Chapter 4: Pull Yourself up by Your Bootstraps: Personal Failure and the Great Depression
- Key point: Stories about celebrities served as attempts to prop up the notion of the American Dream; that wealth could be had by those willing to work hard
- Reversal of fortune: Stories of celebrity “has-beens” cast them as personally wasteful or otherwise responsible for their own downward mobility
- Anxieties about marriage failure were reflected in gossip, stories about celebrities, and advertising
- As scarcity returned, celebrity thinness was described as dangerous, even deadly, and products promised to help readers gain weight
