Out of the slipstream: The creation of celebrities

“Popstars or Puppets?” The Who Weekly cover line that accompanied a photo of the winners of Channel 7’s reality hit Popstars raises a conventional objection to the notion that women can ever be empowered in the marketplace of images. All those girls kicking ass in tight jumpsuits on television might look cool, but behind the scenes there’s always a male pulling the strings, shortening the skirts and reaping the bucks.

It’s a notion that is increasingly rebutted in real terms by the spectacle of women taking charge of their own image production and promotion. As Elle Macpherson once put it, “This is not about lending our image for a fee. We’ve got shares.” Since the early ’90s, female models, singers and actors have increasingly marketed themselves not only as an image but also as a brand. From merely endorsing products, they’ve moved into producing their own product lines. Lingerie, clothing, perfume, jewellery, cosmetics - the core business of celebrity is no longer singing, acting or smiling, it’s the reproduction of image and the range of media expands exponentially.

At an amateur level, research shows that an increasing numbers of young girls are embarking on DIY fame ventures using newly domesticated media technologies to produce and distribute their own images online. The growing phenomenon of camgirl sites, where female-image entrepreneurs set up cameras in their bedrooms and invite virtual voyeurs to visit them online via a website is a case in point. While much media commentary on teenage girls and the internet is focused on protecting them from predatory males, there are plenty of young women setting up their own webcams and offering their images in exchange for cash gifts, fan mail and a shot at various kinds of fame, pornographic and other.

One response is to suggest that girls have no idea of the dangers they’re courting and that they need protection from themselves. But another is to argue that camgirls are adopting a pragmatic position in respect to their role as “teenage girls”. As the author of Yes Means Yes, Kath Albury (Allen & Unwin, 2002) puts it, “They’re extending the idea of the personal website into a commercial enterprise. They’re asking men to be their ‘fans’, and to pay for the privilege of objectifying them, or forming fantasy relationships.”

It’s a view that jars with the common claim that teenage girls were much better off before the age of girl-power pop celebrity and amateur Internet porn. I’m trying hard to romanticise those long fruitless vigils outside the stage door. Perhaps I’d feel more nostalgic if we’d managed to score a real sexual experience out of it. Right now, all I can remember is the boredom and the cold.