ForbesWoman is a new section for professional and executive women. Enter your email below to start receiving ForbesWoman news and updates.  If the tabloids are any indication, America has a new public enemy No. 1, and her name is Kate Gosselin. Gosselin, as many people who never wanted to know suddenly do, is the mother of eight youngsters, including 5-year-old sextuplets, and one half of the couple at the center of TLC's reality show "Jon and Kate Plus 8."  Lately, Kate has been taken to task for everything from her reverse-mullet hair, to her mommy meanness, to her unhealthy diet (She's a Slob Who Pigged Out On Junk Food! screams Star magazine). US Weekly headlines include Mom to Monster, Mommy You Are Mean and Inside Jon's Prison.  The irony is that, although viewers had already known that Kate was the shrewish half of the breeding champs (she's famous for once telling her husband he was breathing too loudly), she only attracted this Brangelina-level frenzy after Jon was caught by paparazzi coming out of a bar at 2 a.m. with a woman--who was not mother of his eight offspring. Jon has denied cheating, but his peccadillo rumbled through the offices of the tabloid magazines like a small earthquake--and the editors simultaneously turned their attention to, not Jon, but Kate.  Suddenly, according to the tabs, Kate was having her own affair--with her bodyguard (which she denies). Then she was "imprisoning" her husband and not spending enough time with her brood at home (Kate is currently traveling to promote her book, Multiple Blessings).  Kate is the stateside version of singer Susan Boyle--the contestant on "Britain's Got Talent" who shocked the world with a sweet singing voice that belied her not-so-sweet looks, shot to fame overnight and had a breakdown within weeks as she became a victim of tabloid hysteria (Her eyebrows! Her temper tantrums!). But with eight children to raise, it's unlikely Kate will have the luxury of checking herself into a mental clinic for a break, as Boyle did.  So why did the media turn their brutal spotlight on Kate rather than the supposedly philandering hubby? Simple: Women are much more likely to buy Mom to Monster than He's a Big Cheating Jerk. "[Jon] comes across as a bit of a schlub, and the media is generally going to side with the 'poor guy,' or take a 'boys will be boys' attitude like they did with Brad Pitt," says Rachel Weingarten, a trends expert who consults with corporations like Nokia and Procter & Gamble about pop culture.  "People are more interested in saying, 'look at that bitch.' That sells magazines." And with women comprising the vast majority of tabloid readership--research firm Mediamark estimates 73% of US Weekly's audience and 77% of Star magazine's audience are women--tabloids need to run covers that will attract women. And that often includes cover lines about Monster Moms and the like.  This "simmering misogyny," as Weingarten puts it, has hit everyone from Susan Boyle to Hillary Clinton. And its latest target, the once untouchable Oprah Winfrey, recently came in for a drubbing by Newsweek for repeatedly giving a platform to New Age medical cures and medical theories.  Granted, Kate has certainly had a hand in orchestrating her own tabloid fallout. She plays the harried harridan to such effect that The Daily Beast chronicled her "top 10 angry moments." (No 1: Kate is rude to Steve Thomas, former host of "This Old House.") But there are innumerable reality TV vixens playing the villainess role to the hilt (Heidi Montag, anyone?), and they are not inspiring such tabloids-on-'roids coverage.  It's Kate's role as mother--and not just mother, but mega-mother--that tips her image from snarky harpy to reviled virago, says Patrice Oppliger, professor of mass communications at Boston University and author of Girls Gone Skank (McFarland & Co, 2008), about the sexualization of young girls in American culture. "Motherhood has much higher standards, so when a mother fails, there's a brutality there in terms of how she is gone after," she says. "Look at Walt Disney cartoons: It's always the wicked stepmother and the hero father."  Additionally, says Weingarten, there's probably some pent-up envy over Kate making tens of thousands of dollars per episode for what most women are doing for free: "Women are kind of resentful because Kate is getting paid a fortune to do what a lot of them are doing anyway: raising a family. She's become a scapegoat for every woman who is frustrated, at home raising kids."
Why the tabloids are having a field day with Kate (''Jon & Kate Plus 8'') ... but not so much with Jon.