They had it all. The money. The fame. The looks. While famous young women of the 2000s seemed to thrive, the toxic treatment of the media was more than some could handle.
Y2K is an era that we often romanticize. From the clothes to the pop culture, it was quite a time to be alive. However, things are not all sunshine and rainbows for famous young women in the spotlight. From paparazzi chases to tabloid slams, women like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan were subject to bullying from the mass media.
Below is a list of notable women who were barely in their twenties before the tabloids placed targets on their backs.
Lindsay Lohan
At the age of twelve, Lindsay Lohan starred in the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap. Her performance astonishes many because she’s one girl playing as twins…one with a British accent! This performance led her to have a successful career. By the time she was eighteen, Lohan starred in several notable movies like Freaky Friday, Mean Girls, and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. She also drops her hit song Rumors along with two albums. Before the age of twenty, Lohan had a high amount of popularity.
However, along with the success, came massive media attention. In the 2000s, paparazzi was at its worst. While on Jay Leno in 2005, Lohan recalls an incident where the paparazzi chases her while driving. She’s cornered by a paparazzi in a U-turn attempt where she describes the paparazzi looking at her with a smirk before purposely ramming into her car door. Immediately after, the paparazzi take photos. In the present day, Lohan looks back on how the paparazzi affected her career. In an interview with Bustle, she says, “I feel like some of [my work] got overshadowed by paparazzi…and that’s kind of annoying.”
As Lohan grew up, she became more sexualized. Grown men started a countdown until Lohan’s eighteenth birthday. This was a common trend of the time, but it still happens to current stars like Millie Bobby Brown. In a Saturday Night Live appearance, an entire Harry Potter spoof sketch is written around adult men gawking over Lohan’s breasts. She was only seventeen.
Since the 2000s, Lohan has run into the law several times. However, she’s doing better than ever now. After a small break, she’s acting again. In 2022, she married Bader Shammas. Last July, their son, Luai, was born.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen
Many of us know Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. At nine months old, the twins share the role of Michelle Tanner in the popular 90s sitcom, Full House. While on the show, the Olsens expand their empire. In 1993, they start their own media company, Dualstar, making them seven years old. This is the start of their film career as a duo. The Olsens are millionaires by the time they’re ten. As the pair gets older, they only become more successful. They are not only actresses but also businesswomen. Through Dualstar, they begin to sell merchandise which leads the company to gross $1.4 billion dollars in sales in 2003.
However, despite this success, the Olsens still encounter disrespect from the media. Like Lohan, there’s a countdown for when they become legal, being referenced as “jailbait no more.” On their Saturday Night Live appearance in 2004, Mary-Kate jokes, “Remember, we’re legal in four weeks!” Once they turned sixteen, they were no stranger to the occasional inappropriate interview question. In an interview with Connie Chung, she asks the sixteen-year-olds whether or not they are virgins. When they’re seventeen, they do an interview with Oprah where she asks what size they are. At this time, Mary-Kate struggles with an eating disorder which is also poked fun at on SNL.
Once the pair enters their twenties, they step away from acting. In 2006, they start The Row, a successful fashion line. In 2024, the company is still around and run by the duo who don’t spend much time in the spotlight anymore. As for their personal lives, in 2014, Mary-Kate married Olivier Sarkozy, but the pair divorced in 2020. As for Ashley, she recently married Louis Eisner in 2022. The pair also welcomed a baby boy, Otto, in 2023.
Paris Hilton
How can you talk about Y2K without mentioning Paris Hilton? The great-granddaughter of the founder of Hilton Hotels got her start as a model before landing a reality show called The Simple Life with Nicole Richie, daughter of Lionel Richie. The show follows the pair as they navigate a working world despite living luxurious lives. While she may appear as a dumb blonde in the show, she’s far from that. Hilton is a singer, DJ, actress, model, and businesswoman. Over the last few years, she’s managed to build an empire.
Along with the success of the show, there came struggle. Shortly after the release of The Simple Life, a sex tape of nineteen-year-old Hilton leaks without her consent. Naturally, the public shames Hilton while also indulging in the video. When reflecting on this time, Hilton reveals her then-boyfriend in the tape, Rick Solomon, coerced her into making it. She also felt her life was over, saying “Everything I wanted my brand to be, the trust and respect I was trying to rebuild with my parents, the sliver of self-worth I’d been able to recover – all that was instantly in ruins.” While the tape did help The Simple Life get ratings, this humiliated her.
Apart from this situation, Hilton continued to spend Y2K in the tabloids. Around the time, she’s considered a party girl. Like Lohan, Hilton ran into trouble with the law. In an interview with Stylist, Hilton touches upon this era, saying she and other women of the time were picked on by the media. The media prioritized showing their nights out rather than their careers. She says, “We were just young girls discovering life, going out to a party. And we were villainized for it.”
In the present day, Hilton’s empire is still going strong. She spoke about her traumatic time at Provo Canyon as a teenager which is a camp for troubled youth. After sharing her story, she is pushing to crack down on the troubled teen industry. In 2021, she married Carter Reum. They have a son, Phoenix, and a daughter, London.
Britney Spears
Anybody who is not living under a rock knows Britney Spears. In 1999, Spears rises to the top with her hit …Baby One More Time. This launches Spears’ singing career causing a massive amount of success. However, being so young in this industry causes room for invasiveness. Like the Olsens, Spears is asked about her virginity as well as other parts of her sexuality. These types of questions clearly are a part of the 2000s journalism approach.
Around this time, Spears is at the top of the world, but things take a turn. In 2007, Spears debuts a shaved head and is met with hounds of paparazzi. The media writes her off as crazy, continuing to plaster her face in cruel tabloid covers. However, in 2023, Spears talks about why she shaved her head in her memoir, “The Woman in Me,” writing “I knew a lot of guys thought long hair was hot. Shaving my head was a way of saying to the world: F— you.” She also adds that she had not been able to see her sons, Jayden and Sean who she conceives with Kevin Federline. She writes, “I was simply out of my mind with grief.” This is what sparks her years-long conservatorship.
Spears continues to release music until her hiatus in 2019. This is also where she first asks the conservatorship to be lifted, but this does not happen. After several fails to end her conservatorship, this is where the #FreeBritney movement rises. Fans take to the courthouse and protest for Spears, demanding her to be free from her conservatorship. Aside from fans, numerous stars like Paris Hilton and Justin Timberlake voice their support for the singer. After lots of uproar and court hearings, Spears’ conservatorship is lifted in November 2021. Spears proceeds to thank fans on X for their activism and support.
Spears has not released music lately but instead wrote “The Woman in Me” to share her side of the story. In June 2022, she marries Sam Asghari, but the pair divorces fourteen months later.
