Michelle Almeida
It’s hard to scroll through social media without seeing celebrities sharing ‘cutesy’ couples Instagram posts, where they stare at each other with perfectly orchestrated romantic smiles and warm gazes. Their comments are flooded with “#OTP”, “#CoupleGoals” and other such schmaltzy compliments. Then, a few months later, when we’re infatuated with their perfect lives, comes the cheating scandal.
‘The Power Couple’: Idealising Celebrity Relationships
Though we can only assume (in part from watching one too many episodes of The Kardashians), celebrity relationships must be tough to navigate simply because they are so public. Masses of people speculate about the beginnings and ends of your relationships, glamourising, judging, and scrutinizing – see for instance the mass public commentary on Khloe Kardashian and Tristan Thompson amidst their many cheating scandals. The pressures of celebrity relationships are vast – we can only imagine what it would be like to deal with a very public infidelity scandal.
“Personally, I still cannot find the answer as to why on earth we idealise celebrity relationships.”
Celebrities have to very publicly go through a negative cycle of emotions and unsolicited criticism, splashed all over magazines and socials for public entertainment. On the other hand, sometimes these scandals are even used by celebrities as a PR strategy, capitalising on a few minutes of fame to keep their public selves relevant. It’s a rather sordid picture, but it goes to show on just how irrationally high of a pedestal we place celebrity couples, glamorising their relationships. Personally, I still cannot find the answer as to why on earth we idealise celebrity relationships.
‘The other woman’: Gender Stereotypes and Celebrity Scandal
In the past few months, we’ve seen repeated instances of high-profile men embroiled in cheating scandals- TryGuys’ Ned Fulmer cheating on Ariel Fulmer, Adam Levine on Behati Prinsloo, Tristan Thompson on Khloe Kardashian, Sebastian Bear-McClard on Emily Ratajkowski, and Gerad Pique on Shakira – to name but a few!
“More often than not, the cheating scandals we so eagerly discuss result in (usually female) victim blaming.”
Celebrity infidelity scandals are breeding grounds for gendered stereotypes. They become a form of entertainment, a chance for us to opine about situations that do not concern us in any way. More often than not, the cheating scandals we so eagerly discuss result in (usually female) victim blaming. How many times have we read comments about the wife being the reason a man couldn’t stay loyal to her, or blamed women for giving their male partners a second chance, only for them to cheat again?
Take the sensationalised stories surrounding Jordyn Woods, Tristian Thompson and Khloe Kardashian: who did we blame? Woods, the then 21-year old, who was labelled a ‘home-wrecker’ and a ‘liar’, and faced both public scrutiny and the wrath of a very influential family.
Shifting our Celebrity Scandal Blame
But there’s also been an interesting shift in public discourse, characteristic maybe of a post-MeToo movement era. We’re perhaps moving away from blaming women in these situations, and starting to rally against toxic masculinity and holding married men to account – you know, the ones who actually did the cheating…
We can see these power dynamics shifting through the responses to celebrity affairs by those around them. For instance, YouTubers the Try Guys spoke out when their costar, Ned Fulmer, was exposed for cheating on his wife, condemning his actions.
We also see a turning of the tide in the case of Emily Ratajkowski. In her book “My Body”, she addressed her sexual assault on the set of Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’, stating that Thicke groped her breasts while filming the music video. More recently, Ratajkowski spoke out in a TikTok, where she condemned society’s approach to holding men accountable in cheating scandals and beyond, arguing that “We don’t hold them [men] accountable, and we blame other women, we ask women to adjust their behaviour instead of just saying men need to change their behaviour. It’s sexism. It’s classic misogyny. Period.”
While our narratives towards victim blaming in cheating scandals are beginning to shift towards reprimanding adulterers, we still have a lot to do when it comes to changing our misogynistic mentality. Women just can’t catch a break, can they?
‘Too beautiful to be cheated on’
If you scrolled through TikTok during the uproar surrounding Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine’s cheating scandal with Sumner Stroh, while his wife was pregnant, you probably came across clips of people reacting to the revelation.
There were TikToks of people crossing out the names of the couples involved in a cheating scandal from a list of popular and over-hyped celebrity couples. There were TikToks of people sharing their thoughts about the situation. And worst of all, TikToks of people comparing relationships, comparing Stroh to Levine’s wife Prinsloo.
“We place these already influential ‘power couples’ on a pedestal, romanticising their seemingly perfect lives.”
Perhaps most harmful of all is the often-pedalled narrative that ‘if he could cheat on a Victoria’s Secret model, then what about me?’ – a distorted view that infidelity is anything to do with beauty. So what if Behati Prinsloo was a Victoria’s Secret model or a well-established fashion designer? Does that mean that women without angel wings, thigh gaps and chiselled jaws deserve to be cheated on? By pushing this narrative, we pit women against one another, dehumanising them, when we should be focusing our energy on the adulterer. We need to remind ourselves that even “imperfect” women don’t deserve to be cheated on.
But the bigger question is why are we even idealising celebrity relationships? Sure, it’s fun to look at their goofy TikToks, and double-tap their Instagram posts on a red carpet.
But why do we then project these standards for ourselves? We place these already influential ‘power couples’ on a pedestal, romanticising their seemingly perfect lives. And when a scandal like Ned Fulmer or Adam Levine’s cheating breaks out, we scrutinise our own personal relationships.
Moving Forwards
It’s easy to get caught up in celebrity cheating scandals and forget that these are actual people dealing with real feelings.
It’s also easy to engage in toxic discourse around these scandals, dehumanising the women involved and critiquing them no matter what – either they are the “other woman”, the “non-affectionate wife”, or they are the “too good to be cheated on”. But you’ll rarely hear similar descriptions of the men who cheat.
That being said, in our post-Me Too era, it’s encouraging to see that we’re starting to divert from old victim-blaming narratives, and questioning men in power who take advantage of impressionable women.
All we need to do now is just give women a break from all the scrutiny- we’ve got enough problems to deal with.
Featured image courtesy of Yuvraj Singh on Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image licence found here.
