Should I Delete That? - ‘A celebrity in a bikini? Gold’: the toxic tabloids of the 00s

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

At the height of their popularity newspapers like The Sun and The Mirror were selling over 5 million copies a day, while magazines like Heat were distributing over 600,00 copies weekly. As we go one step further into understanding the ways in which we feel about our own bodies - we thought we needed to explore more than just nature’s part in our story, and look at nurture’s involvement in this too.In the UK, tabloids were HUGE and as a result, were massively instrumental in informing so much of how we viewed the world and the women around us, but in the context of this series, we wanted to explore how pivotal they were in establishing how we curated the relationship we had with ourselves and our bodies.Thanks so much to our amazing guests who feature on this episode: Giles Harrison, Holly Hagan and Isabel Mohan Find out more about Giles’ work here: https://londonentertainmentgroup.com/ Follow @londonentertainmentgroup on InstagramFollow @hollyhaganblyth on InstagramFollow @Isabel.Mohan on InstagramSubscribe to Isabel’s substack here: https://keepitupfatty.substack.com/ - where she writes about the major journey she has been on with body image and how she has now made it her mission through writing to encourage more people, especially women, to be more active and confident. If you would like to get in touch - you can email us on [e-mail] us on Instagram:@shouldideletethat@em_clarkson@alexlight_ldnShould I Delete That is produced by Faye LawrenceMusic: Dex RoyStudio Manager: Dex RoyTrailers: Sophie RichardsonVideo Editor: Celia GomezSocial Media Manager: Emma-Kirsty Fraser Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome back to episode three of our eight-part series, exploring diet culture and body image throughout the ages. Over the last two episodes, we've explored the recent history of diet culture, our learned fat phobia and our cultural obsession with body image, and the way in which it's perpetuated in the context of generational trauma, looking closely at the historical connection between femininity and womanhood and how society's expectation that we be good girls manifested into an expectation that women make themselves smaller at all costs. And try as we might not to centre ourselves too much in the narrative of this series as diet culture's target demographic, it's hard not to see this story through the lens of our own lives.

In the last episode, we explored how our mothers' collective, not individuals, Don't worry, Francie and Norma, relationships with food and their bodies dictated ours and how, in turn, their mothers informed theirs. To go one step further to understanding the ways in which we feel about our own bodies, though, we thought we needed to explore more than just nature's part in our story and look at nurture's involvement in this too. In so much as to say, we thought it important to take a closer look at the environment that we grew up in. Because try as they might to protect us from the world and its red tops, our mothers were powerless in the face of the omnipresent beast that was the tabloid media in the 90s and noughties. Although newspaper readership has dwindled against the social media giants of today, for a time, news was king, and it was inevitable that the contents of these pages would inform so much of who we are today. And that they did. At the height of their popularity, newspapers like

The Sun and the Mirror were selling over 5 million copies a day, while magazines like heat were distributing over 600,000 copies weekly. It's hard to cast your mind back to that time, to erase the constant content cycle that social media perpetuates from our psyche when we imagine consuming information. But it wasn't that long ago that everything we consumed came to us via salacious headline, grainy papshot, and via the agenda of the editor-in-chief of whatever publication it was we'd saved up our pocketloney to buy or skimmed a look at in the hairdressers. The tabloids were huge. And as a result, we're massively instrumental in informing so much of how we viewed the world and also viewed the women around us. But in the context of this series,

we wanted to explore how pivotal they were in establishing how we curated the relationship we had with ourselves and our bodies. Now the two things of course are intrinsically linked and we could talk for days about the effect that the reporting in the 90s and naughties had on us societally particularly when it came to our view

of other women and perhaps that's a series for another day. To extrapolate these two conversations from one another is too harder task honestly. The tactics used by the media to breed competitiveness among women that taught us to hate the ones thinner than us and resent anyone prettier. Their capitalisation on the internalised misogyny of their readers made women

victims in every sense of the word. Whether we are looking at the women being written about or the ones reading about them, this period met the definition of the word toxic to the letter. So we're looking at this through the lens of diet culture, but aware as we do so that this is relatively small fry in the wider context of the damage these articles did. Now without further ado, let's take it right back. It's January 2005. Goodies by Sierra is number one. Tony Blair is Prime Minister, and this is an example of the headlines that month. A 102 celeb diet tips reads the cover of Heat Magazine, with the subheading, try them, they really work, in capitals, no less, and accompanied by pictures of three thin celebrities,

Jalo, Brittany and Kate Moss. Diet culture from this period almost always appeared to be wrapped up in the phenomenon of celebrity. Thin, as they always were, we held up celebs as the pinnacle of beauty, and the media capitalised on this to sell newspapers and magazines forever promising us a new diet that will help you look like Victoria Beckham. But there was also a huge paradox at play. While on one hand, we put celebrities on a pedestal and desperately tried to emulate their appearance, on the other, there was a desperate hunger for the humanisation of them and the degradation at times too. Everywhere we looked, we saw the hugely airbrushed images we'd seen on the covers and adverts of the Glossier magazines, while in amongst the pages of the

somewhat trashier publications, like hyenas, we'd rush to find the now infamous features like Heats' hoop of horror or circle of shame to see celebrities looking just like us. There'd be pages and pages filled with grainy images of women with a fraction of cellulite visible or a brass strap showing, and we'd go wild for it. I distinctly remember seeking out this feature first and foremost when I got my hands on Heat magazine. God, I loved this feature. I was also like incredibly hungry for it. I remember just desperate, like being in a train station or an airport or anywhere where I could get my hands on a heat or a hairdresser or a dentist.

And it was so exciting is the right word, but it was just desperate. And for that instant, for a very small amount of time after seeing them, I just felt better about myself. Oh, it's so weird, isn't it? And the effects didn't last long, though. No. No. No.

It was a very short-lived, short term. Yeah, very bad drugs. I don't know if it was the same case for you, but Lily Allen always felt to me to be a really important part of this time when I look back. And when I think back to my first ding moments of, hang on a second, this place is a mess realizations. It was her music that I hear. And most pertinently, the lines in the song,

Everything's Just Wonderful, in 2006. It was on an album I was obsessed with. And it said, I want to be able to eat spaghetti bolognese and not feel bad about it for days and days and days. All the magazines, they talk about weight loss. If I buy those jeans, I can look like Kate Moss. And then three years later, when she released the fear, she sings the lines, I look in the sun and I look in the mirror, and everything's cool as long as I'm getting thinner. I'm interested to hear you say this. And I think it's so cool that those things like that resonated with you. I'd love to say that that was the same for myself but it wasn't yeah that's interesting like but i i obviously i'm

saying this with like hindsight and i'm saying this now as someone who's explored this at length and like explore my own relationship with this time and everything but i do i think and i and it it won't be the same for everyone but because commenting on a culture doesn't do a lot to change it but for me i think recognition like this from her and from other women You know, she wasn't, she wasn't the only one by any stretch making these comments, but she was the first one that I heard in the main. It was the first rebellion, I think, of what I'm trying to say. It was the first time I heard someone being like, hang on, this is awful.

Like this, what I'm doing, these Kate Moss, this cycle that I'm on, no one had ever acknowledged it to me before. Yeah. So it's like the first time I heard it. And I, like, I can't credit Lily Allen for like dismantling it all in the body positivity movement and everything that came next. But I do feel, and I think maybe, and I don't know if I'm right, but that this did mark in a bit of a shift that ultimately, you know, there was a big shift after this. You know, by the time these songs were coming out, by the 2010s, we did start to see a bit of a shift.

And we saw over the next 10 years a plus-size woman on the cover of Cosmo. We saw the end of heat, circle of shame. And like, yes, I'm probably giving Lily Allen a bit too much credit in the inception of the body positive movement. But as I've been thinking a lot about this time and trying to put myself. back into the mind of pre-teen me, I can't discredit her influence in the shaping of my own opinions on the issues. But prior to that, time, her albums, and this small shift, I'm sure I can remember it had been very, very, very bad. And we've given you a small insight into it in the context of January 2005, but we wanted to take a wider look at some of the very worst headlines

from this period, some of which I actually still remember all these years later, which perhaps ought to tell you everything you need to know about how incredibly insidious all of this is. We're taking you back a tiny bit further briefly to 1997 because it felt crucial to highlight one particular example to paint a picture of just how toxic and honestly fucking outrageous the treatment of women's bodies was in the press. Mariah Carey performed at a Christmas concert wearing a Versacee sparkling mini dress with spaghetti straps and she looked divine, right? Divine. Great use of the word. Thank you. But here's it. a snippet of an article written about her the very next day and brace yourselves because

this one is rough. Fashion victim of the week. Oops. We forgot to put Mariah Carey in our fat thigh story. On those porcup pins, the pop princess is no dainty butterfly. It's not even over, is it? It's not even over. Hang tight. Her vavavoon, Versace couldn't be much shorter. It's barely bigger than a t-shirt. Why doesn't the suddenly single songbird just go naked? I like that there's such a spattering of misogyny in a month of avophobia. I think it gives it a little something, something. It does, doesn't it? A little vintage taste.

Yes. Now, I struggled to find the source of this article. We set our very tech-savvy studio manager Dex on the case, and he found that it was very likely to have been the globe, given how similar it was in appearance to the other. other articles in the globe at that time. Don't sue us the globe. But don't sue us the globe.

We're not entirely sure, but we're pretty certain. Interesting how much of it's been erased. Interesting how hard it was it is to find these articles now. We cannot stress enough that there doesn't appear to be an ounce of fat on Mariah's legs in this picture. And we're going to put these pictures on our Instagram and put them in the trailers so you can see them. But the fact that there wasn't any fat on her legs, that shouldn't even matter.

We shouldn't even have to say that. And it certainly is not the point. She should be allowed to have as much fat as she pleases on her legs or on her body without magazines printing pictures of her with cruel words. Fast forward a few years and body-shaming headlines were just commonplace. Cover up, please.

The Worst Celebrity Beach Bodies reads a cover from page 6 in 2007. 2007 was also the year that Britney Spears' infamous breakdown played out blow-by-blow in the press, showing her with a shaved head, attacking a photographer's car with an umbrella. At one point, she was the front cover of practically every gossip magazine and newspaper. American tabloid, the National Inquirer, published a somewhat unflattering picture of the star

quite clearly in distress alongside the headlines, I'll Kill the Kids. Brittany's breakdown minute by minute. I actually have goosebumps reading that out. The paparazzi were literally hounding the pop star to get pictures, putting both Brittany and themselves. in danger to get the shot. We spoke to Giles Harrison, who is widely recognised as one of the leading celebrity photographers in the world and who has been at the forefront of paparazzi photography for decades

to get an insight into this period. You know, the very nature of your job, it can be invasive. And at the time, you know, the paparazzi were very heavily criticised around the time of Britney Spears, you know, very public breakdown, which was captured and shown to the world largely via the paparazzi. Yes. How did you feel about that criticism? Were you involved in that, in that?

You know, I've been at a Britney Spears card chase. I've been in this Britney Spears scrum with 30 photographers chasing it down the street. It's crazy. And the thing is, it's one of those things that once you have the benefit of hindsight, you can see how it was problematic. I mean, there's, like take Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck, for example. You know, there's not a day since they got together

that they haven't had paparazzi outside their house probably, right? So I can see, certainly now, like I said, once you have the benefit of high sight, and I've been doing this, God, I'm going into my 30th year of doing this. Wow. Which is a long time. And, you know, far too long in my opinion. You don't look old enough. No, no, trust me, I am.

I am. it's it's it's it's got to it's got to be it's it's got to be a hassle right if i if if if every day you've got to worry somebody somebody's writing a story about your life somebody's trying to get your photo every single day what when you're not even doing anything you know sometimes just by sheer nature of who you've gone out with or who you were married to or who you might go out with and who you might be married to it's it's it's it's it's got to be maddening What a lot of paparazzi probably didn't realize, it's the mercenary aspect of it, right? And you have people that aren't trained who aren't journalists.

So the fact that you have people just hounding this woman every single day and not bothering to take the fact out that, okay, she's just had two kids in the space of 18 months. She's, you know, married to a guy that may or may not be worthless, who she's going to end up divorcing at some point. she's going through a lot and I don't think you know photographers especially at that time you know you're thinking money you're not thinking story you're not you're not taking into consideration that this person is a human being I think what what a lot you know you're if you're seeing somebody as a commodity um then it it's taken a personalization out of it to some extent yeah unfortunately celebrities were victimized you know and i think certainly a brittany spears was victimized because like i said every single day every day and it's not just one photographer you could maybe handle it if it's

one photographer but it's every single day and it's not like they're writing you know the tabloids are writing fluff stories about you about oh look how pretty she looks it's she's a mess she's out partying she's terrible mother she's this she's that it it's it's you know I think the publications and the outlet search are as much to blame, but the fact is, their feet, because so much money was being thrown around, they were feeding the appetite for the photographers to be out there every day trying to get that. It wasn't uncommon in our heyday, especially for my company, because I have a company that has several other photographers that work with me.

We were making over $50,000, $60,000 a month. Wow. You know, and working hard, obviously, to get it, but that's regularly what we were making. Brittany Spears later opened up about this period in her 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me, writing that during these episodes she was suffering from postnatal depression, grief after the death of her aunt, and an intense custody battle with her ex-husband, Kevin Fedeline. If we briefly flashed back to 2005, Kate Moss was caught on camera taking cocaine, and the British press had a field day with the story.

The supermodel was on the front cover of practically every single tabloid newspaper and gossip magazine of that month. The mirror who bought the set of photos and had exclusive rights to them broke the story. The newspaper printed Kate laying out lines of cocaine on the front cover alongside the headline, Cocaine Kate, also writing more amazing photos inside, accompanied by a snapshot of Kate actually snorting the cocaine. Other examples of headlines stood out for all. all the wrong reasons are Kate's on crack, published by The Sun and cocaine Kate's career

in ruins written by The Daily Mail. This is going to be a common theme as we go through these episodes because it's just outrageous the things that we're reading. But what scares me is I don't remember thinking that they were outrageous at the time. No, I genuinely, I think I applauded the honour, like the, the alliteration. Right. I think I'd be like, ooh, cocaine, Kate. Cocaine Kate.

I know. On crack. But I think that just goes to show how. indoctrinated we were. And they are so dehumanised. You know, these aren't body image related, actually, a lot of them. But I think you can't ignore the dehumanisation of these female celebrities to the point that we were just like, I can't, we were just destroying them. It was just like, it's like watching, you know, when you watch the National Geographic or like a David Attenborough documentary and you see a little zebra and you just know it's curtains, like there's a whole

in a sleeping lines, and I'm like, they're, like, the Deborah's dumbful, but it's like every time a woman pops up, it's like, I watched a very big lizard get taken out my stakes last night, and it was horrible. I know exactly the video you mean, but I feel like that is a metaphor. Perfect metaphor. Perfectly. Something else that I at least didn't consider at the time was the effect that headlines like that and scoops like that and exclusives like that

were going to have on the people who are the subject of them. 100%. I mean, okay, fine, drug. use, there's always going to be people that argue that if you do bad things, you know, actions, consequences, you're busted, whatever. But I think that that's all part of it. You know, we are dehumanising. We don't think like, oh, what's led to this and what's caused this and why, and why? Like, there's no critical thinking. There's no empathetic thinking. But I think what's interesting or terrifying, perhaps, is that it doesn't matter if you're doing cocaine. It doesn't matter

if you're shoplifting. It doesn't matter if you're going to the shops. It doesn't matter if you're sitting on a chair, this is a crime that you are committing by virtue of just being a woman, by being, yeah, by being a female, because I want to say women, but we're sometimes talking about children here. We spoke to Holly Hagan, Georgie Shawstar, about her first foray into fame, about the first time she appeared in a magazine, and how she felt about it. And it makes you realize how devastating the press made being a woman. Can you take us back in time? You were on the MTV show, Georgie Shaw, that blew up.

It was huge. It was global. It was literally across the world and you found yourself suddenly famous. How did it feel going from relatively unknown to a famous person like that? I think for Jordy Shaw it was very much. much one of those like overnight success things it was like life literally changed the second that that first episode went out so it's very much like you know now it's kind of like everyone knows like what's kind of happening and it's kind of a bit more accepted i mean there's so many

reality shows now so you kind of know what you're getting yourself into whereas ours was just nobody knew who i was to oh my god everybody knows who we are everyone's got so much to stay everyone's got an opinion and all of a sudden it just felt like this community that I had around us that you know you only had Facebook back then there was no like big social media platforms I think Twitter was just coming out and it was just everyone on Facebook I was going through these statuses of people I knew from like school and friends dads and like oh my god all of them just like saying awful things about us about the showing itself and just like just me basically and I'm like you do realize I'm your friend on Facebook and I can see this. But yeah, it was a hell of a lot. And I don't think any 18 year old can prepare for that. With finding fame that quickly at that younger age, what effect did that have on you? Oh, God. I mean, so many negatives, I think, that I can think of in terms of, you know, body image. I would never have really classed myself as a big girl prior to going on to Johnny Shaw. I mean, I was literally a size 12 to 14, like, that is a lower than the standard size in the UK for a woman.

And all of my friends were that size as well. So it's just, you know, that was normal to me. And then I went on the show and it was kind of like, oh my God, I'm being made to feel like I'm completely abnormal. And I'm stood next to the girls who, yes, were a couple of sizes smaller than me, a size eight. And they were kind of held in a much higher regard because of that. So body image was like such a big thing. Is it fair to say that you felt scrutinised for the way that you looked

and for the size of your body? More than fair to say that 100% I think so many people had so many things to say and I was like it made me feel like my body was the most important thing about me for so long and I think that's why I struggled with it

for such a long time because no one ever really commented on anything else it was literally just the way that I looked at my body So it felt like that that needed to be held in such a high regard and that I needed to really focus on making myself look better, myself look more attractive. And that was like my number one aim from being like, what, 18 to probably like 23. Thinking specifically back to the tabloids at that time,

because they were quite ruthless, are there any tabloid headlines or tabloid moments that you remember from that time? It was everybody, we were all sat on a sofa, all eight cast members and Heat Magazine, without even watching the show, just judging off our looks, rated us all out of 10. And I think the lowest mark that anybody else got was a six out of 10, which, you know, still, you know, average, a bit above average. And I got a 1 out of 10. They rated me a 1 out of 10. And I was just like, out of everybody that you could, like, could you not have just put me at a 5? Like, so, you know, I'm still

average, but, you know, you're not going to hurt my feelings that much. but to be sat and compared solely on like literally first impressions just the way that we'll look was sat on this sofa and you're rating me a one out of ten and it's like what do you think that's going to do to an 18 year old girl's confidence and is there any wonder that I put myself through so much fucking surgery and so many procedures and literally looked like I had a rectangle face at one point not probably more of a hexagon actually with the jaw filler but any surprise that I went and did all of that because I was just desperate to try and fit in and look better. So, yeah, that's the one that really sticks out for me.

That's the one where I felt like that was a punch in the gut. I mean, that is brutal. And you're right. How else are you going to receive that? There was no good intention behind that from Heat Magazine. Let's be honest. No, I mean, what was that even giving to the public? What was the need?

Why was it necessary? It wasn't. It was literally just to be mean. And I think it was so much easier back then. to just, there was none of this mental health. No one spoke about mental health. No one spoke about how things made people feel. It was just expected that if you are in the public eye,

this is what you've signed up to and this is what you need to sit down, shut up and take because this is the world that you were in. Georgie Shaw literally blew up, didn't it? And you guys were just, like, so, so famous. And it felt like it was at a time where the paparazzi were really, I guess it was on the back end of the paparazzi.

parazzi era where they were really relentless in their pursuit of catching celebrities in like and compromising positions and not looking their best. Do you feel like that applied to you guys as well? Do you feel like they were kind of out to get you, so to speak, or out to get like a picture of you looking, you know, yeah, not your best? Yeah, I think we were unfortunately in that era of perhaps just wanting to get the worst shots and making you look worse or getting you from a bad angle. And sometimes I'd see these pat pictures and I'd be like, do I actually look like that? Because I'd look in the mirror and feel quite confident before I would leave the house. And then all of a sudden I would get, see this paparazzi picture and be like, oh my God,

like I can't wear a skirt. Like that looks awful. Like my cellulite and you know, you get caught in different light in. And yeah, it made me feel like I needed to learn to cover up more. And I still, God's honest truth to this day, I will not go to any event with my bare legs if I know. there's going to be perhaps there because I just know that I'll be photographed at the wrong angle. It's going to make me feel like crap and I'm still doing the work at the moment to try and love the way that my legs look. I grew up in a household where my mother had the same legs, didn't like them, covered them up at any opportunity where she needed to, you know, be in a bikini or in a bathing costume, she would have a sarong neatly placed very close to the steps and she'd put that on really

quickly. So I'm still trying to get over those things that I saw in my past to be able to actually like my legs. I still don't really like them. I'll be very honest. I won't pretend to like things that I don't. But do I really need to love them? Like, is it really that important? Or can I just get through life and be like, right, they're just legs. I use them for walking. And that's it. whilst the British press remains some of the most toxic and vitriolic in the world it is believe it or not considerably better than it once was our awareness and subsequent tolerance for a lot of the tactics used by the press have contributed to its evolution and so too has the power that social media has given

the celebrities at the centre of these headlines to have some sort of autonomy over their own stories it's wild to think back to a time when this was the case but for a long time, the narrative was completely out of the hands of the people these stories were about. They couldn't go to Instagram to give their side of the story or put out a statement in their own words in their own way on Twitter. They also didn't really have any say in the images that were released and the photoshopping and airbrushing that happened to them. That didn't stop Kate Winslet, though, who has more recently emerged as a real advocate for body confidence and self-acceptance in women. In 2003, she slammed DQ magazine for

excessively retouching her figure. I do not look like that. And more importantly, I don't desire to look like that, she told Hello magazine. I actually have a Polaroid that my photographer gave me on the day of the shoot. I can tell you they've reduced the size of my legs by about a third.

GQ editor Dylan Jones's somewhat casual response was very telling of the culture of that period. We do that for everyone, he said. Whether they're a size six or a size 12. Like size 12 is the top end of the spectrum, right? We do it for literally everyone. Practically every photo you see in a magazine will have been digitally altered in this way.

Thank you for telling on yourself. So succinctly, Dylan Jones. Luckily, in recent years, more and more celebrities have had the means via Instagram and Twitter accounts, or X as it is now, to speak out about the use of photo editing, slamming society's unrealistic beauty standards

that they too are held to. After posing for Model East magazine in 2015, Zendaya took to Instagram to share her dismay that the publication had manipulated her image and included the unedited picture in her post. I had a new shoot come out today and was shocked when I found my 19-year-old hips and torso quite manipulated, she wrote. These are the things that make women self-conscious that create the unrealistic ideals of beauty that we have. Anyone who knows who I am knows I stand for honest and pure self-love. So I took it upon myself to release the real piece.

and I love it. Meanwhile, in 2018, Riverdale star Lily Reinhart spoke out about cosmopolitan Philippines magazine touching up her and her co-star Camilla Mendez's waists in a particularly moving Instagram post. She shared comparison pictures of her and Camilla both before and after the editing, showing the clear photo manipulation at play and wrote, Camilla and I worked incredibly hard to feel confident in the bodies we have. It's an everyday battle sometimes and to see our bodies become so distorted in an editing process

It's the perfect example of the obstacles we have yet to overcome. We cannot stop fighting. Our battle has only just begun. We are fucking powerful, beautiful and strong. We aren't going to hide behind Photoshop to conform to beauty standards. That's why I'm calling out Cosmopolitan Philippines. It's sad that you felt our bodies needed to be slimmed down. Camilla and I are fucking beautiful, as is, and you can't fix us.

Chilts. It makes me so happy to see women in the public eyes standing up and fighting back against these beauty standards in the media, not just for themselves, but for the millions of women who consume this content and inevitably end up comparing themselves to something that isn't even real. It's beyond unfair, but I think it's just so powerful to witness the women who are the ones that have the power to make a change. Take a stand and fight for all of us. It's also incredibly impactful to see reflection from those who were in charge of decision making at the time. Former editor-in-chief of popular US magazine Lucky

recently shared her regret at heavily photoshopping the cover of Jessica Simpson in the September 2010 issue. The headline read Jessica Simpson finally loving her body alongside a shot of the star that ironically didn't show Jessica in her real body. She said, when the cover film came in, we could see that Jessica was about a size 14, which is considered normal by many rational standards but not by glossy magazine standards,

not in 2010 and not by a long shot. I'd like to be able to tell you that I fearlessly insisted we put her on the cover anyway, looking the way she actually looked, but I did not. We made her skinnier, much skinnier, than she actually was. She added that you simply didn't see larger or even average-shaped women on covers back then, unless you were Oprah.

We know we live in a fake news era now, and we know that we're up to our eyes in edited and photoshopped images online, but it's important to remember how hard it was to have any trust of what we were consumed even then. And I think that's probably the hardest pill to swallow because the press and the media in the UK were held to a code of conduct and they felt reputable. So as young adults, I mean, in my case as a child, obviously, I trusted what they were showing me, as so many still do when it comes to mainstream media. With huge cases like the Leveson inquiry, though, the investigation into the illicit means by which journalists were acquiring stories at some of the UK's biggest papers, the public became more aware of the insidious nature of huge. parts of the industry. Of course we have the BBC in this country who are expected to remain impartial, but the papers that we bought all had a political agenda and that was formed ultimately

by who bankrolled them. Everything we read was something that someone wanted us to and every photo we were shown was one that someone had worked out would garner our attention. Marketeers needed us to see these perfectly airbrushed images so that we might buy into their dream and editors gave us everything else, knowing that the dirtier, the more salacious, the better. Stories were sold, sometimes by friends or acquaintances of the celebs in question, sometimes by the celebs themselves, that they were never told without a gender. Nowadays, the Daily Mail sidebar of shame is mostly made up of photos plucked straight from celebs' Instagram accounts.

And this in and of itself is so interesting and definitely a conversation we need to have another day about the way that this has mutated journalism and obviously the curation and editing and whatever else that goes into social media content. But back then, the only photos circulating were the ones taken without consent or even any awareness they were being taken at all. There was no way to explain or defend yourself truly, given as any quote you gave could be manipulated to mean almost anything the journalist, editor or even public wanted it to mean.

To get a better understanding of how powerful the editors were at the time, we wanted to speak to someone who was there, who not only knew how the game worked, but who played it, who sought the stories out, that they knew we wanted to read. Isabel worked for Heat Magazine on their hoop of horror segment, the part of the magazine that we ashamedly rushed to, and one that contributed in no small part to the vicious lens

through which we viewed each other and in turn ourselves. Can you talk us through your time working for Heat Magazine? How long were you there for and what did you do? So I joined Heat, well I actually started on work experience in, it was October 2002. So how long ago is that? A long time ago. Straight out of uni, I was doing like a journalism course.

Went there for two weeks work experience. Went really well. They invited me back. I don't think things happen as easily as this these days in magazines. Like you have to like be an unpaid intern forever. But if there was money then in magazines. So yeah, they offered me a job on my 22nd birthday, which was 2003. Initially as like a junior writer on the news desk, or that news desk,

sounds it wasn't real news it's like Justin Timberlake walking a dog or something it all felt quite kind of

simple then and then I stayed there for six years kind of was a writer on the magazine and then

worked on the website as well what was it like to work there in a time when women's bodies were heavily scrutinised

slash criticised this is something I think about all the time now when I joined Heat I was

by far the biggest person in the office. I was like a size 20 when I first worked there, 18 maybe. Everyone else was tiny. You know, the image of a sort of women's magazine. It was as you expect, like lots of like very attractive, fashionable, like young, gorgeous girls. And I wasn't like that. Like I always felt like I was slightly on the outside looking in.

And then, of course, you're then writing about celebrities. And I think when I think there was a shift while I was there. Like when I'd started, it was more, the body stuff wasn't the stuff that was selling as much. Like it was more, they hadn't really tried that. It was more like reality TV and Hollywood celebrities in a more kind of, it was all just quite funny and fun. And then it sort of changed into realizing that what sold was

looking at pictures of celebrities' bodies in a critical way, which obviously is really uncomfortable now. So, of course, no judgment because it was the culture of the time. And it also sounds like it kind of snuck up on you a little bit. I think so, yeah. But with that in mind, would you say that your work and what you were doing there contributed to what was ultimately being put out? I guess so.

Like, I find it hard to decide. I've been like thinking about this when I, you know, preparing for the podcast and everything. Am I a victim? Am I a perpetrator? Am I both? And the same with every, obviously, as a writer on the magazine, more so, even readers, like all of, the whole culture at that time, I think we're all really mixed up about the role that we might have played in that. Yeah, it's a tough one really.

Like, I definitely look back at the some of the content from then and feel really uncomfortable about it. Not even uncomfortable, like completely freaked out. It just seems bizarre. Some of the stuff that was just commonplace to write that. And it wasn't just magazines. It was the TV at the time, you know, posh stuff getting weighed on TFI Friday, some of the sex in the city scenes that now like make us cringe, all of those things, which obviously all heat was writing about all that stuff. It was all one big, very messed up body image world. And I suppose what's true about it is that all of us that were working there were also young women struggling with our own body image issues. Like I was obviously one of the

youngest people there kind of joining straight out of uni, but even the senior people were maybe 28, 29. Like I thought they were super grown up at the time. But it's basically a load of kids having a great time, trying to be funny, being funny. Like, Heat was known for being funny, like the tone of voice and all of that stuff was why it was sort of the kind of iconic magazine at the time that everyone wanted to work on, like, you know, anyone in journalism at that time, even people who were at the Guardian or whatever were applying for jobs on Heat. Like, it was a place to be, winning loads of awards, selling loads of magazines and all

of that. It's really exciting. And lots of very clever, talented people. but yeah I suppose it's that it just feel yeah it felt like it changed in quite a subtle way going from people like looking at pictures of celebrities without makeup on um which felt like a that felt surprising then because we're coming out of a very um quite an airbrushed Hollywood era plus all the like kind of lads magels and stuff that were everyone was wearing a lot of makeup and um looking perfect so that felt I suppose refined.

refreshing initially but then you go from no makeup to and I think this is the thing that's when it's the honing in on on body parts that now just seems bizarre and I also don't think it's how we really look at people's bodies and that's I think that took me a long time to realize that that I had to sort of like when I go to the beach I might notice if someone's like bigger or smaller but I'm not going oh look at that cellulite but it's only visible for a split second but it's that split second that's been caught on camera

and then put in a magazine we don't really go around doing that I don't think but then I think it was about sort of feeling like we're kind of celebrating being a normal woman and I think that's where it came sort of comes from a good place initially

that readers are going to feel good if celebrities actually look a little bit more like them than they thought they did but that just got magnified to ridiculous degree I think that's a really interesting point and I do I can see how that started and I can see how convoluted the logic to look back but actually you're right yeah

that's the reason that I loved heat magazine was because I was craving seeing reality because like you say everything else was vogue and airbrushed yeah photoshopped But the section that I think you're referring to, the thing that I remember was the Circle of Shane, hoop of horror, yeah. That saw the circling, a stretch mark, cellulite, belly rolls. The other section that I remember was best and worst beach bodies. Yeah.

Did you ever work on either of those segments? Yeah, like I would have been like writing the captions sometimes for the, I wouldn't have been choosing the pictures. That would be the picture desk. I didn't, I wasn't the main writer writing the captions, but I was off. I was the person drafted in if someone else was off actually to write some of those captions. And I'm not looking for like a medal or bravery award here, but I tried to, I did used to try and say,

I don't, not really comfortable with that. Or just try and make it funny and not mean. I think that was, the trouble is the easiest and quickest way to be funny is to be a bit mean. Like we, you know, we all do that all the time. it's sarcasm and that's you know when it lands well it lands well but when it's about people's bodies oh it just I mean the whole thing does make me feel really uncomfortable and I don't like the fact that I used to write stuff like that and you know we also used to I'd put

fake names on things sometimes if I didn't want to um have my name on something that might it was often that was often things that were maybe more like speculating that somebody might have had surgery or something but yeah obviously all of that's just the very fact that I wasn't comfortable putting my name on it probably tells you that it shouldn't have been written in the first place really doesn't it and yeah and I think what came from that initially that was just one or two pages in the magazine that were like that they were incredibly popular so then it's like okay well how do we turn that into a cover story every week and it it weirds me out now and I think that the intended impact of making women feel like their bodies are normal it that

isn't maybe that worked initially but ultimately you're going well people are looking at me and they're mentally putting rings around tiny perceived flaws on me um rather than how we really look at people well people are more worried about themselves than anyone else really aren't they like and you take in the bigger picture of someone when you meet them when you were honing in on other women's bodies because you had to because a picture desk and sent them and you had to find the captured to go with it did you ever find that that was something that you reflected that you turned onto yourself? Yeah, well, yes and no, I think, with that, because I always, I think, I always felt

quite far removed because I looked not like those people at all. Like, I didn't care about cellulite. I cared about the fact that I couldn't buy clothes from Topshop because I was a size 18 and they only went up to a 14 and that wasn't a real 14, you know. So to me, all of these celebrities looked amazing and it, and not something I could ever aspire to be, but the people who I saw both in the office and amongst like people who were readers at the time, maybe friends or people who worked in that general industry at the time who were naturally quite slim, you know, maybe they were, they looked sort of acceptable

in terms of how society viewed them, which is not how I felt about myself. They were, I think they were more damaged by it because it was like, if only I could just be, like a little bit thinner or if I could just go to the gym a bit more or whatever like they would I feel like they were much harder on themselves whereas I think I just I think there's an element of just thinking the whole thing was a bit ridiculous but then that was then maybe makes it easier to not really think about that as being a real person if you can't relate to them at all we found you because you wrote a post you wrote an article about that time and about kind of moving on from it and feeling remorseful I guess or not necessarily because well I don't know

I don't put words in your mouth but reflective of that time definitely yeah and you say you'd do it all again but I wonder when which I also understand because you know we go through what we go through but when you think back to the shift that you had because it's been 20 years Yeah, which is mad. Which is mad. Yeah. When was it? Can you pinpoint a time where you started to think,

God, I wish I had done that or I wish this had been different? Was there a point? Was it when everybody started pointing and looking back and going, God, that was awful? Or did you get there before? I think it was gradual. So suddenly I felt like the people I was writing about were all younger than me. And that felt a bit weird.

Like this was the era of like sort of Lindsay Lohan. and all the kind of L.A. party girls, it all started to feel quite grubby when you sort of realize that these people are actually, like, really messed up. They're having a bad, you know, people being, there was a period of time where we were just constantly seeing mugshots of celebrities.

Like, that's not normal, is it? That is weird. And so that, and it was Amy Winehouse and all of that stuff around that time as well. It just suddenly all felt less fun. Like, in fact, not fun at all. And that was when Brittany was struggling and all of those. So all of these people that we were like being fun and sort of taking the piss out of,

I suppose, but also celebrating and loving these things. Like, who doesn't love Brittany? Like, they suddenly realise that they are really struggling and it doesn't feel that nice to be scrutinising their lives in the same way. And a lot of those people are either, yeah, the same age as me or a bit younger. And I guess I just grew out of it a little bit. And also becoming a mother. Like, it's such a cliche, but kind of, I've got a son and a daughter, but thinking

about them and them growing up in their bodies and all of that stuff definitely makes you you just get a bit older and wiser I suppose you know when I think back to this time and again I was only young but in the research of this and actually just because it always has been these papers are run and funded by men but they are also existing within a patriarchal society that wants women smaller that wants women buying that wants women controlled that wants all these things so there is an agenda whatever there is always an agenda yeah and unfortunately it's very often the male one so i do think it's interesting how often and it's still happening now within journalism where a lot of young women are pawns really or they're they're they're internalizing

it because they have to and perpetuating it because it's their job to yeah exactly so it's a kind of and i guess there's a question to finish or would you feel at that time I'm comfortable labeling yourself as a victim or a perpetrator. Do you think you land somewhere in the middle of it? I think I probably land somewhere in the middle. It's definitely not just a victim. Well, if I am the net, I think everybody was. Like I say, it's very young people producing all of this stuff

without much, like I say, not much analysis. And probably a lot of it comes from how you feel about yourself how you've been brought up to feel about yourself like from all these different influences your the media from before that and your mum and whatever else like it's quite actually quite dangerous to put a national publication in the hands of loads of like young people who might feel quite messed up themselves um to make money like you say to make money for um largely lots of men um so but in terms of being a perpetrator um yes i feel like i wrote some bitchy stuff But I think one of the things, one of the myths about the media or certainly from where I've always sat is that there's some big agenda and that I think people imagine that like all the journalists are getting together and deciding this is our angle on something we're going to take this person down, you know, that vibe.

and I don't think any journalists are organised enough or like everyone's just thinking like how do we fill these pages and it's the same now even more so with online stuff where it's like Google won't even rank it if it's less than 400 words so you're like oh god what can I say about something like you're desperately trying to think of angles all the time like it's it's nuts like you know quite often you're just dealing with a picture it's like okay I need to four minutes I've got half an hour

to form an opinion of this picture or I'm going to get told I haven't done my job and I'm too slow or I'm not funny enough or whatever. It wasn't really like nobody was like cracking the whip in that way but there's also a magazine that needs to be printed. It was a very vast turnaround all the time. I think that he was part of a much bigger, fucked up naughty's world.

But it's one of the things that people remember because it was so bright and in your face and the TV adverts and all of that stuff that people loved. Like it was, you know, a big iconic title of what was a quite messed up era that, yeah, we obviously look back on in a slightly eek way.

I mean, some of the captions, things like, like, like, eke and oh my God, is now how we feel when we look back at that stuff. I was really grateful and struck by how, how candid Isabel was speaking to us there like being honest about about the part you play because it's sometimes hard to do that

but I wonder on balance what you think looking back now was she a victim or was she a perpetrator and you can't you can say both but I'm going to need you to be on one side more than the other here's what I'm going to say

I'm going to say both but I definitely lean more on the side of victim. I think that it's important to stress here that, you know, I think obviously she had a lot of external pressures and she, ultimately, she wasn't the one in charge. She was doing what people were telling her to at the top. But what's that quote they say?

It's like good, evil. What's the quote about evil? It's in mean girls. excellent janice ean there are two types of evil in the world those that do evil and those that see evil being done and don't do anything to stop it i i think if we call isabel a perpetrator then we have to call all of ourselves perpetrators as well i think we do need to do that i think that lumps us i think that also then lumps in everyone who consume that content a hundred percent because i think we were just as guilty i think it's important that we do that

though because I don't think we can move forward now I don't think we can operate empathetically kindly smartly I don't think I think I ignorantly like you're ignorant if you don't acknowledge your part in this then you're going and causing harm so maybe we're all we know we are it's not maybe we are yeah yeah yeah victims first and foremost but perpetrators also close second and also you're right because I think that's the only way I think acknowledging that is the only way that we stop we break the cycle because this still continues

the Daily Mail is one of the biggest is the biggest newspaper for a reason because it relies on I mean it does it in a lessover way now but it still relies on shaming celebrities and

mocking women and if you can make an allowance for yourself here if you can justify this to yourself Oh, well, well, well, and leave it just at the justification without taking any accountability. I don't believe that you're growing as a person. I don't believe that you're going to operate any better now. Like, yeah, your means of inflicting judgment or pain or whatever will be different,

but you'll still find a way to be a problem and to be cruel. And I think if you can justify it, if you, a hundred percent, we need to look back and say, we didn't know any better, of course, we didn't know anybody. you did what you did with the tools that you had like we were kids it's yeah but we did eat it up and we did love it and like that is bad it is bad it is bad yeah and it's like it's okay for us to say like it was bad we're not going to do that again but you have to say it was bad otherwise you're not right you know like you're just pushing it away from yourself and then I think that's when you end up with why is the Daily Mail so popular now same shit exactly

they know what they're doing they're they're not printing the headlines for themselves They're printing it because they know, they're printing them because they know that those are the ones that get clicks. Yeah. And clicks by the last year. The nastier the headline, the bigger the clicks. Yep. The more images of women's bodies, the more clicks. So you're right.

We've, we've all got to acknowledge our part in this. But RIP, the Circle of Shame segment. Horrific. And absolutely testament to the fact that a photo paints a thousand words. And since this was a huge. invasive era, there were a lot of photos, painting a lot of words. For every page of every magazine we ever read, there were photos of celebrities, and these held huge reputational value. I don't think we can underestimate the weight, the importance of a woman's reputation,

how everything is pinned on a woman's reputation. And it's terrifying. It's terrifying. to think how quickly they can be trashed. But the Circle of Shame was a two-page spread of a weekly magazine. Yes, it was infamous, revered by readers and feared by celebrities, particularly women who, yes, had this reputation to uphold. But it wasn't mainstream in the same way that the front pages of the daily papers were. And it's crazy to think that a woman's body might find itself top of the entire nation's news agenda. But by God it happened.

You know what? We wrote Nation there, but it's like, these newspapers cover international news. This is like world conflict, famine, natural disasters. Like, these papers cover every big thing that happened in the whole world. But you know what was more interesting? Time and time again. How a woman looked. On the cover. The biggest agenda of the day, all too often,

we were presented with photos of compromised women. Of course, there are incriminating instances in which celebs were busted for doing legitimately bad things like the aforementioned grainy photos that appeared of Kate Mas, doing her cocaine, or the CCTV images of Winoda Ryder shoplifting. But far more common than that was the circulation of photos that were just bad. Right. Whether it was a picture of Lindsay Lohan with her eyes half closed with the headline, wasted again also to stress in capitals. And by the way, getting a photo of someone with their eyes half closed is bound to happen.

If you are snapping hundreds of photos of someone within a matter of seconds. Owl, it happens every time we take a photo of you anyway. Right. Blinking is a natural human reflex, but that doesn't fit the narrative, right? Or whether it was picture sporting, also very natural, cellulite, with rings around the offending areas and headlines like, don't panic, famous people get it too. One particularly bizarre feature printed at that time was titled Britney Fears. Clean up your act or face an ugly future alongside a current unflattering photo of Britney without makeup and looking dishevelled.

The newspaper had projected her ageing trajectory based on the photo to show how she would look at ages 46 and 56, after which I presume she would just cease to exist. Right. Both images showed a larger woman with unkempt hair. It's so crazy to say out loud. It's horrible. It's hilarious. And now it's wild to think, but upskirting, the practice of taking a photo of someone's skirt was only made illegal in the UK in 2019 after a campaign spearheaded by Gina Martin.

But before that, it was very normal for perhaps to lie on the ground outside nightclubs or hold the cameras low when female celebrities were getting out of their cars. In recent years, Emma Watson spoke out about how her 18th 13th 13th, the celebrations were ruined because photos of her skirt were published in the newspapers. Like, that in and of itself is absolutely unhinged the very next day. I think it was the cover. 18th birthday. I think it was the cover.

I've seen this clip of her speaking about it so many times. And it's heartbreaking. She literally says you ruined, like, it ruined adulthood. Like, it was the day I turned 18, the day that I was. going into the world as a woman like the day that my life was supposed to be like the biggest day of my life so far and it was completely ruined and I think she had this she talks about this kind of you just you feel the weight of the injustice that it just hadn't happened to her co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grynt weirdly I feel like the internet's been scrubbed of it

I would not be surprised if the internet was scrubbed of it given as that happens a lot after Caroline Flack died, all the tabloids that had run all the stories, they all just disappeared, which is interesting. It's actually so disgusting to talk about this. It's absolutely disgusting. Like, I feel, on one hand, I feel like real sadness for Emma Watson, but overwhelmingly, I feel rage at how vile and disgusting this practice was. I mean, that's like, it's more that, I don't know what it's constituted as, I'm under law now, but it's sexual abuse.

Like, it is the, it is the most violating thing. Imagine anybody having, taking a photo of your, like, vulva, like, I would die. I would die. It's a truly horrific thought. It's true, it's proper violation. And when we talk about, like, revenge porn and, like, actual sexual crimes, like, of course men think they can do this shit. the papers were

to kids I mean she's like 18 for a day it's like it's actually revolting I'm sad I'm sad for her it's fucking disgusting

no it was it was no it was it was I'm desperate to find I'm sure it was a cover whilst researching this incident I've actually just come across something

also quite horrific from that period hit me that I would like to share with you Like doesn't feel like the right word But okay Feel compelled It was a picture of Charlotte Church

Actually someone that we haven't covered in this series But A woman that was often attacked For the way that she looked Because she wasn't thin She wasn't skinny It's a picture of her in the Daily Star With the headline

She's a big girl now I'm just going to show you the picture of her there Right Woman cannot be bigger than a size 12 Showing you the picture, Charlotte Church was 15. She's a big girl now. At the time, with the headline, she's a big girl now. And it reads,

Child Singing Sensation, Charlotte Church, showed just how quickly she's grown up after she turned up at a Hollywood bash-looking chess swell. It's a picture of her boobs, essentially. That's what they're referring to. Charlotte Church hit puberty. Let's sexualize the shit out of her. Voice of an angel.

voice of an angel star Charlotte who at the age of 15 is already a showbiz veteran showed off her new look new look showed off the effects of puberty my new brown hair is a new look breasts are not a new look imagine imagine like genuinely sometimes you have to put this to a man to make it sound as stupid imagine posting a photo of someone's testicles and saying here's Leonardo DiCaprio showcasing his new look it's it's so ludicrous to imagine it like oh it's balls must have dropped if that happened to me at 15 let me tell you that I would never be seen in public ever again it's fucking disgusting I would have I would have died I would have literally perished well we've taken a massive caveat onto the sexualization of women stars

but still the most viral I ever went on Instagram was that headline that I called out in 2021 from the Daily Mail of Billy Eilish when she did that Vogue cover when she turned 18 and they ran this big headline and I'm paraphrasing but basically saying like after years of hiding her body Billy Eilish strips off for a Vogue magazine shoot and I corrected the headline to being after years of being an actual child Billy Eilish does a Vogue cover whatever but it's like this entitlement that we have to women's, to children's, to children's bodies, children. This feels so gross though because she was 15 years old. Yeah.

It feels even like is this feels absolutely disgusting. But on this and we literally haven't got time to go into this but we can remember as well that during this time we had a countdown. There were reputable websites with a countdown to the Olson twins turning 18. They did the same for Hillary Duff. Like newspapers, yeah, they were having count downs. Like Ashton Coucher, did this big thing in, I can't remember what interview,

maybe it's a punked episode about how excited he was for Hilary Duff to turn 18. No, he didn't. Yes, he did. It's absolutely disgusting. It's not cool. This is definitely going to have to be another series because we've got to get back to body. For sure, for sure. We have to stress that getting a photo of a woman looking bad in any kind of way

was a huge win for the paparazzi, which goes a long way to explaining how big that industry got. Here's Charles to explain. I mean, certainly in the... the British press in our tabloids, photos of women were very, very often, you know, there would be photos of women depicted in unflattering ways and they seemed really, you know, really popular. There'd be like women falling out of taxis or women showing their cellulite and things like this. Yeah. Did you feel like you had to go out of your way to get photos like that because you knew that there was an appetite for that? No. No. The problem of

is I think people have a common misperception of what actually goes on. I mean, when you're taking the picture, you're just taking the picture and what happens, happens. It's usually up to the editors of the particular outlets, how those pictures end up getting spun. So, you know, when you take a picture, yeah, if you see an unflattering one, yeah, you might include it in the set because you know the appetite of, say, the British tabloids. So you know, okay, if I get somebody really glamorous looking bad that's going to sell but you're not at least from my standpoint you're not actively seeking to get that shot you know i mean sometimes it's one of one of the most popular shots that we used to take would be celebrities eating because yeah there's nothing more in flattering

than you know shoveling food in your mouth and having somebody shoot you said those those you would tend to take be it man woman whatever it's just it's that was always a good a good shot but you know, the, for lack of a better phrase, you know, the Britney Spears upskirt shot and things like that. It's, those aren't things that I'm particularly setting out to get. And if, if you get them and they sell, then you get them and they sell. That's actually really interesting. And I, that was a misconception I had as well. I thought that you, you, you set out to get, not you, but like the, you know, the paparazzi set out to get unfattering photos because they know that that is what they would sell. Some do, obviously, right? Because once you realize, oh,

I got that shot, it sold, okay, let me go out and get more of that. But that's not journalism to me, you know, and I think one of the, one of the core things you do want to get, and one of the core things that magazines and newspapers do want to see is that celebrities are just like us. So that's why some of it sells, right? So, i.e., you know, they get up in the morning and they don't have makeup on and they go to the grocery store and they grab their Starbucks with it with their hair messed up. That's type of thing. You know, they grocery shop and push their shopping car just the same as everybody else in their slippers you know there's two types of photography paparazzi photographers there's the ones that come in it from a journalistic aspect and

you get what you get and there's the ones that are actively trying to create controversy and trying to get the shots and that's not the way I try to operate but you know people do but I imagine you witnessed a lot of that oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah um I think there was a shot once of Britney Spears getting out of her car, you know, exceedingly short skirt and a photographer caught it and you could see that she had no underwear on. And then the next thing, you know, every photographer and their mother is trying to get, trying to get that shot. And I'm like, why? You know what I mean? One, it's rude. Two, it's unflattering. And two, it's just, it's crass. I know. Why do we want to see it? And the thing is, it's like the fact that anybody runs with that story anyway in the

first place is even a bit bizarre but especially when it comes to British tabloids we're talking about you know a country where page three girls were a popular thing so it's it's it's not outside of the realm of possibility that that's what they're focusing on did you ever do things that you didn't really want to do or didn't necessarily feel ethical to you but you kind of had to stay relevant to make a living to be in this in the in the world of the paparazzi well it depends on what you consider unethical. I mean, I would argue that a lot of celebrities would argue that taking somebody's picture surreptitiously when they don't necessarily want it done would be unethical. Or taking a picture of a celebrity when you're not asking would be unethical. It depends. You know, have I ever

broken into somebody's house? No. Have I ever gone through somebody's trash? No. Have I long lends somebody, you know, from a hilltop? Yes. Yeah. Have I flown a drone over a celebrity wedding yes have i been in a helicopter over a celebrity wedding yes have i taken pictures of celebrities you know picking and dropping their kids off from school yes tend not to do that anymore um only because i'm older i have a kid um i have a kid in private school so private school in l.A means sometimes your kid goes to school with high profile people um and you just try I just, there's no, there's no point in it. I see no, I see no, you know, story value and take your pictures of children, you know,

if they're out with a celebrity, that's, that's a different story. But, you know, if they're doing other things, it's, yeah, kind of off movements. It was very common for perhaps to hide in bushes and outside houses, taking photos on really long lenses. And it was always the pictures of women, normally in their bikinis, that sparked the most intrigue and therefore generated the most money. Even in 2011,

do you remember those photos of Kate Middleton topless on her honeymoon were taken? She was on a private island at the time. She was topless on a private island and photographs were released with her. I don't think it gets more invasive than that.

But this actually leads us on to another subset of celebrity photography, which is getting photos of them in their swimwear, which was... Unfortunately, the biggest are most profitable. Would you always get more for a woman who was in a bikini, who's wearing a bikini on the beach? Always.

Right. Always. Always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always. That's why there's photographers that just hang out on the beach in Hawaii, Miami, the Caribbean. A celebrity in a bikini? Yeah, gold. I mean, that makes sense, because it always makes headlines, right? Yeah, exactly.

Well, and also it's the fashion thing. It's the, you know, fetidization of women. Yeah. Because people are like, oh, look, she looks gorgeous or, you know, some. Unfortunately, it's, you know, it's to take down, you know, oh, you know, they're wearing a bikini and they don't look great. It's, it's, it's around that. Once again, it's around the sensationalism of that. Was it bigger in the, in the naughties?

like we need beach pictures and now it's there's less of an appetite for it or is it just as where people just as hungry I think it's just the same I don't think I don't think anything about that's changed yeah okay okay I don't and I don't and I don't think it will what role do you think that kind of photography and you know photograph you know photographs of women looking unflattering or less than flattering what effect do you think that that had on women's body image in general oh I think it would be awful I mean, here's the thing. I have a daughter.

She's seven years old. The last thing I want is her growing up, you know, whether she's, you know, overweight or underweight or underweight or skinny. The last thing I want is her being concerned about her body image based on some bullshit she's seen in a magazine. I mean, at the end of the day, you know, tabloid pictures and. you know it's bullshit right it's it's it's it's it's it's it's fluff it's you know there's a lot more problems going on in the world than than that and I think the reason um you know celebrity celebrity photography and celebrity content is so interesting to people because you know sometimes it gives them an escape you know it's it's that's what the entertainment value is

from it so so so and that's why you know there are sections of towers in magazines where it's like celebs are just like us because people want to think what want to be able to escape from their mundane lives and I think it it is awful that you know those things are capitalized upon and yeah photographers don't help it you know the picture you know picture is worth a thousand words right so if you get if you get the picture there's there's you know 20,000 words that's going to be written about it and and it's not and it's not good and I think you know I've I've had the benefit of being that this a long time and Like I said, once you get into the reality of the world, i.e. family, i.e. kids and things like that,

you do realize, yeah, it's kind of awful. People like to blame the paparazzi, and I do think still at the end of the day, it's kind of the public's fault. Because if they weren't, if they weren't clicking on it, if they weren't buying it, if back in the days before the internet was around, if circulation didn't go up because Kim Kardashian, you know, it's supply and demand. You know, that's You know, newspapers are there to simply give people what they want. And unfortunately, there's a huge section of the populace that want to see that. That some revel in the glamour, some revel in the downfall. And it's unfortunate, it's unfortunate.

But unfortunate, you know, that's how you can have situations where Donald Trump, you know, denigrating every human being on the planet, can suddenly have the popular vote and be elected. versus somebody who's not doing that. That's how you can have, you know, a country where a qualified woman doesn't get elected. I know we mentioned before how often celebs in these days would call the paps on themselves. But when you think about it in the context of, these photos are going to be taken anyway.

I might as well work with the people taking them rather than against them and ensure that the photos that end up all over the world are ones that I like look good in and have control over. Like, it's totally fair enough that you would kind of strike a deal or make this sort of arrangement. I know it's hard to feel sorry for celebrities

and that's something made hard and no doubt by the horrible reporting we're describing here. But when you put yourself in their shoes, it's very easy to see why a lot of them played the game that they did. For sure. It's a way of them taking back control. We asked Giles about this who explained a little about how it works.

We often imagine that your industry just works with you guys following celebrities or like spotting celebrities and, you know, going around and undercover cars. But I think in reality, a lot of it is orchestrated by celebrities, by their public, public, publisher? Yeah, well, they're publicists, but not a lot of it. Really?

But more so now than they're ever used to be, especially with the advent of social media, a lot of celebrities, you know, they want to control the narrative. Back in the day, what usually what would happen is, you know, if I got an unflattering photo of a celebrity, you know, the moment you're shopping it around, the publicist is calling the celebrity going, hey, look, somebody got a photo of you painting your house and you didn't look too great. The celebrity turns around and goes, okay, let's get a paparazzi to get a better shot of pictures of me before that publication goes to print. So at least, you know, it doesn't look. And I've had that situation happen. I've had,

you know like I said it's about controlling a narrative and I think that's why celebrities do it now because they have things they want to promote they have rumors that they either want to stand up or kill they they want some some of them want to take you know for lack of a better word the bounty off of their head so like for example you know a celebrity who's got you know the first shot of a celebrity child you know after a celebrity said a baby is always a big thing but if a celebrity puts, goes out and takes their own photo and then posts it, then that's just kind of taking the price off of their head right in there, right? And if they arrange, you know, they say with a paparazzi, okay, I'm going to go to this restaurant,

I'm going to walk and push a pram down the sidewalk to my car, you get a nice set of pictures, then that deters everybody else from hassling you because, like I said, the price is off your head. Right. That's interesting that you say it doesn't happen as that often that the shots are orchestrated. I think we imagine that it's most of most of the time that these shots are set up. With certain people, it's probably a lot more than it's not. I mean, and the thing is you can always tell the shots that are like better set up. Because it's probably it's perfectly cropped, it's perfectly composed, it's perfectly lit.

You know, all the elements are there is just. It's just picture perfect for it to be stuck, to be splashed all over a magazine. I actually remember being on holiday in the Caribbean when I was younger, much younger, and Colleen Rooney, the Roonies were at a hotel down the beach. And I remember all the chat being like, she works with the Pats, like she does it. And I want to think that I thought this at the time, I won't have done because I was swept up in it. But as an adult, no, I'm like, fair time. you're on holiday with your kids.

If you can say to them on day one, look, I'll come down by myself, I'll get the photos, leave the kids out of it, just let, you know, I'll do whatever you want, let's get the photos on the first day and then just leave me to it with the holiday,

leave me to it for the rest of the holiday. It gives her peace on the beach, rather than having them every day, like, fair enough, but I remember the way people talked about her, like, oh, she's just, you know, it's like, they're taking them anyway. I mean, it's just so crazy

that it even has to be a considerate, for clean. Of course. I mean, holiday with my family. Let's think about how I can like get the paps out the way. I mean,

on a different. But of course you do it. We had this, I mean, yeah, we had the same, we had the same thing. Of course.

Yeah. So. You have first-hand experience. Yeah. God, it used to make me nervous. When I turned 18 and I knew that they could take

photos of me, it would be, it would be terrifying. And they do it. The first few years, they'd take photos of me and my mom. Oh,

used to dread it. He used to dread it. He used to absolutely dread it. I would die. Because you'd have to walk down the bit where you wanted to swim. You knew they were there and I'd be walking. Like, please don't be there. Please don't be there.

Please don't be there. It's so horrible. For a child as well. I was like 80. Yeah. Still a child. Poor me. Poor you.

So yeah, I think with hindsight, it's sad that we didn't have that empathy at the time. But I think with hindsight, it's, you could see how much pressure there was on them with all of this public scrutiny. and how much pressure was on them to stay as slim, as humanly possible. To speak candidly, any flaw that they had at this time was absolutely gobbled up by the press and therefore the public. And we cannot stress enough, fatness was weaponised entirely. Jessica Simpson was called Jombo Jessica on the cover of US Weekly after that on-stage appearance in high-wasted jeans, while The Daily Mail wrote this headline after Britney Spears performed on-stage in 2011, looking maybe slightly like a tiny bit bigger than she once had, Britney packs a paunch.

Spears looks out of shape on the opening night of her femme fatale tour. Yes, that was an actual headline. Can we just talk quickly about that, Jessica Simpson? Those Jessica Simpson photos. I distinctly remember looking at them and thinking, oh my gosh, she's let herself go. She's gotten so big. What happened. Yeah. Which is horrifying looking at them now with my 2024 rational recovered head on because that woman was tiny. Absolutely tiny. The paunch that they speak of, Britney Spears, I remember Lady Gaga had a similar thing a few years later. There's nothing there. There's nothing there. Nothing. But you hear the word and you think, well, the paper say, these people report on the You know, at the time, it's like you're reading like Iraq war, paunch, and so you think, well, this is the news.

This is the news. This is where I learn things and take information about the state of the world. She's got fat and there's trouble in the Middle East. It's just awful. I'm like, I'm making jokes, but it's like, it's actually insane that this was the world. Terrifying. There are thousands more examples, though. Candid pictures of celebrities doing really banal tasks like eating their love.

lunch were casually and cruelly used to shame them. And in turn, any other woman who looked like them. NAM magazine published a shot of Step Star, Claire Richards bent over, eating what I think looks like a muffin, in a tight-fitting t-shirt with the headline, Claire's Diet Despair, also including a picture of Claire, and I say this with the most enormous air quotes you can imagine, at her best, when she was clearly thinner and posing in a bikini. The subheading, on the cover read. Step Star gains three stone in five months. You know what?

Hearing this now, it's reminded me, it's like, you'd read it like, oh, they've lost control. Like, that was the narrative. It was like, look at them. They're in a spiral. It's like, yeah, it's so interesting hearing this with, like, 2025 is Star Magazine, which were arguably one of the worst culprits when it came to body shaming, printed a picture in 2014 of Kim Cardagh.

in from the side where she was wearing a tight-fitting strapless dress. The magazine printed two arrows to parts of her body, one pointing to the bit of back fat that sat over the top of her dress, while the other pointed, and we kid you not here, to her elbow. The caption joining the two arrows, back and elbow fat. Yup. Seriously, the headline splashed across the photo read Kim, alone and binge eating, alongside another photo of Kim mid-bite of what looks like pasta,

another subheading screams, packs on. 22 pounds too depressed to work out somehow, and I can't necessarily explain why the overzealous use of exclamation marks in these titles just adds insult to injury. I know the use of punctuation like exclamation marks is usually pretty subjective, but it just feels like they're laughing. Also, why so many headlines, you know? It's like we need to tell you in lots of different ways, just how bad she looks. We have to shout this at you as loudly. as we can. But we have to dehumanise it.

We have to mock her. Are you not panicking that she's eating past her? Because you might be panicking about the fact that her elbow's fat. And if that didn't get you, she's 22 pounds up. Elbow fat. And honestly, like, again, we're going to share these pictures on our Instagram. You've got to go to the Should I Delete that Instagram and look, everything we're going to share from these episodes. But I'm telling you.

Extraordinary. It's just her bone. It's just a bone. So it makes sense, right? In order to ever feel like you were winning in any way as a celebrity. when it came to the PAPS and the press and all of it, it was to play the game as well as you could, and that meant looking as best as you possibly could at all times,

which meant, let's be honest, be as thin as you possibly could. Something that we started to see more and more of as time went on, and I don't know if you remember this, although Alex, you definitely will, was how frequent it would be for a pap shot of a celeb on the beach that would appear maybe end of August, September time of the maybe looking a little bit overweight or bending over or in a too smaller bikini or whatever, only for new photos to be released of them in January, perhaps on

a Christmas break, looking transformed just in time for the new year and the release of a fitness DVD. Carrie Cotona did it, Scarlett Muffat did it, Charlotte Crosby did it. This was a crazy time of mass exploitation as the celebs played the press and the press played the public and the public played the celeb and then the celebs sort of uno reversed the public and played them right back again. Rightly or wrongly, you can see how these women ended up playing the game in the way that they did. It was a doggie dog era and it feels remarkable that any of us made it out at all, at least with any empathy intact. The British press has always felt particularly savage but it was just one part of the brutality of the time. Whilst these days we're looking

enough to settle down to an episode of the Great British Bake Off or the repair shop and consume some long overdue, wholesome and diverse content. Back then, our evenings looked very different. It's mad to think it now, but some of the biggest television shows of our childhood made some of the headlines that we read to you earlier in this episode look like love letters. From shows like How to Look Good Naked, which would display a large image of a woman's body onto a billboard so they could ask members of the public what they thought, to fat families that really enabled the most judgmental form of voyeurism imaginable. The TV we watched was one of diet culture's most powerful weapons, a truly formidable beast.

And next week we'll be back to explore the toxic world of television. See you then. Should I delete that is part of the ACAS creator network.