Is there a double standard in celebrity gossip? If not, why do gossip publications mostly go after women? Even though most of the biggest movie stars are men, when you're leafing through In Touch or Star or the dozens of other celebrity dish sources, you mostly read about the tribulations of living women like Lindsay Lohan, or dead ones like Princess Diana.

Bonnie Fuller, editor of the popular tabloid Star magazine, says they don't yet have "a big male star who's going to have crossover appeal to both sexes." What gives a star the broadest appeal, apparently, is being a woman and being in trouble. Though you'll read about celebrity couples in gossip magazines — Fuller says that Brad Pitt is "integral to the dynamic" of the beloved Brangelina cover stories — you'll rarely read about men getting into trouble. At least not without women like Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Aniston to get them into that trouble.

Of course, sometimes a male star goes so spectacularly wrong that the gossip magazines have no choice but to feature him. But they seem to do it almost grudgingly. When Owen Wilson attempted suicide in August, TMZ.com, which started up in 2005 and almost instantly became the leader in lurid celebrity-stalking sagas, gave remarkably little attention to the story, even though it was one of the first sites to break it in the first place. After reporting on the basic facts of the case, TMZ and its founder and editor, Harvey Levin, started moving on to other subjects, doing very little to investigate the reasons for Wilson's depression. Gawker.com, a site that covers the world of gossip coverage, pointed out how different this was from TMZ's literally 24-hour coverage of Lindsay Lohan and her arrest for cocaine possession. "Why aren't they updating us on his every move?" wrote Doree Shafrir at Gawker.com. "Why haven't they talked to 'friends' and his brothers and anyone who ever took a crap within a 12-mile radius of him?"

The gossip-mongers themselves are unwittingly offering some hard statistical evidence that they just don't care about men. TMZ.com has a list on its website of various celebrities and the number of times they've been the main focus of a post. As of Oct. 25, 2007, Britney Spears led the way with 791 mentions, followed by Paris Hilton at 757, Anna Nicole Smith at 449(even though she's been dead for a large portion of TMZ's existence), and Lindsay Lohan at 427. But among males, Mel Gibson leads, with only 67 mentions.

Even celebrity columnists themselves are starting to mutter a little bit about a possible imbalance in their own coverage. Liz Smith, the veteran gossip columnist, pointed out in print that photos of Matthew McConaughey falling down drunk were being treated with indulgence and even amusement, whereas the same photos would have caused a Lindsay Lohan to be "branded an out-of-control tramp." In an interview with Maclean's, Smith adds that there are other male celebrities who aren't getting a rough enough ride from her profession. "When Robert Downey Jr. was arrested for drugs, over and over, and eventually went to jail, his problems did not receive one-tenth of the heat and light that has been rained down on Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie and Britney Spears for their drunk-driving and drug addictions."

It's not as if this has always been the way of the gossip world; only a decade ago, celebrity dirt was a little more evenly spread around. Charlie Sheen was a major gossip star back in the '90s, when he admitted to having patronized the establishment of "Hollywood Madam" Heidi Fleiss. Now he's a bigger star than he was then, and the writers of his hit sitcom Two and a Half Men told the New York Post that they base their episodes on Sheen's debauched lifestyle, but he's no longer a source of tabloid stories. Tom Cruise was once able to make the covers of tabloids on his own, when questions arose about his sex life or Scientology; now, in keeping with Fuller's statement about the dominance of couples, he only gets written about as part of a couple, "Tom and Katie." As if his weird behaviour would be less weird if he weren't married to the girl from Dawson's Creek.

Why don't gossip publications focus on men? One reason may be simply that most readers of gossip(in print and online)are women, and gossip writers think that women prefer to read about other women. "Fundamentally, the tabloid industry is geared toward women," says Rebecca Aronauer of jossip.com. "If someone like George Clooney is a hard partier, and I'm not saying he is, it ruins the fantasy of him. Women who read these magazines, at least subconsciously, imagine themselves as part of this world. They want the men to be Prince Charmings, and the women to be evil stepsisters." Fuller makes a similar point, insisting that Star's coverage is driven by the fact that women "have an innate interest in other women," particularly young and famous ones.

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