Celebrities bite back: why Armie Hammer and Justin Bieber should grow up and ignore their critics
I read in yesterday’s Guardian about models objecting to the critical comments made by former Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman. Is it common for those who are criticised to speak back to their critics? Michael, by email
Good Lord, Michael, fashion people never do anything that is “common”! They do, however, do things that are a trend, and celebrities snapping back at the critics is verily the hottest trend of the moment. Expect to be able to buy it in Zara by the weekend.
So, as you read in the Guardian yesterday, Shulman wrote rather disobligingly about Helen Christensen’s recent party look of bustier and jeans. Now, for us devoted fans of old Guns’n’Roses videos, the only thing wrong with this look was that Helena’s hair wasn’t big or crimped enough to get the full Use Your Illusion vibe. Shulman’s objection, however, was that Christensen is too old for such a look, a comment that is never going to go down well with, well, anyone, and it went down especially badly with Christensen and her friends, including Linda Evangelista and Naomi Campbell, who all promptly rounded on Shulman. So she is presumably now surrounded by security because, while everyone knows that the No 1 rule for life is never get involved in a land war in Asia, only slightly less well known is never anger Naomi Campbell. Watch out for flying mobile phones, Alexandra.
The other week, the actor Olivia Munn – like Christensen – objected to some fashion criticism and posted a frankly loopy mini essay on Twitter about the popular fashion blog Go Fug Yourself, which she criticised for its “snarkiness and hypocrisy”. Now, let’s leave to one side Munn’s own apparent hypocrisy in topping her essay with a glamorous photo of herself next to a normal photo of the blog’s two female authors, thus implying: “How DARE these normals comment on goddesslike me?!” Instead, let’s focus on her bizarrely over-the-top argument in which she somehow draws an analogy between her suit being critiqued on a fashion blog and the #MeToo movement, as if someone saying they don’t like your outfit is comparable to being physically assaulted. Bad, bad look, Olivia.
Apparently, Justin Bieber has been drinking from the same well as Munn, because after a journalist suggested he lip-sync at Coachella, he furiously tweeted that she was like “[those] bullies at school that are making kids suicidal”. Because criticising a hugely successful 25-year-old pop star is definitely comparable to driving children to kill themselves.
But my favourite example of A Celeb Fighting BACK!!! involves the actor Armie Hammer. That’s right, everyone’s favourite example of extreme family privilege – that Armie Hammer. When the excellent Buzzfeed writer Anne Helen Petersen wrote about Hammer’s career, he called her “bitter AF”. When Petersen later wrote about a magazine profile of Jennifer Lawrence, he tweeted that she needed “medicating”. Ha ha, cool one, bro! Love it when a super-powerful man calls a woman crazy!
A couple of things are going on here. While celebrities rightly complain that social media means that they are now targeted with abuse all day long, it also means they have the ability to send abuse back. Once, their only real weapon was going to Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons for a moan – now they can reach out directly to the critics, and, as a bonus, set their legions of followers on them. And that brings us to another problem here, which is a disingenuous refusal on the part of the celebrities to accept that, while criticism may hurt, if you have hundreds of thousands – or even millions – more followers than the critic, your reply is less of a simple response and more an open invitation to attack. When you have, say, 12.5m followers on Twitter, every time you reply to someone, or favourite a negative comment about them, you are ostensibly unleashing a barrage of abuse at them, and protesting, “But can’t I even defend myself???” is just not good enough. As superhero movies have drilled into us, with great power comes great responsibility.
As much as celebrities might feel attacked, in newspapers and online, they still definitely have the power. They have the platforms, the fans, the defenders. And if they feel miffed about that mean review on Pitchfork, they would do well to remember that most people don’t read criticism anyway, so by complaining about it they are only drawing more attention to it. (Feel free to Google “Streisand effect”, Armie and Justin.) I agree that it’s bad taste to tell someone they’re too old to wear something. But going after people with far less power than you is just juvenile.