‘I am the centre of fame’: doing celebrity, performing fame and navigating cultural hierarchies in Grace Jones’ I’ll Never Write my Memoirs

ABSTRACT

This article outlines the concept of doing celebrity: whereby celebrity and pop stardom are presented as a deliberately constructed set of actions and behaviours, rather than an ontology. It does so by conceptualising celebrity as something one does, not something one is. The article examines Grace Jones’ 2015 memoir, I’ll Never Write My Memoirs, as an example which contravenes the claim – in both celebrity culture and autobiography – to offer up access to an authentic self. This article reveals an embrace of performativity over authenticity that Jones presents as part of a wider art practice. This self-representational move claims the masculinised status of creative agent and author of the star image, and seeks a level of cultural value otherwise often denied to the female pop star celebrity. The concept of doing celebrity, therefore, opens up new ways to consider the means available to public women to navigate the negative value judgements associated with female celebrity as a cultural field.

KEYWORDS:

• Grace Jones
• performance
• gender
• agency
• memoir

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. By contrast to Jones, Pamela Anderson’s fictionalised memoir typifies the view of paparazzi intrusion as violation, for example, when the protagonist laments of a photographer, ‘[He has] pictures of me walking the dog, on the set, having lunch with friends, on dates, kissing, holding my mother’s hand. He even has pictures of me sleeping. It’s like he’s stealing my life. Not the part that we all give to the world, but the part I keep for me’ (2005, p. 50).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hannah Yelin

Hannah Yelin is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Culture at Oxford Brookes University. She is writing a book about the ghost-written memoirs of young, female celebrities and is co-investigator on the project Girls, Leadership, and Women in the Public Eye. Before academia, Hannah had a 12 year career in the media. She now runs the Celebrity Culture Club, hosting discussions between academics and media industry figures. She tweets at @hannahyelin.