How the Rise of the Internet and Social Media Influenced the Coverage of Sex Scandals and How we Approach Them

If there’s one thing we know that sells in entertainment and media, it’s sex. Sex sells. It always has and it always will—unless, of course, the general population is forced to undergo a procedure—in some sort of dystopian universe—that makes them not horny. Until then, the Marilyn Monroes and Brad Pitts of the world will be generating chatter, infiltrating headlines, and sending box office sales into the stratosphere, and there’s only one thing that seems to make more of a bang in the news than who’s banging whom—tragedy. The only thing the public gets off to more than the actual act of sex—sex scandals.

We all know the stories of Monica Lewinsky, Roman Polanski, Kim Kardashian, Kevin Spacey, Aileen Wuornos, Epstein—among others. What is it that sets them apart from each other? How have gender, power, money, fame, time period, beauty, race, political corruption, historical occurrences, and media influenced sex scandals, how we approach them, and how has the coverage of them been used to effectuate change?  

At a recent family party in New Jersey—where many of us convened after not having seen each other in—God knows how long—my grandmother approached me and shifted the otherwise cheerful and lighthearted vibe of the reunion.

“When I was growing up, it was a happy time”, she asserted, “you could leave your doors unlocked. People weren’t kidnapped. They weren’t raped.”

“People weren’t raped?!” I cast aspersions on the validity of her statement. “Grandma, if anything, they were raped more!”

“You’re in a very argumentative mood.” 

“I’m not in an argumentative mood, you just provoked me”, I rebutted. “People were most definitely raped. We just didn’t have as much media coverage of it. News didn’t travel as fast. We weren’t as online. When you were growing up, women had only relatively recently gotten the right to vote, so speaking out against men was frowned upon.”

“Ok, fine. When I was growing up, it wasn’t the norm.”

“Are you insinuating that it’s the norm now?”

This conversation did more than just stir the pot at my cousin's graduation party; it caused me to heavily consider how the rise of the internet and social media influenced the coverage of sex scandals and how we approach them. As a result, I decided to compare three sex scandals from different periods of time in an effort to evaluate how the evolution of the internet affected the aforementioned topics. 

If you’ve ever set foot in the Richard Rodgers Theater—any time since the musical Hamilton took over Broadway, accumulating Tony awards left and right and infiltrating the playlists of pre-pubescent teenage girls, you may know a thing or two about The Reynolds Pamphlet. 

When he was at the height of his influence as treasury secretary, the founding father had an affair with his 23-year-old mistress, Maria Reynolds. Soon enough, Hamilton was confronted by the husband of his mistress and blackmailed into paying him $1,000 of hush money—that’s 100 bills with Hamilton’s very own face on it (which is equivalent to around $25,000 today). Her husband, James Reynolds, was later imprisoned for a government scheme, and an untrue rumor circulated that Hamilton was involved in illegal speculation with Reynolds. In an effort to clear his name, he clarified the real reason he had ties to Reynolds and published the letters between the two of them and the details of his extra-marital affair in a document called the ‘Reynolds Pamphlet’, which James Monroe sent around. This all took place 5 years after the affair had ended. While he successfully repudiated the allegations of any illegal activity, he simultaneously irreparably tarnished his reputation and family life—ruining any chances he had at becoming president during the Election of 1800. All this to say, because of the lack of social media (and other forms of media), Hamilton’s affair would have never been publicized if he, himself, had not published the letters and details of his affair—years after it ended. If paparazzi, TMZ, and Twitter had been in existence at the time, chances are the public would have been in the know about this scandal before Hamilton even had enough time to leave Maria’s room that first night. However, if he had not published the letters between Reynolds and himself, he very may well have been the third president of the United States instead of Thomas Jefferson.

Chances are if you’re not living under a rock large enough to cover all of Hollywood, if you’ve ever been outside, or if you’ve ever talked to anyone about anything, you know who Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee are—and chances are if you know who Pam and Tommy are, you’re familiar with the scandal surrounding their leaked sex tape in the 1990s. 

The newly-married couple filmed a 54-minute home video including 8 minutes of intimacy and then stored it away in their safe, where they assumed it was—well, safe. However, a vindictive contractor whom they had recently fired from working on their house stole the safe in 1995. It wasn’t until a few months later—January 1996–that they noticed the safe missing. In March they filed a lawsuit against Penthouse Magazine, which obtained a copy of the tape. 2 months later, Penthouse published photos from the tape alongside a story on the couple, but it wasn’t until November 1997 (after the court denied the couple’s request for an injunction) that the actual video was posted to a website called “Club Love” where anyone with a subscription could view the couple’s once-private and intimate tape. The couple settled a lawsuit against those that posted the tape on the internet a month later—as an attempt to finally put an end to the legal dispute. Elle writes, “The couple figured that if the tape was distributed online, at least it wouldn’t be sold in stores; but they didn’t realize the power of the internet then”. In February, Anderson filed for divorce, and by this time, the tape was widely available on VHS, DVD, and CD-ROM.

This was considered by many to be the first viral video. It was 1993 when the internet became accessible to the public—with the launch of the World Wide Web, but it wasn’t until a couple years later it became popularized in households and its capacity was understood. The tape was stolen in 1995 and did not actually become viral until late 1997. 

While Hamilton’s scandal was also only publicized years after it occurred, there are a few things that set this apart. In addition to this being 2 years after (as opposed to Hamilton’s being 5), this ordeal was in the news before it became viral—Penthouse had published the stills from the tape, and there was an ongoing legal wrangling surrounding it, so it’s not as if the scandal just emerged out of nowhere after years, like Hamilton’s did. On top of that, what Anderson and Lee did was not inherently scandalous; nobody was harmed or unfaithful in any way, so if it had not been for the rise of the internet, they would not have been caught amidst a career-altering scandal. Neither its creators nor the public were aware of the danger of the internet at the time of its birth, but Oppenheimer didn’t mean harm when creating the atomic bomb either. 

If you’ve ever worked in the entertainment industry or were alive during the ‘Me Too’ movement—which just about anybody who can read was—I’m sure the name Harvey Weinstein is a buzzword. 

Weinstein was a powerful and successful Hollywood producer with influence over the entire entertainment industry. In October 2017, he was dismissed from his production company and expelled from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences after over 80 women accused him of sexual misconduct. As of today, more than 100 women—including some of the world’s most well-known actresses—have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct (ranging anywhere from harassment to rape). 

In May 2018, Weinstein was arrested and charged with rape and in New York, and in February 2020, he began his 23-year prison sentence after being charged with more counts of rape and sexual assault. In December 2022, he got 16 years added onto his sentence after being convicted of more charges. 

For years, Weinstein served as a symbol of the ‘Me Too’ movement and of justice and policy change. Many others were influenced to speak out about being sexually harassed by other well-known and powerful figures in the entertainment industry. Policy change was enacted not just in the entertainment industry but in other areas all throughout America. Many states—including California, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Virginia—banned the use of nondisclosure agreements to cover up sexual harassment. Harvard.edu claims “In the United States, discussions on sexual harassment and related retaliation increased by over thirteen hundred percent since 2017”. Hollywood producers began hiring more female writers than they did before the scandal, but most importantly, countless sexual predators became held accountable and men became held to higher standards—not just in terms of predatory behavior but the language they used to describe women and sexual situations.

With the rise of social media, the ‘Me Too’ movement significantly grew in prominence. The movement began in 2006 when an activist first used the phrase “me too” on her Myspace account to share her story as a victim of sexual assault. After Weinstein’s allegations became public in 2017, the movement gained momentum. More than 200,000 people tweeted that same phrase in a day—after actress Alyssa Milano did in response to the Weinstein allegations (not to mention more than 12 million women responding to her tweet sharing their own stories). The next day it was tweeted more than 500,000 times, in addition to the hashtag being used by more than 4.7 million people in 12 million different posts in a single day on Facebook. Many of these stories spanned decades back, which my grandmother seemed to be unaware of when we got into our dispute. Needless to say, if we only had the Reynolds Pamphlet, it seems unlikely that change so radical would have occurred. 

If you think about it, our founding fathers—not Washington and the aforementioned Hamilton but Zuckerberg and Gates and Jobs, among others—fostered liberation and declared independence for many (including women and victims of sexual assault) by giving us platforms to have vital conversations and consequently enact change. The rise of the ‘Me Too’ movement—in a way—was women’s declaration of independence from the men whose shackles silenced them for ages.

All this to say it was both heart-wrenching and unfathomable when Weinstein’s conviction was overturned this very April—less than two months ago—in the state of New York. It felt like years of progress were undone, and many women I know in the state of New York feel significantly less safe. It appears that power, wealth, race, and gender may still play a role in the justice system—even with a chronically-online society.

When it comes to sex scandals, the internet and the popularization of social media is a double-edged sword. It can beneficially be used to shed light on sexual predators, catalyze the traveling of the news, and foster important colloquies (especially amongst younger generations). The ‘Me Too’  movement led to so much reform, policy change, and justice for so many which would have never made this much of a bang (pun not intended because that would be in poor taste) without the popularization of social media. On the contrary, it can be detrimental to the Andersons and Lees of the world—whose personal lives and careers were irreparably damaged—despite them harming no one and being unwilling participants in an infringement of privacy. 

Whether you like it or not—social media isn’t going anywhere and neither is the public’s libido. Therefore, all we can do is keep fostering important conversations that draw attention to these issues, ask ourselves and each other what we can do, and pray that the government does a better job of holding people accountable than they recently did with Mr. Weinstein.

Written by Lucy Geldziler

The Politics of Queerness

Illustration by Alec Conwell

If you’ve followed any sort of news in the past couple of years, you’re probably aware of the ongoing attack on queer and trans rights in the United States (and the rest of the world, to be fair, but we’re going to focus on the US). As of last year, there have been hundreds of anti-trans bills and anti-queer bills introduced to a variety of state and federal legislatures, and the number continues to grow. 

Many of the bills are targeting trans kids since far too many people run under the assumption that people under the age of eighteen are incapable of making choices about their own bodies and well-being. This includes restrictions on access to hormones and hormone blockers for people under eighteen, restricting people from using the bathrooms that coincide with their gender, and banning trans people from playing on sports teams that coincide with their gender. Plenty of these bills are also trying to demonize the parents and health professionals that support trans kids, such as charging parents with child abuse if they allow their children to receive hormone therapy and restricting doctors from practicing for administering it. 

There are, unfortunately, outspoken “LGB” groups who try to distance themselves from the trans part of the queer community. They seem to think they are morally superior, and that the cishet people in power will see that they’re just so different from us trans folk. The truth is that the community as a whole is being attacked—there have been numerous states trying to ban drag performers, and there have been a multitude of bills introduced trying to prevent any education on the queer community, inclusive sex education, and queer history. 

There are also people who try to claim that queer and trans rights are not an issue of politics, but that could not be further from the truth. Queerness and transness are inherently political; it does not matter if we wish they were not. We will exist regardless of whether or not the government has deemed it right or lawful—we have always been here, and we will continue to. Still, it is important for us to be recognized and respected by government officials, so those of us who wish to seek medical care and procedures are able to do so safely. The people in power should be able to influence the public in some way, so we do not have to continue to see hundreds of hate crimes documented in the news each year. 

Change has to start somewhere. Sign petitions, research the politicians you support, and keep up with what they are or aren’t doing, call them out if they aren’t doing enough (and they probably aren’t). Support your queer and trans friends, stay up to date with how these laws are affecting their lives where you live, and respect and try to understand their identities even if it doesn’t match how you’re used to seeing certain people present. Trans people especially do not owe you attempts at “passing,” and your respect and support for them should not waiver if they don’t match up with your binary ways of thinking.

To my queer and trans friends reading, I have faith that things will get better, and know that you are absolutely not alone in any of this. Seek support from your friends and family, and don’t ever think you’re a burden for existing. Don’t settle for anything less than you know you deserve. 

Written and Illustrated by Alec Conwell

This Ain't Texas: The Internet's Identity Crisis

The "country aesthetic," the latest in the internet's identity crisis, has been everywhere, fueled, in part, by Beyoncé’s newest genre-bending record, Cowboy Carter. Two years after her previous disco/house-inspired record, Renaissance, her latest album has defied much of what was commonly expected of Miss' Yoncé, as she has fully repatriated to her St. Louis roots with this pop-country jam. 

While the casual listener was left stunned by the sudden change to Beyoncé’s music, her devoted Bey-Hive has been coyly aware of the many references she had left in her previous album, hinting that this second-act of her alluded three-album project would most likely be heavy in the yeehaw-department. Beyoncé’s record-breaking Renaissance world tour transformed stadiums into a sea of leather and chrome, with fans donning cowboy boots/hats and assless chaps (for the brave), as was the compulsory dress code in anticipation of the mythicized Cowboy Carter. 

By the time Beyoncé kicked off her tour in May 2023, Taylor Swift had already begun her long-awaited Era’s Tour in March, and, much like Beyoncé’s fans, Taylor’s fans had brought their twist on the “classic cowgirl.” Swifties bedazzled the cowgirl in fringed tinsel jackets over sequin dresses with cowboy boots, and bright pink flare pants with matching vests and cowgirl hats (à la western Barbie). T-Swift’s uncompromising and unapologetic femininity brought the cowgirl to an uber-girly level, whereas Beyoncé fans kept it sleek, sexy, and silver (but still cunt to the feminine). Some see the outfits as an homage to Beyoncé and Taylor’s country roots; others see it as more of a cosplay of a modern cowgirl. But this quick adoption of Western aesthetics should not shock most terminally online folks.

The "cowgirl/boy" aesthetic has been on the rise since the early months of COVID-19 when everyone was forced to watch life pass by from their bedroom window, seeking some semblance of community by participating in trend after trend. Typically, TikTok trends have a shelf life of 90 days, but this cowgirl flare has quickly become the exception, with its influence finding itself in daily wear. Pre-TikTok, we were used to trends reemerging 20 years after their inception; now, the trend cycle has grown shorter and shorter with each appropriated trend of yesterday.

We are witnessing a rise in the Southern comfort wear of the down-to-earth cowgirl. She represents a natural, homey, and fearless je ne sais quoi that is the antithesis of another popular fashion trend, the coquette girl. However, unlike the coquette, the cowgirl can keep up with the boys while not sacrificing her femininity. She is often seen in dirt-covered flare jeans, point-toe cowboy boots, a big leather belt with an even bigger belt buckle, and that trademark wide-brimmed Stetson. During the early days of quarantine, this neutral, low-maintenance vibe was ideal for many who were not into the maximal fashion trend, which was also popular during this time. Soon, early adopters began implementing a southern twist into their wardrobes, but with a microtrend-y pop of color.

Nightlife quickly became a barrage of tiktokified pseudo-southern fits, dripping in fringe, feathers, and jewels. The "jeans a cute top" look was elevated by cowboy boots instead of the traditional going-out bootie and a boho belt to tie it all in. At that point, throw on a bedazzled hat to up the sparkle factor. The casual cowgirl look became the go-to going-out outfit. We all have a shared memory of drunkenly walking down a city street during the summers of 2020/1, fighting for our lives in a swarm of pink cowboy hats. 

As this year’s Coachella, the Instagrammer Olympics, comes to a close, we are getting a sneak peek at what in-trend styles we should expect to see come summertime. Among the most popular items littering the valley (and our feeds) were ruffle-tier skirts, concho belts, chunky jewelry, anything denim, loose/flowy tops, and cowboy boots/hats.  

Besides fashion, vices like tobacco have become southernized as more twenty-somethings drop their e-cigarettes for the latest dipping tobacco successor, the Zyn. Similar to Dip in both cowboy influence and consumption methods, these tobacco-filled plant-fiber pouches are meant to be lipped for 5-30 minutes (depending on nicotine percentage and the user's tolerance). Think Nicorette, but with less chewing and more gum recession. Zyns are increasing in popularity, particularly in the nightlife scene, in part due to an increase in federal crackdowns on flavored e-cigarettes and public perception of traditional cigarette smoking continuing to nosedive.

The discourse on trend-cycle decline overconsumption continues as Gen Alpha kids are pining over an uncanny nostalgia for pandemic-era style. Dubbed "Pandemic-core," it is a repurposed infatuation with the fashion, music, makeup, and lingo of a time most of us remember like a PTSD flashback. Everyone old enough to have their social lives permanently disfigured by the shutdown talk about it like a biblical slight, a modern-day Noachian Flood. But while most of us sheltered in the Ark that was TikTok, the Gen Alpha kids only experience this shared trauma through our recollection of it. Their FOMO is now bringing back Bella Poarch-style videos and whipped coffee a mere four years after its initial popularization. 

At this rate, we will soon run out of things to overconsume if we haven't already. Once the next "it" (re)style comes around, its fate might be that of the cowgirls: regurgitated until it is a parody of its history, community, and cultural values. Yet, we all wait with bated, Zyn-laced breath for the next over-manufactured trend to please the drop-ship-buying masses. 

Written by Daniella Fishman Creative Director, Production Manager, Photographer: Ben Pfeifer

PA: Mark Bluemle

Talent: Ariana Catalinotto (@aaariana.c), Diamond Durant (@diamondurant), Sen Zacarias (@senzacarias)