Another day, another alleged female celebrity feud we’re all supposed to care about. The latest? Gwyneth Paltrow and Meghan Markle, two women whose only real crime seems to be existing while rich, successful, and vaguely Californian.
According to the internet (and certain corners of the media that should really know better), these two women are at war. The evidence? They both have lifestyle brands. They both…give interviews? They both like oat milk, probably? If you think that sounds flimsy, congratulations – you’re not the problem.
The apparent hostility came to a head when Paltrow was asked about Markle’s own Goop-esque ambitions in recent interview with Vanity Fair. Responding to the inane question with a perfectly acceptable “I don’t know her at all,” Paltrow was swift in putting an end to the line of questioning, with a telling, “I was raised to see other women as friends, not foes.”
Because the internet has absolutely no chill, “hidden meanings” were instantly attributed to her words, and don’t even get the comment section started on the “subtle shade” and “coded digs” allegedly displayed in the cooking video Paltrow captioned: “My cleaner take on a classic breakfast.”
The outrage continued until Paltrow responded with the ultimate social media silencer, which, for the record we’ll just leave below.
Of course, we’ve been here before. The Hailey Bieber vs. Selena Gomez saga has dragged on longer than some celebrity marriages, despite both women repeatedly insisting they’re not fighting. And yet, the narrative of two women locked in a passive-aggressive battle for the ages is just too irresistible for the public to let go.
Case in point the viral 7-part TikTok series created by an – anonymous – user, fancy that? Determined to paint Hailey as a “psycho stalker” whose marriage to Justin was a culmination of a decade-long plot to lure and coerce the unsuspecting Biebs into a lifelong partnership, the videos continue to dredge up tired comparisons that neither are able to escape.
We can’t seem to collectively accept that famous women might simply coexist without wanting to topple each other.
There’s something uniquely exhausting about the way female celebrity feuds are framed. When men in Hollywood disagree, it’s called a “creative difference.” When women do it, it’s a catty and calculated, complete with breathless speculation, anonymous “insider” gossip, and think pieces (yes, including this one – hello, irony).
And let’s be real: these so-called celebrity feuds rarely exist outside the fevered imaginations of tabloids, X (formally Twitter), snarky Reddit posts, and that one friend who still hasn’t gotten over Gossip Girl ending.
The saddening reality of celebrity feuds spans centuries – just take your pick from history (Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth), literature (Joan Didion and Eve Babitz), fashion (Donatella Versace vs. almost every female designer), film (Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield), and even sports (Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan).
Who could forget the tired trope cycled through Hollywood’s hills – see Jennifer Anniston and Angelina Jolie, J-Lo and Jennifer Garner, Kim Cattrall and SJP, or Taylor Swift’s never-ending list of supposed enemies? The bland beat goes on… and on.
The obsession with pitting women against each other isn’t just boring – it’s regressive. It’s a relic of the Mean Girls era, dusted off and repackaged for the social media age. It also conveniently keeps the focus on interpersonal drama instead of, say, the structural issues that make it so much harder for women in the industry to succeed in the first place. Why have a conversation about the lack of female directors in Hollywood when we could speculate on whether Florence Pugh liked Olivia Wilde’s Instagram post?
It’s also no coincidence that the women most frequently caught up in these faux feuds are the ones who refuse to play by the unspoken rules of likability. Gwyneth is “out of touch” (read: a successful woman who doesn’t care what you think). Meghan is “calculating” (read: a woman of colour who dared to leave an institution that made her miserable). Hailey is a “mean girl” (read: married to someone the internet thinks she doesn’t deserve). The playbook is so obvious it might as well be printed in Comic Sans.
So, why do we keep falling for it? The short answer: misogyny, but make it fun. The slightly longer answer: we’ve been conditioned to see women’s success as a limited resource, where one person’s win must come at another’s expense.
This isn’t an accident. It’s the same old patriarchy at work, ensuring that women are too busy tearing each other down to collectively dismantle the system that keeps them fighting for scraps. Throw in Australia’s proclivity for a touch of Tall Poppy and we’ve got ourselves the perfect recipe for a delicious – albeit manufactured – rivalry.
But here’s a radical thought: what if we just…stopped? What if, instead of gleefully dissecting the latest alleged celebrity feuds, we asked why we’re so eager to believe it in the first place? What if we let women be complex, ambitious, sometimes messy people without immediately assuming they must hate each other? What if we—stay with me—cared about literally anything else?
As controversial as that may be, the truth is, female celebrity feuds only have as much power as we’re willing to give them. And right now, they feel less like juicy drama, and more like a tired rerun of a show we should’ve cancelled seasons ago. Maybe it’s time we changed the channel.
Related articles:
- Is Mean Girl Culture Really Dead? Or Has It Just Had A Makeover?
- Why Do We Continue To Glorify Female Rivalry?
- The Toxic Truth To Our Treatment Of Female Celebrities
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