In defence of gossip: no better way to navigate life's flawed relationships

If we directly confronted people with their every flaw or annoyance, we'd all be exhausted and hurt all the time. Stop moralizing and get in on some hot goss

"She doesn't have an unkind word to say about anyone" is almost universally understood as a compliment. It is meant to convey how nice a person is. But to me, what stands out is what this person is not saying. They aren't just being praised for their kindness so much as for their refusal to speak ill of others, for elevating themselves above gossip. I hope no one has ever said it about me.

When it comes to gossip, I borrow my motto from Steel Magnolias' Clairee Belcher: "If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me."

I want rich and messy and complicated friendships and romances and professional engagements. I want to be around people that have and want the same. I want us to want to talk about them, and yes, even gossip about them, in all their complex and frustrating glory.

Gossip is sometimes speculative but it is not inherently untrue and indeed, most of what is characterized as gossip is actually the sharing of opinions rather than facts. We call it gossip when someone has something less than kind to say about someone's new boyfriend, a friend's spending habits or a boundary-pushing roommate. I should say, that I make a distinction between it and the spread of rumors or the divulgence of someone's secrets. The latter two are violations of trust that can have profound impacts on people's reputations and relationships.

Though gossiping is vilified year round, there is something about the holiday season that makes people prone to moralizing against it. But the combination of holiday parties that thrust high volumes of people into the same room at once, the uptick in marriage engagements, and then family engagements on top of it all make the holidays also the ripest for gossip to take place.

It has always been fashionable to moralize about gossip. The book of Proverbs is full of warnings against whisperers and slanderers. George Harrison called gossip "the devil's radio". Good old Marcus Aurelius wrote: "How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy," in Meditations in the second century. To me, that just sounds like a lot of navel-gazing.

Perhaps most famously, Eleanor Roosevelt is purported to have said: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." But with all due respect to the former first lady, I have to question whether she's ever been around people who only discuss ideas.

At least Henry David Thoreau had the decency to wag his finger about gossip honestly when he said: "To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea." Yes, the heart of our collective disdain for gossip is that it is considered a distinctly feminine practice.

Talking about other people is considered a petty, superficial pastime that women engage in because they just can't stop themselves from being jealous or nosy. The reality is that women engage in this pastime because they bear the overwhelming majority of the burden of keeping relationships thriving. It is telling that we do not call it gossip when a woman complains to her girlfriends about her romantic relationships, but it is if she talks about her other friends? We put enough social value on romantic partnerships that of course she ought to talk through it for the sake of saving the relationship. But it a woman is talking unkindly of her own friend or about a female colleague, she is just being jealous. We don't consider the fact that advancing her career or maintaining high quality, accountable friendships might be just as valuable as keeping a partner.

Anti-gossip detractors argue that people should be confronted directly in such cases. And if there is an ongoing issue that truly threatens a friendship or job or network, it is worthwhile to talk about it. Talking to other people about others is a way of navigating relationships and feelings without directly involving the person being discussed. But if we directly confronted people with their every flaw or annoyance, we'd all be exhausted and hurt all the time.

Let's face it: people are deeply and splendidly flawed. Reminding them of this with constant confrontations isn't going to magically improve the human condition. Talking about our friends and their boyfriends and their jobs and their new tattoo lets off steam in a sager space than a confrontation or judgement and also getting a third-party opinion that can be both validating but also push back on the gossip. The more insidious practice, I believe, is repeating gossip back to the person about whom it was said.

For one thing, that is just another way of gossiping. And more cruelly, repeating gossip rips the conversation from the context and empathy of the original conversation and turns it into a soundbite. It is a way of seizing the narrative and painting oneself as on the moral high ground. But if the original nature of the gossip is so egregious, people should confront the one saying it and recuse themselves from the conversation and server ties with the gossiper if they are planning to repeat it.

I have every confidence that my friends have judgments about my life and relationships that they've spoken behind my back. I don't care to know what they are unless my actions are in actual danger of ending our relationship.

So I do not repeat gossip, but I am certainly around to listen to it and have come to accept and even love the fact that people talk about me. Because you know who else people talk about? Movie stars! Tastemakers! Leaders of the free world! The creators of culture and intrigue!

Through plenty of cultural icons had ill to speak of gossip, Oscar Wilde was reliably on the side of gossip when he said: "If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you."

So God help you if you don't have an unkind word being said about you.