<\/p>\n
At this weekend\u2019s Mother\u2019s Day party, my family and I spent about an hour discussing the the Kardashians, from Kim and Kanye\u2019s relationship (is it bearding? A business deal? True love? All of the above?) to Kim\u2019s unfortunate yet seemingly deliberate crop<\/a> out of the Met Ball album on Vogue.com (vengeance is Anna Wintour\u2019s ), to her apparent surprise and disgust that being pregnant actually means you have to carry a small person in your stomach and stay away from high-waisted pencil skirts<\/em>. Although some might dismiss us as under-stimulated yentas, as far as Elaine Liu, Gossip-in-Chief on website Lainey Gossip <\/a>, Rumour Reporter on etalk<\/a>, soon-to-be host of CTV\u2019s new social media-inspired show appropriately titled The Social<\/a>, and Dean of the Faculty of Celebrity Studies<\/a>, is concerned, we\u2019re participating in a truly academic pursuit<\/a>. Three cheers for higher education!<\/p>\n [nggallery id=430] Lainey, as she\u2019s known to those who read her site while eating their lunch over their keyboard without any concern for cleanliness of said keyboard, recently stopped into Montreal to host a master class on celebrity smut in partnership with Vitaminwater<\/a>. I had a chance to sit down with the super-sweet and oh-so-stylish Lainey to dish on the Hollywood game, life as a Gossip Maven and whether or not the not-so-ladylike lady in the ladies room<\/a> was a recently dethroned starlet (It wasn\u2019t. But I do know who it is now. And I\u2019ll never tell. Unless you give me vodka.).<\/p>\n Gossip has turned for you into a serious intellectual pursuit and I want to know a little bit more about your theories around it and how you perceive it.<\/strong><\/p>\n It started as just a little throw away phrase I started writing on my blog, because you know on Lainey Gossip we tend to discuss celebrity stories with more analysis perhaps than other outlets. So it\u2019s not just Reese Witherspoon was arrested but there\u2019s a whole study on what happened and why, so I started throwing out the phrase \u201cif I was the Dean in the faculty of celebrity studies\u2026\u201d And through my partnership through Vitaminwater, they said to me \u201cLainey if you want to do this faculty of celebrity studies we can help make that happen. We can just produce some salon style gatherings in different cities,\u201d and I loved that idea. So as we did that last year and engaged people in a more cerebral discussion around celebrity topics.\u00a0 it gave me ideas and insight about the things that were already germinating, and those discussions ended up forming the basis of my TED talk<\/a> in which I argue for the value of gossip, called Sociology of Gossip. Because I do think that there is more insight and understanding that we can glean from celebrity\u00a0 gossip than people would assume. The assumption is that it\u2019s frivolous, it\u2019s a distraction\u00a0 and there\u2019s no value to it, but in essence we are communicating when we gossip. We are communicating to each other who we are, what are expectations are, what our beliefs are, what our standards are, and if that\u2019s not psychology, if that\u2019s not anthropology and evolution of a society then what is?<\/p>\n I have a theory on celebrity gossip that as we\u2019ve grown apart from communities and we don\u2019t have the village idiot or the town whore, we\u2019ve had to find them in the star system in order to all have common people to talk about.<\/strong><\/p>\n My position is that what is happening in Hollywood is simply a reflection of what happens in our own civilian lives. You know fidelity, the regression of the female, the obsession with motherhood, all that. We are looking at it almost as if it\u2019s in a laboratory setting.<\/p>\n There are still topics that you don\u2019t touch on the blog.<\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t talk about people dying and I don\u2019t talk about reality shows. There\u2019s never been a dedicated article about Kanye West\u2019s girlfriend on my blog. I don\u2019t post pictures of celebrity children without the celebrity. The famous parent has to be attached and often times the story is the famous parent. I didn\u2019t go super deep into Rihanna, what she\u2019s been going through in the last year and getting back together with Chris Brown, I wrote about it once in defense of her, not in defense with her getting back together with him but people seem to be attacking her for that decision and I think what they were missing was that psychology of the victim. And so I wrote that one piece, then I\u2019ve stayed away from that.<\/p>\n Is it hard to maintain those kinds of boundaries in a world that basically is defined as smut?<\/strong><\/p>\n No its not. It\u2019s not hard to define boundaries if you believe in them. Ultimately I have to enjoy and believe in what I am doing and if I follow that then I think that I should be okay. I hope.<\/p>\n And so now you\u2019re moving\u00a0 to Toronto, when is that happening?<\/strong><\/p>\n July. I am stressed out and I don\u2019t have anywhere to live! It\u2019s one of the things I am avoiding of thinking about.<\/p>\n But you\u2019re moving for a great reason! You\u2019re starting a TV Show!<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes I am moving for a great reason! The social, it starts in the fall on CTV it\u2019s a talk show, Melisa Grelo, Traci Melchor, Cynthia Loyst and I will be the hosts. I am very excited and it\u2019s a great opportunity, I just wish that I could snap my fingers and the show will have started and like everything will have been taken care of in terms of the move, but I am super excited, obviously, and I\u2019m excited to move back to be closer to my parents.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve done a really great job in bringing in your personal life and let people know about you, but are there things that you try to keep like to yourself, how do you determine what gets public and what stays private for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n It has to work with the narrative. I don\u2019t just write an article about my mother I usually write it because something has reminded me of what she use to tell me, so it has to be in context. I don\u2019t know if I would avoid sharing anything about myself!<\/p>\n How do you think that social media has changed the face of Gossip?<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the ways is that celebrities themselves are using social media to reach out to their fans, and that has given us some interesting results. Because when they\u2019re not very intelligent about what they say, or if they don\u2019t say anything then we can read into \u201cHey! How come Miley hasn\u2019t been tweeting for five days and all these rumors about Liam are circulating?\u201d So it\u2019s added another dimension to the reporting, hasn\u2019t it\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s really open now I think everybody can see what a celebrity is doing and so everybody is a reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Citizen reporting for sure, it\u2019s sometimes not very accurate. In my business I have to watch that because there has to be still a standard, cross-referencing and sourcing. And we don\u2019t even just see that in gossip we see that in like real news. Like look what happened in Boston. The tweets were so wrong you know and ironically, it was old fashioned newspaper reporting that was first and accurate in Boston, it was the Boston Globe that had the best coverage and the most accurate coverage.<\/p>\n You have celebrities that you love and celebrities who you don\u2019t really like as much, and they get pretty fair treatment in your column.<\/strong>I think that when you read magazines like People, everybody is treated with such reverence, no matter who they are no matter what they do, it\u2019s kind of refreshing to actually read a realistic take on celebrity behavior.<\/strong><\/p>\n I wanted to. My critics will say that I am unfair and biased and supporters will say that I am not. Ultimately I am writing what I think and trying to support what I think. Every article is intended to be structured as an essay. So even though it\u2019s 200 words there has to be a thesis, the supporting arguments and a conclusion. University actually came in handy with my career, surprisingly!<\/p>\n So have you ever sat across from a celebrity who you\u2019ve written negatively about and they know it?<\/strong><\/p>\n I interviewed Gwyneth Paltrow last weekend and I\u2019ve written negatively about her before, although I worship her, and I don\u2019t know that she knew about it. In general etalk does not send me to interview people who I don\u2019t like. Number one, because it would be a betrayal of\u00a0 the readers if I sat across from Jessica Biel and told her that she was interesting, when I keep saying that she\u2019s not.<\/p>\n Are you staying with etalk when you start at The Social?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes! I am going to be doing Lainey Gossip, I\u2019ll be doing The sSocial, and I\u2019ll be doing etalk and will be trying to write my book.<\/p>\n How on earth do you do all that in a day? I need some practical tips here, seriously.<\/strong><\/p>\n Get up early, go to bed late and work on weekends and and stick to a schedule. That\u2019s why it\u2019s 15 minutes here and then I\u2019m giving myself 15 minutes to pack, then I\u2019ve got 10 minutes to finish and article I started when I came and then 5 minutes to go downstairs. I\u2019m very very, very, very regimented. To the point where I don\u2019t like small talk.<\/p>\n So when was the last time you had a free full week vacation, or unplugged?<\/strong><\/p>\n Eight years ago. Well I\u2019ve been on vacations, but I\u2019ve always worked half days and then vacation half day.<\/p>\n Do you come to Montreal fairly often?<\/strong><\/p>\n Once a year but super short like only 48 hours at a time or 24 hours. I\u2019m leaving now and that would be an exact 24 hours that we\u2019ve been here, and that makes me sad.<\/p>\n Do you have any favorite spots here in Montreal?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, last time my husband and I were here we went to L\u2019Express<\/a>, I love it there and Mortimer Snodgrass<\/a>. And we went to Garde Manger<\/a> and had a lobster poutine and it changed my life.<\/p>\n