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Could TMZ Bring Accountability to American Politics?

TMZ is branching out from the Hollywood Hills to Capitol Hill.


On March 26, 2026, they put out a open call for pictures to be taken of politicians spotted out over Easter weekend, and it could be just the thing to bring more accountability to American politics.


You might be thinking, really? TMZ and accountability?


To understand how TMZ can be effective, you have to understand the United States, its elections, and its relationship with the media.


In the United States, we elect politicians to represent us in government. Elections are just one way the law allows us to replace the leaders we feel aren’t representing us well or making the changes we want to see. If politicians want to be elected or re-elected, they have to do what we, the people, elect them to do. Not only that, but they have to win over the American people, so it matters how they are perceived. This is where the media comes into play.


Think of it as filmmaking v.s. Hollywood: Filmmaking is the actual act of making movies, and Hollywood is about image and perception. If people actually like you (actor, director, etc), they’re more likely to support your work (Film, TV, etc).


When it comes to government, I like to think of it as public service v.s. “politics.”


Public service is the actual boots on the ground work, like drafting legislation. Whereas a big part of “politics” is playing the game of perception. Hence, campaign tours, doing interviews, etc. 


Political campaign tours basically run on the same principle as Hollywood press tours. Perception and likability are key!


Throughout American history, politics and the media have gone hand in hand. From political cartoons, radio interviews, images in newspapers, to televised presidential debates, television commercials, and now social media. Politicians have always relied heavily on the media to get their message across to the public.


With social media being even more crucial in election results over the last ten years, we’ve seen politicians becoming even more and more visible and accessible to the public, where before they may have been harder to reach. Ironically, visibility doesn’t solve a lack of transparency. Just because we’re seeing politicians on our feeds more, doesn’t mean they’re being more honest.


Currently, there is a lack of transparency between the American people and the officials we have elected to represent us.



Let’s go back to the Hollywood and politics analogy.


For the most part, actors or other celebrities will say whatever they need to say to the public for a plethora of reasons, whether it be promoting a movie or avoiding scandals. It’s the same for politicians.


That is why TMZ may be the answer. The way TMZ and other paparazzi and tabloids pry into the lives of celebrities without second thought or abandon could be exactly the aggressive journalism America needs right now.


Think about it: America is being run not just by a businessman, but a media mogul. His presidency so far has been like a reality show, and many of the people in his cabinet are from the media world. There’s Dr. Oz, a physician and television host, who currently serves as the Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Linda E. McMahon, co-founder and former CEO of the WWE, serves as the U.S. Secretary of Education. 


What better way to combat this style of leadership than with the very thing all people in the media try to avoid? The paps!


So here comes TMZ, a tabloid company that is notorious for prying into the personal lives of the rich and famous, often releasing photos and information that is downright intrusive and sometimes evil. They promise that if people send them photos of politicians on vacation, they will help demand accountability.


In a time of cellphones and technology like Meta glasses, there is a general lack of privacy that previous generations didn’t have to face, where at any moment someone could be recording you, and you would never know it.


Everyone is a paparazzi now; all anyone needs is a recording device and a little bit of nosiness. People even go as far as to record strangers! It’s no longer just celebrities who are concerned with being photographed during their off time, but everyday people.


By calling for people to send in pictures of politicians on vacation, TMZ is tapping into a gold mine! Essentially allowing people to channel the power of surveillance into holding their elected officials accountable. It would seem that the paps might be obsolete when everyone can take a photo or record a video, but TMZ has found a way around it, a way to funnel all that media attention back through themselves.


And they found the perfect timing: amidst last month's government shutdowns, T.S.A. agents working with no pay, and waiting for Congress to make a decision, while members of Congress take two-week vacations, during which many will travel by plane. 


The hypocrisy is hard to miss.


Since the current political landscape looks like a reality show, with members of the administration being fired like a Survivor elimination, who better than TMZ to step up to the plate to hold them accountable?


TMZ created an avenue for the people’s frustration to become motivation, and for that motivation to become an actionable step. It’s honestly genius.


In a way, it taps into the very heart of the American experiment, the idea that, if we the people don’t like how our leaders are acting, we can do something about it.


Time will tell how much this will change things, but in a rapidly changing, image-obsessed political landscape, it might be the perfect start.

Female-Led Media Needs More Whimsy


Camaraderie has been an enduring element in female friendships throughout history. Whether in medieval convents or as newly working women in the past century, sisterhood and female solidarity have helped women fight against all kinds of bigotry, or at the very least, make persisting through it just a little more tolerable.

Women have typically been underdeveloped, if at all developed, characters. For the longest time, entertainment media in particular have represented the interactions between women and the relationships women have in their lives as unexplored territory at best and wholly inaccurate at worst. Female characters have primarily existed to support the often-male leading characters’ motivations and journeys, or as foils to enhance their “aura”. Disney’s early films portrayed women, even their princess protagonists, as passive maidens. Video games don’t operate much differently, like the ubiquitous Mario franchise, which has kept Princess Peach’s physical autonomy in a questionable state for most of the franchise’s existence, with her primary role having been as Bowser’s hostage that Mario must rescue over and over. Misrepresentation of women worsens with nonwhite female characters. Even if white heroines do get a chance at being at or near the foreground, albeit rudimentarily at times, the portrayals of nonwhite female characters are bastardized with shoddy stereotypes, such as black and brown women being depicted as unduly desexualized and undesirable or Asian women shown as overly submissive. 

With mainly male writing rooms and casting directors and editors and directors, where are women, and especially impressionable girls, supposed to find their stories on the big screen?


The 2000s and early 2010s saw a host of female-centered, primarily animated media in response to young girls consuming more digital media just like everyone else, with popular selections like the Barbie film franchise, the Monster High media franchise, the Winx Club series, and the Bratz series coloring my childhood. Such productions often included a mix of original and revamped content, with the latter in large part done by the Barbie film franchise, whose early works featured remakes of existing works like the Brothers Grimm’s Rapunzel or Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers or Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake ballet. Even these remakes were a first for women-centered media. Now, women were at the forefront of stories and fantasies involving them. 


No, these stories didn’t just involve them; these stories were theirs. Women were the main characters in every possible way. They were active players in their stories with the most interesting backstories and the best supporting cast. Men were frequently relegated to the background, with their most significant role being as supportive love interests. Notably, the men in these productions were never dehumanized, and the most underdevelopment their characters may have seen was in terms of… computer-generated motion graphics. Characters’ relationships, whether platonic or romantic, were not going to be ignored. The respectful yet flattering attention of male characters could be appreciated—and sometimes even reciprocated—by female protagonists, who also didn’t slow down to save their kingdom from evil sorcerers.


Depictions of female friendships were realistic: women could disagree, argue, and fight, even as part of the plot or conflict in an episode. But sisterhood was never abandoned. Women were rarely pitted against each other unfairly, especially over a man, as most male-dominated media may characterize female connections and bonds.


The target audience—Gen Z and younger millennials—has now grown up, but pop culture has maintained the relevance of popular women-oriented media. Nicki Minaj, despite having since fallen from grace, paid homage to Barbie’s brand with lyrical references and prominently pink stylistic choices, so much so that her fanbase calls themselves “the Barbz”. Zara Larsson’s rebrand mirrors the design of the Winx Club protagonists, with neon pop colors and glitter galore. Bratz’s impact on women of color cannot be sidelined with the main cast being overwhelmingly nonwhite, challenging the European beauty standards that even Barbie upheld to some extent. Gen Z and younger millennials have now been able to use the styles of the beloved characters from the films and TV shows from their childhood to inform their own aesthetic choices in how they dress and present themselves, especially when they want to make a statement. It is media like these that gave women, whether as young girls or evolving teenagers, a space to healthily engage with topics like beauty and fashion and life, without thematically being too “adult”.


Stories about women and with women in leading roles don’t always need to be about institutional sexism and omnipresent misogyny with dramatic monologues on the seemingly inescapable nature of firmly established patriarchy. Those stories are undoubtedly important, and we need them too. Awareness is a necessary first step to having the intellectual tools for women’s liberation from any and all oppressive structures. 

But sometimes, women, and especially impressionable girls, need to be able to see themselves as fairies and princesses and adolescent magazine editors, and everything in between. 

Fantasy is a means by which we can conceptualize our dreams and desires through imagination. In order to do, we need to be able to think. And without imagination, thinking doesn’t extend much too far. It may be an idealist perspective, but if there were no idealists, I certainly wouldn’t be a literate college student writing and drinking Moscato I bought with money I earned, with no one’s permission but myself.

HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF THE PINK TAX



Have you ever heard of the pink tax? No, I’m not specifically talking about the color pink or your actual taxes, but an extra cost that’s often added to products and services marketed toward women. It’s basically gender-based pricing, where items marketed toward women are more expensive than the same or very similar items marketed toward men. This directly impacts women’s buying power, with studies showing personal care products can be roughly 13% more expensive than men’s, creating a substantial financial burden over time.


A lot of these products are things society says women have to have, and many of them we realistically can’t go without. For instance, personal care items that we use regularly and most times, even monthly, are affected by the pink tax. Things like razors, deodorant, lotion, clothing, and even services often have a male counterpart that is cheaper, even though the product is basically the same.


Even when you look at actual products, you can see the difference. At Target, a men’s Degree Cool Rush deodorant is priced lower than a women’s Degree MotionSense deodorant, even though they serve the same purpose. 


This pricing difference even starts with kids. A Spider-Man bike helmet marketed toward boys can be significantly cheaper than a nearly identical Spider-Man “Ghost-Spider” helmet marketed toward girls, just because it’s pink and branded differently. It shows how early this kind of pricing starts, even when the product itself is basically the same.

While it’s called a “tax,” it’s not actually a government tax. It’s more of a price markup, mostly caused by marketing

tactics. Companies often claim the higher prices are due to production differences, like adding colors or scents, but realistically, those small changes don’t justify the consistent price gap. We don’t need pink versions of products; we need products that are safe, effective, and affordable.

There’s also something called the tampon tax, which refers to the sales tax placed on essential menstrual products. These are necessary items, not luxury goods, yet they are still taxed in many places. Some states are starting to remove this tax, but it’s still an issue.


The pink tax can be fought in small ways, like buying the “men’s” version of products when they’re cheaper, but that doesn’t fix the bigger problem. This is really a form of price discrimination, and it’s something women deal with every day, whether they realize it or not.


The impact adds up. Women can end up paying up to $2,000 more per year for similar products. Over a lifetime, that’s a huge amount of money just because of gender-based marketing. On top of existing wage gaps and inequality in the workforce, this becomes just one more financial burden.


So is this really the cost of being a woman? It might sound like a theory, but there’s strong evidence that it’s happening. The pink tax shows how inequality can exist in everyday things, even in something as simple as buying deodorant or a bike helmet.


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