Let’s begin with a slightly shameful confession: I love to gossip. I don’t even have to know the people involved to savour every detail about some obscure scandal at someone’s workplace or an argument overheard in a supermarket or, well… anything juicy, really.
Over the years, my nosiness has led me to draw clear lines between what I consider to be harmless fun and what’s hurtful or mean-spirited; I don’t gossip about those close to me (obviously), and I don’t gossip in a way that would have a real impact on the lives of anyone involved. Gossip should, at its core, be silly.
This is something Kelsey McKinney, host of the chart-topping Normal Gossip podcast and author of You Didn’t Hear This From Me: Notes On The Art Of Gossip, has thought about a lot. “It’s storytelling, but it’s also comforting to dissect the choices of other people and compare them to our own,” she shares in a Stylist+ story this week, which explores why gossip is good for us – particularly (and perhaps most controversially) in the workplace. But you didn’t hear that from me.
Hannah Keegan,
Features director, Stylist
