Ellen DeGeneres wants you to know that she is very sorry for all the hurt to her brand that she has caused. This week the comedian and presenter kicked off the 18th season of her eponymous talkshow with a monologue in which she addressed the numerous allegations of a toxic work environment there and apologised to the people affected. DeGeneres, who is famous for her sunny onscreen persona and “be kind” catchphrase, also rebutted accusations that she is a horrible person in real life.
Now that DeGeneres has apologised, perhaps we can all leave her alone for a bit. It pains me to come to the defence of an obscenely wealthy and often irritating celebrity, but the vitriol that has been directed at DeGeneres over the past few months has been a little much. It’s hard to shake the feeling that a lot of people seem incredibly gleeful that a gay woman is finally getting her comeuppance. While there were lots of serious complaints about bullying on her show, there also seemed to be a lot of disgruntled men who were annoyed that DeGeneres wasn’t as nice to them as they thought she should have been. A bodyguard who protected her during the 2014 Oscars, for example, complained to the media that DeGeneres never said “thank you” to him.
Unwarranted rudeness should never be excused – but we should also acknowledge that women are held to a very different standard from men. Not being nice 100% of the time is a cardinal sin when you’re a woman and entirely unremarkable when you’re a man. John McEnroe’s tennis tantrums, for example, earned him the reputation of a “legendary bad boy”; whenever Serena Williams raised her voice, however, she was derided as an Angry Black Woman. Again, I don’t think we should condone DeGeneres’s behaviour but we should absolutely put it in perspective. The moral of this is: be kind – and carry on thinking about sexist double standards.
