The cover of the Toronto Sun on June 13th featured a close-up photo of a woman’s face, her eyes wide in surprise, a strawberry dangling suggestively from her mouth. The headline read “THE LADY IS A TRAMP.”

The woman in the photo was Heather Mills. Most Canadian readers, according to my extensive poll of my four roommates, have no idea who Heather Mills is. Some careful investigation into high quality magazines like Hello! and In Touch reveal that she is the soon-to-be ex-wife of Paul McCartney - a big name in the UK, but not so notorious over here. So why was she paraded about as a “tramp” on the cover of a Toronto newspaper?

The breaking news reported on June 13th was the discovery of an 80’s porn book Mills starred in. This unearthing of Mills’ “sordid” past has gossip columnists wetting themselves. Being able to call a woman celebrity a tart, without risk of legal consequences, is a chance that comes along pretty rarely. The pure joy that the media is experiencing has trickled all the way down to little Toronto, where nobody knows, or really cares that much, who this woman is.

Why is the press having this “hey! you’re getting divorced! let’s make it worse!” party for Heather? Is it just that blood-thirsty readers love to hear about the downfalls of rich and famous people? But there has been very little negative press directed towards Paul McCartney. If anything the tone the press takes with him is “poor old Paul.” It would seem that the caustic coverage is reserved solely for Heather. Call me a hairy-legged feminist if you want, but it seems like our papers enjoy reporting the pain of women far more than they do men.

One of the cruellest pieces of post-divorce print I’ve come across (since I often diligently research gossip magazines in preparation for moments like this) was an open letter to Paul McCartney, written by Chris Terrill, the man that Mills dumped when she met McCartney. In it Terrill invents the term “heathered” and states that Mills collects fiances “like other people collect stamps.” Perhaps what is most shocking about the pure malice of this piece is that it was published in the Sunday Times, which is a fairly respectable paper - not quite a gossip rag.

This reminds me of the time that Brad and Jennifer split up (an upset I have still not recovered from) and the mags all proclaimed it was because Jennifer didn’t want to have babies - later reported to be quite false. There were no allegations that they split because Brad was a stinkin’ adulterer, a claim that could easily have been made. Imagine if it was the other way around, if Jennifer had quickly paired off with say, Antonio Banderas, a few weeks after their separation? It’s hard to believe she would’ve received the gentle press reaction Mr Pitt got.