Bad Behavior

On norm breakers, cheating, and criticizing those in power

A few days ago, Sophia Bush (of One Tree Hill fame) published an essay in Glamour discussing her recent scandal. For those unfamiliar with the world of Famous Lesbian Gossip, Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger were teammates on the USWNT and spouses who served as shining beacons for sports obsessed queer women everywhere. 

In October of 2023, Bush (who filed for divorce in September 2023) and Harris were spotted together in Europe. Rumors began flying that Bush and Harris had left their spouses for one another, and soon after, Harris filed for divorce. Krieger then posted an ominous Instagram post about being in her Lemonade era. At the same time, the USWNT took sides, and the drama snowballed when members of the team began liking TikToks and Instagram posts heavily implying that Harris cheated.

L-R: Ali Krieger, Ashlyn Harris, Sophia Bush

(This has nothing to do with anything except my need to fill in all the contours of a very messy situation, but it should be noted that Sophia Bush was friends with Harris and Krieger, regularly posting pictures of them and saying they were couple goals. A sniper from the side indeed…)

In her essay, Bush reorients the narrative to be about her unhappiness in her previous marriage and her subsequent coming out. It’s masterful PR: the story has completely shifted, and news outlets are breathlessly covering the happy new couple and Bush’s new identity. The cheating is unaddressed: she refers to the “bullying” Harris received on social media but doubles and triples down on her choices that brought her to her new life.

A few weeks ago, Ewan McGregor was interviewed as part of the promotional cycle for his new show, A Gentleman in Moscow. In a throwaway line, the interviewer mentioned that McGregor and his current wife, Mary Elizabeth Winstead (of 10 Cloverfield Lane and Smashed), met on the set of Fargo. I made a TikTok pointing out that while yes, they did meet on set, the article conveniently forgot to mention that they were both married to other people when they met. 

Reactions to the video were swift and furious, with people accusing me of spreading gossip, being hateful, and the internet’s go-to: who cares? (Famously, I do!) I’ve been accused of being “monogamy pilled” whenever I bring up American Cheating (my term for the phenomenon of people sweeping cheating under the rug as long as the person marries their affair partner). 

The internet’s favorite thought terminating cliche: who cares?

As I said in my post about Ariana Grande: two people do not decide to leave their spouses for one another without something going on. It’s imbecilic (and frankly, offensive to everyone involved) to say that marriages—legally binding, with all the paperwork and lawyers and bank accounts and conversations involved—ended and new relationships were formed with no feelings involved whatsoever. As the kids say: be so for real. 

My issue isn’t the cheating, per se, it’s the reaction to it that fascinates me as someone who studies macro-level social behavior: to discuss any offense is gauche, and reputations must be protected at all costs, no matter how egregious the behavior. 

In 1983, Nora Ephron published Heartburn, where she fictionalized the end of her marriage to Watergate’s own Carl Bernstein. (If you haven’t read it, you should!) In the book, Ephron’s protagonist discovers her husband (a journalist) is cheating on her while she’s eight months pregnant. In real life, Ephron discovered Bernstein was having an affair…while eight months pregnant. Journalists decried Heartburn as tacky and inappropriate, with the dissolution of her family being described as “banal”. Bernstein himself sued when Heartburn was made into a movie, stating Ephron “continues the tasteless exploitation and public circus Nora has made out of our lives and what should have been our family's private sadness.” (Imagine cheating on your pregnant wife and describing it as a “private sadness”.)

While Bernstein tried to silence Ephron with a lawsuit, celebrities now use stans and adept PR maneuvering to avoid discussions they don’t want to have. Countless stars default to accusations of “bullying” (referring to either unfavorable press coverage or chatter on social media). Dominic West—caught kissing co-star Lily James in 2020 despite his decade-long marriage to an Irish aristocrat—recently joked about how discussions of his affair were “deeply stressful” for his family.   

It’s disheartening to see things haven’t changed much in forty years. It’s easy to fall back on the Sociology 101 standby of pointing to America’s roots in Protestantism and the cultural dominance of the WASP conflict-averse communication style. The status quo must be maintained at all times, feathers must never be ruffled, no one should ever be upset. It’s very easy to see how we get from a culture where all criticism and all dissent must be silenced to a culture afraid to criticize its leaders and the people it venerates. It’s how we get Colin Jost preaching “decency” and people afraid to criticize politicians because of “civility”. It’s how we get the former president weaponizing his fanbase against the press, sowing seeds of distrust in journalism through the active bullying of journalists. 

It makes sense that there’s a cultural refusal to acknowledge that someone may have behaved badly, or hurt someone, or abandoned their family, when you’re forced to reckon with the fact that there are victims on the other side. For every triumphant coming out essay from a starlet, you get a story about a woman learning her wife filed for divorce in the middle of her workday. It’s hard to acknowledge the humanity of everyone involved in a situation when your love story has an emotional body count. 

Joan Didion said that one of the virtues of having Self-Respect was the ability to stand in your truth and own when you’ve wronged someone. The recent trend of stars refusing to take any accountability and giving slippery responses to questions about timelines is new. Eddie Fisher openly left Debbie Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor! Julia Roberts tore through multiple relationships with glee in the 90s, and she’s more beloved than ever! The inability to stomach any criticism is appalling and embarrassing.

It’s understood by the general public that reality stars sign a Faustian Bargain: in exchange for fame and fortune, they will flay themselves in the court of public opinion. They chase it, they crave it, they need it. For some reason, we don’t have the same opinion about celebrities. There’s a false modesty that comes with chasing the limelight: Who, me? Aw, shucks. You shouldn’t have. 

You don’t get as famous as Ariana or Ewan or Sophia or Julia without wanting it. I’m not saying their privacy should be disregarded: there are many celebrities who fiercely guard their private lives. I can’t tell you a thing about Nicole Richie. I can’t name Julia Roberts’ kids. Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin live in New York and are never papped, spotted, or interviewed. You have to want to be a mega star. There are certain trade-offs. Polite judgment of someone else’s life choices isn’t a crime, and no one is exempt from all criticism because their art is beloved.

One line from the (unfairly) maligned Charmed (1998) bounces around in my head whenever I hear people who have hungrily pursued fame and fortune complain about social media. After a body swap, one of the Charmed Ones looks at the trio of shrunken demonic sisters (bear with me) who stole their lives and says calmly: “Well, you wanted to live like us. Now you get to die like us.” 

Neat Little Morality Slogans

— There’s so much more I can say about people not being able to handle dissenting opinions as part of the rise of algorithmic social platforms. Just because you don’t want to see something doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist, and this bizarre egotism exists across platforms.

—For my reality folks: we’ve seen the same silencing happen on a few different shows. On the current season of Vanderpump Rules, Sandoval (of Scandoval fame, who compared cheating on his girlfriend to the Black Lives Matter movement) is targeting anyone who brings up the fact he cheated because they should all be over it.

For context, the affair was exposed in March and the current season filmed in June. He wanted all conversation about his nine year relationship over and done with because three months had gone by…

—I did not love Lauren Oyler’s book (review here) but I liked her essay about gossip! She was harsher than I was, basically stating that celebrities have no right to privacy whatsoever and that making up false information about people is fine (for the record, I do not agree with either of these thoughts) but she made some good points about the cultural wishy-washiness around what’s appropriate to speculate about and what’s considered rude.

—At the end of last week’s piece I included a link to a story about how everyone became dysregulated, and this week Vox published an investigation into how everyone became anxious. Everyone is suffering and no one knows why!