I asked him why we like to examine our celebrities so closely these days. Do we just want them to be more human? “We like to look where we can’t or shouldn’t look,” he said, citing the photographs that seem to accidentally reveal the most vulnerable square inches on celebrities’ bodies. These draw the most traffic to PerezHilton. Forget the hourglass figures of stars of old; now fans and anti-fans simply seem to want small pink dots of light, partially obscured, that seems to represent human glands. Mr. Lavandeira boasts that his site is the one that most frightens Hollywood, and nearly every celebrity site keeps up some pretense that it shines a bright light on the famous.
Weakly I have hoped reading portraits in this way might strengthen some evolutionary skill, the way gossiping is said to make you better at forging allegiances. One possibility presented itself last summer when I spoke to a lawyer I met on a “Lonelygirl15” message board. He and I were both obsessed with figuring out whether she was an actress or an ordinary girl.
