Who will be ousted from the revolving door of celebrity next?

You’ve been “Woman’d”

This modern phenomenon – where everyone stops liking the same woman at the same time – has been coined being ‘woman’d’ by culture writer Rayne Fisher Quann.

The way female celebrities are shot to fame and torn down just as quickly is described by Quann as a lifecycle with a ‘depressing inevitability’. Writer Juanjo Villalba describes it as ‘a dynamic that pushes a woman to perilous heights, so the public can relish in taking her down a peg and then pat themselves on the back when they build her back up again’.

It’s happened not just to musicians and actors such as Britney Spears, Millie Bobby Brown, and Anne Hathaway – the latter of which was accused of being ‘annoyingly perfect’ and ‘calculatedly earnest’ – but also to the highly successful writer Rupi Kaur, whose poems were wildly popular on Instagram throughout the 2010s.

Rayne Fisher Quann went viral for her concept of being ‘woman’d’ when she sent out a tweet predicting it will also happen to Ottessa Moshfegh, the writer of the highly-successful novels, Eileen and My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

Today, a woman’s rapid rise to success means a fall from grace can almost be expected. No one, not even introverted writers, are safe.

if something gets popular on twitter there must be an immediate response of people asserting that said thing actually sucks and you’re a normie for liking it. x20 because she’s a woman. https://t.co/Ovq34V99qe

— ❦ (@D4LL4SWINSTON) June 17, 2024

A human, not a villain

It all starts when we see a side of a side of a star that is maybe, I don’t know, human?

Perhaps they’re caught on camera ignoring a fan (likely because they didn’t see or hear them), or revealing what audiences perceive to be a ‘bad take’ in the middle of an interview (Gasp! You can’t have a different opinion to me!). They may simply fail at presenting themselves in the most palatable way possible.

The media then snowballs off the public’s reaction, publishing any and every piece of content they can that diminishes the reputation of the female star they once helped elevate to stardom.

And while these narratives were once limited to the pages of gossip magazines, our internet algorithms create an all-access echo chamber that repeats and repackages our own gradually worsening views about certain individuals.

With so much content affirming our newfound beliefs, watching the downfall can become more entertaining than the celebrity themselves.

| Tyla addresses the controversy around her identifying as “coloured” after the topic is reignited in Breakfast Club interview.

“I don’t expect to be identified as Coloured outside of Southa by anyone not comfortable doing so because i understand the weight of that word… pic.twitter.com/qpYuEzwoaB

— KenBarbie™ (@itsKenBarbie) June 13, 2024

Unsurprisingly, female stars are becoming more aware of this trap that’s been set for them.

Those with large audiences have started stressing to their followers that they’re not perfect people. They admit to being flawed and explicitly ask not to be put on a pedestal. They’re fully aware that their fall from grace is one poorly judged or well-intentioned action away.

That women have to warn audiences from perceiving them as god-like individuals is ridiculous. None of us are perfect, so why do we expect stars to be?

The reason is, of course, that celebrities are seen as commodities born for our consumption. In that case, remaining desirable requires being timeless and designed without flaws in a culture that values novelty and trendiness more than ever before.

Let’s be real, this is an impossible task for anyone to take on.

The good news is, we don’t have to perpetuate the cycle. Becoming less of a fan doesn’t mean require becoming a rampant hater. We should remember that we’re all human. Yes, even Rihanna, as hard as that is to believe.