“What’s your relationship to gossip?”
This is the question that host Kelsey McKinney asks her guests at the top of each episode of the podcast Normal Gossip. Answers range from earnest observations that gossip is the glue that binds communities together, to unapologetic admissions that hearing about the embarrassing antics of an old enemy can be vindication in its purest form. Some guests describe themselves as active gossip-mongers. Others enjoy being receptacles for the secrets and stories of friends-of-friends. In later episodes, guests bring their own morsel of gossip to start the podcast, with the host handing over her role with relish.
Kelsey often asks guests about the geographics of gossip; does Los Angeles gossip function in a different way from Rhode Island rumours or a Texan tidbit? It seems the answer is yes, with guests often (maybe retroactively) attributing stereotypes about their state to how they experience gossip. What is clear from Kelsey’s conversations with all her guests is that gossip is inescapable and, as the podcast title suggests, totally normal. Some light schadenfreude now and again is just what a person needs.
In Netflix’s regency-esque behemoth Bridgerton, gossip, intrigue and scandal are the driving forces behind the plot. The central character of season 3, Penelope Featherington, makes her mark on the world (and her money) by writing and publishing her razor-sharp observations of her peers, revealing the scandalous antics of every lord and lady within a ten-mile radius. Hidden behind her pen name, Lady Whistledown, and her wallflower persona, Penelope wields incredible power and influence over high society. That is until her secret is revealed, of course.
It must also be said that gossiping is not the same as just being a bitch. Spilling your best friend’s secrets to anyone who’ll listen because they pissed you off one time is not gossip. Making snide remarks about someone on the train’s shoes is not gossip. It’s not even good conversation. Great gossips are great conversationalists, virtuoso storytellers who are too often dismissed as frivolous or dramatic. I often think about the saying that snootily suggests that “small people talk about other people, while great people talk about ideas”. But people and connections and stories are what make life interesting. Your ideas might be marvellous but they won’t make you spit-take your coffee or your sides hurt from laughing. A good story, a good gossip can do that.
The best kind of gossip unfurls like a well-plotted yarn. It’s told with a degree of distance (on Normal Gossip, stories are submitted by a pseudonymous ‘friend of a friend’). There are unexpected twists and turns, a hero to root for, a villain to boo. No one dies or is horrifically maimed. Lives may be changed but are never ruined, just desserts are served and everything turns out alright in the end. The story might spool out over months, through text updates and excitedly garbled voicenotes. It might all spill out in one sitting over a pint in the pub, mopped up hungrily like the greasy crumbs at the end of a bag of salt and vinegar.
Back with Bridgerton, Penelope’s erstwhile friend Eloise pleads with her to give up the Whistledown pretence: “You had a good run for a while, but it’s just gossip. Let it go.” But gossip is never “just” that. In Bridgerton or the real world, a surprising or scandalous turn of events can’t exist in a vacuum. The 45 million of us viewers, much like the well-heeled members of the ton, are proof that we can’t get enough of it. We talk about the stories on our screens with the same excitement and wide-eyed disbelief as we do when we meet and share events from our own lives (or the lives of others) with friends and family.
“What’s your news? Do you have any gossip?” is often the way to kick-start the juiciest of catch-ups. So much so that we can’t help feeling disappointed if we’re the one without news to share. Sometimes we’ll purposefully store up stories to tell in person, rather than hastily typing out the abbreviated version in WhatsApp. Us gossip lovers relish the drama of the story, the luxury of labouring the point. In person, we can add impersonations and indulge in pausing for dramatic effect in the way that only Colleen Rooney can achieve in text form. When someone shares their gossip with you, they put their trust in you. They trust that you’ll never tell a soul or that you’ll tell everyone in a way that truly does their story justice, impersonations and all.
Gossip is never “just gossip”. Gossip, and the connections forged by it, signals that we are seen and heard. As the guests on the podcast confirm, we are all suckers for a good story and a sense of connectedness. Some of us love to take the mic, while some of us settle in to listen, popcorn at the ready. We all dabble in a little gossip-wrangling of some kind or another. A tall tale can grease the wheels of your stilted lunchbreak chat with new colleagues. A revelation overheard can leave you giggling with your partner for hours afterwards. Maybe you just can’t wait to see your friend’s reaction when you tell them the hilarious story about your uncle’s colleague’s sister’s hamster. Gossip is good for your health. As Lady Whistledown might write herself, a little scandal a day keeps the melancholy at bay. Who am I to argue with that?
Omg I also thought about this parallel when I binged s3 today!!!