In its 93 years, the Academy Awards has only ever recognized only seven women in the category of Best Director. This is despite the fact that women have had a long and lasting presence in film history. This year, two women were honored with nominations at the Oscars this year. Emerald Fennell was nominated for her work on “Promising Young Woman” starring Carey Mulligan.

This year, Chloe Zhao, the director of “Nomadland” became the second woman in history to win the best directing award in nearly 100 years.

She is also the first woman of color to win the award.

Zhao won Best Director at the Oscars and became the first woman of color to win the award.

“When I was growing up in China, my dad and I would play this game. We would memorize classic poems and text and try to finish each other’s sentences,” Zhao explained during her acceptance speech.

She went on to recite a line of poetry in Chinese and then translated it in English, “People at birth are inherently good.”

“I have always found goodness in the people I met,” she said. “This is for anyone who has the faith and courage to hold onto the goodness in themselves.”

In addition, Zhao won directing awards from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and the Directors Guild of America.

Despite the presence of women in the entertainment industry, only seven women have been nominated for awards.

American filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director for her 2009 film The Hurt Locker. Directors Lina Wertmuller (“Seven Beauties”), Jane Campion (“The Piano”), Sofia Coppola (“Lost in Translation”), and Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”) are the only other female directors to have ever been nominated for the best-directing award.

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Recently, there has been quite the reckoning over how the media and society treat celebrities and influencers. Perez Hilton was one of the leading influencers when it came to haunting young famous women and LA ‘It Girls’ thanks to his up-to-the-minute celebrity gossip blog. 

Whether he was detailing their very public spirals out of control or drawing cartoon penises on their photos, Perez Hilton was there to capitalize on everyone else’s drama. Now the father of three says that he’s sorry for his past cruelty and is working to remake the world of celebrity gossip.

Hilton has apologized for his years of cruelty but does he deserve forgiveness?

For several years in the mid-aughts, Perez Hilton, whose real name is Mario Lavandeira Jr., was the most talked-about celebrity blogger in the world. And although his readership has taken a severe dive, his posts frequently pop up and remind the public that he was once the Queen of Mean. 

“I’ve apologized countless times,” Hilton, who lives in Los Angeles with his mother and three children, told Buzzfeed News. “A lot of what I did during that time was reprehensible and toxic. But that wasn’t everything. I wasn’t just nasty and mean and cruel and hurtful. I was also positive and supportive.”

But Hilton admits that he knew even at the time that what he was writing and what he was putting out into the universe was wrong. “Attention was my drug. A drug addict, in the moment, knows what they’re doing is wrong. Most of them wish they weren’t using, but they’re doing it anyway,” he tells Buzzfeed News.

Through all the writing and posts, Hilton has a lot to be sorry for.

One of his actions that gets him the most criticism is his obsession with outing famous men, including Lance Bass, Neil Patrick Harris, and Dustin Lance Black. “Two years before I came out, I was really bullied on the internet by bloggers, that’s when Perez Hilton just started and was just really malicious against me,” Bass said in 2007. 

Thanks to these cruel posts, Hilton would often face criticism from The Advocate and AfterEllen.com. 

Despite his efforts, his cruel reputation continues to follow him. 

Regardless of his mea culpas and attempts to reform both himself and the content on his site, his mean-spirited reputation has always followed him. That was made all the more clearer following the release of Framing Britney Spears.

The film really focused on her relationship with the press and paparazzi which was always waiting for her to slip up and get it on camera. Although Hilton wasn’t mentioned in the film, his old posts about Spears began resurfacing on Twitter. One, titled “Britney’s Breakdown,” ends with, “Take her children away!!!!!!” repeated five times in bold. 
Thanks to the explosion of social media apps and everyone having a camera at their fingertips thanks to smartphones, the celebrity gossip industry has changed a lot. Now, it’s impossible for a gossip blogger’s work to go unchecked. And now, most people even consume their by-the-minute celebrity updates on Instagram accounts like deuxmoi and The Shade Room.

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