NerdGlam: Why Do We Hate Celebrity Lifestyle Gurus?

Image via WENN

“I think two big avocados is enough for a family of four…
I think I use a fork because it just works the best with the avocados.”

- Gwyneth Paltrow

This morning, another issue of GOOP — Gwyneth Paltrow’s attempt to help us all live better lives through roasted chickens, super-clean colons, and expensive handbags — landed in my inbox. It contained some Kabbalistic spiritual advice about achieving “similarity of form with the Creator” (who, incidentally, is referenced with the pronoun “it”).

Last week, I watched Gwyneth make tacos.

Blogs immediately jumped on her (including this one), and I, too, watched the video with burgeoning disdain. I am watching Gwyneth Paltrow chop an onion, I thought. She explains that she’s going to cut almost all the way to the end of the onion, but “then spare my fingers.” Really? Should you stop cutting an onion before you get to your fingers? At one point, Gwyneth explains that she is showing us something she learned from the “the cooking channels.” Why am I watching a video of someone repeating something she learned on TV?

It’s like TV of TV, an endless, Neil Postman-style recursive loop. After she puts a pan of canned beans on the stove, she says, “Donesville!” Did she really just say “throw my shrimp on the barbie”?

Were you ever in a relationship with someone who had to constantly move in on your territory? For instance, I once dated an opera singer who was really, really good at opera singing. As tends to be the case in relationships, I had different skills: I ran a web design company, and also had awesomely impressive biceps due to, oh, I don’t know, the five or six hours a week I spent bodybuilding and following up with a precise regimen of protein shakes. Yet, despite being queen-in-the- relationship of all things musical and otherwise artistic, my opera- singing lady would jump in, “I’d have bigger biceps than you if I didn’t have to look feminine for opera parts. I can design really good websites, I just don’t have the time. Oh, did you do something?

Because I’d do it better if it were more important. I have better genes than you, so if I started working out, I’d look better than you right away. Look at my animated GIF!”

I think Gwyneth is doing that to all of us. There is a bargain with the universe: Gwyneth gets to be a movie star, and we all spend our extra, non-movie-star time making guacamole for our own fucking selves, thank you very much. What else would you even use besides a fork to mash your avocados? We get it. Can you name one thing that the average woman — and statistically speaking, the average woman is probably a middle-aged, size-14 mother of 2.5 children — can do better than a movie star? Well, how about make a healthy fucking dinner for a family of four? Gwyneth is moving in on everyone’s territory, and it’s obnoxious. It’s like if Lance Armstrong made videos telling us how to relax. Pretty sure we’re winning that one already. Maybe he could tell us, you know, how to ride a bike.

The Amazon reviews for Teri Hatcher’s Burnt Toast tell much the same story:

It also annoys me when celebrities believe that they are experts on certain things when the rest of the public is just as capable of doing a great job. I refer to Hatcher’s discussion on parenting in the book. She talks about how she “blew up” at her daughter one night while they were cooking dinner. She discusses how she eventually told her daughter that she was sorry and it wasn’t a big deal. But my take on this story was: SO WHAT?! Millions of other parents/guardians in the world would have done the same thing. I mean does she really think that writing about something so simple is teaching people something new?

Lest I drop the f-bomb on Pepper Potts once again, let’s point at someone who does not inspire Paltrowesque fits of bile: Kathy Griffin. Sure, her audience is mostly women and gay men; she’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But she’s famous and wealthy and she just tells us about that. You know, the stuff we don’t already actually know. Can you imagine Kathy Griffin earnestly explaining to you how she uses dryer sheets so that her laundry comes out all fresh? No, because we don’t need celebrities for that. We do need Kathy Griffin to tell us what starlets say when they’re drunk, because we don’t get invited to those parties. Job well done!

Even better: I once bought a copy of Sister 2 Sister magazine in the subway because this cover photo (pinstripe! fedora!) was awe-inspiring, and because Vivica Fox promised to tell us “how she secretly makes millions in the movie biz.” And she did! She told us things we didn’t already know! She actually gave up the goods! An excerpt:

Interviewer: So does that mean that there are intellectual properties that, should they play again, you get residuals from them?

Vivica: That’s right…. So basically when I say “produce,” I’m getting two checks.

She goes on to explain that the movie industry has changed a lot and that a movie going straight to DVD isn’t a bad thing, financially: she gets paid on the backend, it’s another credit for her production team, and getting the movie done will allow them to get a bigger budget for the next movie. (If you don’t mind squinting, you can read a scan of the entire article here).

Have you ever read a magazine that caters to white women that would ever, in any context, publish the sentence, “There is still profit participation”?

You know what I don’t like about the brave new world we live in? “Experts” who aren’t. In The Four-Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss tells the story of a women who became a “relationship expert” in just three weeks by joining some organizations and getting on a few journalists’ call lists. Do you want her relationship advice? Do you want Gwyneth Paltrow to show you how she learned from TV to chop an onion?

My BFF Molly Crabapple put it well: “There are only two real ways to become a superstar. Be born into an extremely connected, privileged family. Or work with an insane, singleminded, Machiavellian drive from a young age, with blinders on, devoting every second of your life to self advancement. Neither of these are really applicable to normal women. And this is why celebrity advice books fall flat.”

That said, here is a short list of celeb how-to’s I would be more than happy to read:

• Oprah’s “How I Ruthlessly and Strategically Crushed My Competition for Thirty Years”
• Lady Gaga’s “Where I Get All That Shit I Put On My Head”
• Lady Gaga’s “How to Treat Latex- and Metal-Induced Skin Rashes”
• Madonna’s “How to Look Freakishly Young While Also a Little Weird, Just In Case You Ever Get a Whole Lot of Money”
• Sarah Jessica Parker’s “How to Not Mind the Horse Thing So Much By Prudently Investing All The Awesome Money You Have and They Don’t”