ere top- five sellers for four of the six major gossip weekly titles— editors increasingly turned to real ity stars precisely because of their will- ingness to “tell you every detail about their life” (ibid.). Appearing to acquire fame for doing l ittle more than offer their private lives for public consumption, real ity stars are routinely decried as valueless celebrities who are simply “famous for being famous.” Yet, as t hese magazine sales numbers suggest, real ity tele vi- sion celebrities have captured the public’s attention, and their rise to cultural prominence speaks to a shift in the ways we think about and engage with celeb- rity culture in the twenty- first century. This book offers a critical analy sis of the exploding coverage of real ity tele vi- sion cast members in Us Weekly magazine, the top celebrity weekly of the 2000s, 1
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