Permission to Look

There’s something addictive about celebrity gossip, even when you know what you’re doing is crude and a little pathetic. You see a photo of a famous woman—doesn’t matter who—and you start thinking about it more than you should. There’s the obvious part: the attraction. But there’s also something about the critique, the dissection, the feeling that you’ve figured something out the world missed. You catch them mid-mess and you feel clever for noticing.

I turned that impulse into a blog for years. Years of running commentary on famous people, mostly women, mostly in that register where crude and honest become the same thing. I got good at it—good at looking, anyway. And someone eventually offered to make it my actual job. The offer didn’t shock me. It made perfect sense. I said yes.

I didn’t take it for the platform or the legitimacy. I took it because it meant permission to keep looking, and that was all that actually interested me.