Owen Wilson is heading back to work following his breakdown and suicide attempt last year. He had a movie out last fall, the Darjeeling Limited, and while he did drop out of the Ben Stiller flick Tropic Thunder following his suicide attempt in August, it looks like his career is going to continue unaffected.

Which got me wondering – will Britney ever really come back? Will Amy Winehouse ever be introduced without the words ‘recovering addict’ included? Possibly not. And even though men aren’t immune to scandal (Keifer Sutherland, Mel Gibson, Robert Downey Junior) they seem to get off lighter in the tabloid press.

I’m not the only one who thinks about this, the New York Times ran an article talking about it too.

Some editors confirm that they handle female celebrities differently. But the reason, they say, is rooted not in sexism, but in the demographics of their audience.

The readership of US Weekly, for example, is 70 percent female; for People, it’s more than 90 percent, according to the editors of these magazines.

“Almost no female magazines will put a solo male on the cover,” said Janice Min, the editor in chief of US Weekly. “You just don’t. It’s cover death. Women don’t want to read about men unless it’s through another woman: a marriage, a baby, a breakup.”

Thus, magazine coverage of Mr. Ledger’s death gave way to stories about Michelle Williams, Mr. Ledger’s former girlfriend and the mother of his daughter; US Weekly, for instance, put the headlines “A Mother’s Pain” and “My Heart is Broken” atop a four-page spread. Mary-Kate Olsen, telephoned several times by the discoverer of Mr. Ledger’s body, came in for it, too: “What Mary-Kate Knows” trumpeted In Touch Weekly.

Indeed, while one of People’s best-selling issues of the last year was its cover story on Mr. Wilson’s suicide attempt, a follow-up cover on his recovery was one of the worst sellers, said Larry Hackett, the managing editor.

Conversely, he said, the Britney Spears story continues to flourish precisely because women are fascinated by the challenges facing a young mother.

“If Britney weren’t a mother, this story wouldn’t be getting a fraction of attention it’s getting,” Mr. Hackett said. “The fact that the custody of her children is at stake is the fuel of this narrative. If she were a single woman, bombing around in her car with paparazzi following, it wouldn’t be the same.”

[From The NY Times]

All of this is true – women are the ones who buy gossip magazines and we are more interested in hearing about other women. So are we partially to blame for the increased attention on the plight of female celebrities?

Owen is set to start work on a film titled Marley and Me, which features Jennifer Aniston and a dog as Marley. Owen and Aniston star as a young couple who work in the newspaper field who adopt an “incredible” puppy named Marley.

Note by Celebitchy: While Owen Wilson was said to be drinking again and was even supposedly seen buying a pipe with which you wouldn’t smoke tobacco, his post-suicide behavior didn’t attract a lot of press. You also have to give him credit for staying out of the hot spots, though, and he seems to have tried to keep under the radar. There does seem to be a disparity in how women are analyzed and dissected by the gossip press as compared to men.