Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan is right – when it comes to scandal, women have a harder time
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“The brighter a lady shines, the faster she may burn,” warns Lady Whistledown in TV’s Regency bonkbuster, Bridgerton. As Netflix prepares to drop a third season, Nicola Coughlan (the actress who plays Whistledown) has said that modern women are likely to be judged more harshly for their sexuality than they were back in the 18th century, with social media fanning the flames that can leave the careers of high-profile women in ashes.
“It’s more insidious now,” she said. “Men can sleep with as many women as they want, but women can’t do the same. It’s not seen on an equal footing.”
Mayah Riaz, a celebrity manager and PR who advises in crisis management, agrees. “As much as we’d like to think society has changed, I’m sorry to say I’m not sure it has,” she says. “Women are still seen as an easy target. They’re judged much more harshly than men for things like having romantic relationships with younger partners, for having many relationships, or for infidelity.”
You don’t have to look hard for examples. For instance, Mick Jagger’s wild love life did his trajectory to rock royalty no harm. On the other hand, there’s Lindsay Lohan and her infamous sex list, written, she claims, as part of her AA rehab and subsequently leaked, which Lohan described as “unfortunate” (the same year she released a satirical gaming app called The Price of Fame).
Rachel Wingate of superstar agency Borkowski PR, whose services also include reputation management, says that “women still bear the brunt of our celebrity obsession. Journalistically, whilst the language used to describe celebrities is generally less blunt than it was in the Noughties, there is still judgement from media.” Reports of scandals then activate the much more brutal citizen gossips of social media.
“Everybody has an opinion, and the algorithms often reward the most judgemental posts,” says Riaz, who started her PR and social media business after former Dragons’ Den star James Caan became her first client. “Women are still seen as the easiest targets online and they’re hurt by what they read. Most of the late-night calls I get after TV shows, gigs or appearances on chat shows like Graham Norton’s come from my female clients. They’re struggling with posts by trolls and seeking reassurance and advice on how to handle the spite and misogyny.”
Does Riaz feel she’d have to handle reports of sexual infidelity differently for a female celebrity than for a male one? “Honestly? Yes,” she sighs. “I’ve never had a client in that position but I’ve had clients experience scandal and the women generally have a harder time. So grim experience has taught me to be more worried about a woman in those situations. I’d expect there to be more backlash against a woman so there would be more meetings and discussions to cope. I’d be more worried about career damage and the effect on a woman’s mental health.”
Although Riaz would tell both male and female clients to “keep walking the red carpets with your head held high, and stars of either gender are experienced at batting off unwanted questions in those situations,” she says the real fallout comes later.
“Men aren’t scrutinised in the same way. But after a woman’s done an event there is likely to be more judgement about what dress she wore and whether she was still wearing her wedding ring or not. I’d think it would be more acceptable for a male celebrity to have left his ring by the sink.”
In cases where male celebrities are rumoured to have cheated, Riaz is annoyed to note that the public “often judges both women, taking the heat off of the man”. This happened after Brad Pitt left Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie and people started wearing T-shirts reading “Team Aniston” or “Team Jolie”. “Sometimes, unfortunately, the women involved will play into those narratives,” says Riaz. “I was once approached for representation by Sarah Symonds, who claims to have had an affair with Gordon Ramsay. She was saying he wouldn’t have cheated on his wife if she had given him what he wanted.” Ramsay has strongly denied the claim. His career doesn’t seem notably damaged.
When celebrities are caught cheating, Riaz says men “feel there is less pressure on them to comment. They’ll get an apology written and released by a representative but they’ll think it’s nobody else’s business. My male clients have often felt it didn’t matter if they were papped coming out of nightclubs with the wrong person. Whereas society and the media have drilled it into women this need to apologise. As a publicist you’re often telling women to stop apologising and move on. Even if they do apologise [as Zoe Ball did after cheating on her now ex-husband DJ Norman Cook] people will question the apology more.”
Riaz suggests that women look to Kate Moss’s strategy. “Saying nothing after her cocaine scandal was a great strategy. She lost a bit of short-term work but ended up on top. She handled it the way Hugh Grant handled the scandal when he cheated on Liz Hurley with an American prostitute. Just moving on is effective.”
Publicist Nick Ede, who has worked with the likes of Eva Longoria and Kylie Minogue, agrees that Moss has been smart to avoid “being judged by society’s archaic views on sex and sexuality, which treats a cheating man as a hero and the women he’s cheated with as bits of fluff”. He suspects Moss will be unaffected by reports of her apparently facing away from her boyfriend Nikolai Von Bismarck at a fashion show (after being photographed holding hands with Skip Marley). “Every aspect of Kate Moss’s sex life has been speculated on for decades and she’s not felt the need to justify anything. Sometimes people make the mistake of explaining and justifying too much, which perpetuates a rumour in a way that can harm their careers.”
Ede notes that the latest Moss photographs “have been cropped in a way that doesn’t show the whole story. If you zoom out you see Nikolai was turning towards his mother on one side and Kate was turning towards her daughter on the other. But isn’t it interesting how the papers picked up on those photographs of a woman in a way they wouldn’t have with photos of a man.”
He generally advises clients that tabloid gossip is “tomorrow’s chip paper and it’s usually best to stay quiet and not talk about what you’ve been up to. I’d give the same advice to men and women on that.”
Might the tide soon be turning? Ede believes that “movements like MeToo have improved society’s attitudes towards women”. And, of course, not all male cheats are exonerated these days. Indeed, when comedian Seann Walsh was photographed cheating on his girlfriend [actress Rebecca Humphries] with his Strictly dance partner Katya Jones in 2018, he ended up feeling like “the most hated man in Britain” and writing a stand-up show called Seann Walsh: Is Dead. Happy Now? about it. Although Ede notes that Walsh won back public support by appearing on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here.
“The good news is that in 2024 we’re more likely to listen to women if they’ve been treated badly,” concludes Ede. “But the bad news is that as soon as a woman puts a foot wrong we’re back to square one.”
