Picture this: a woman, who is presumably just a so-called “regular person”, gets the lead role in an upcoming movie. Before shooting she is able to walk outside of her home and partake in normal everyday activities such as food shopping and picking up her children from school. Let's fast-forward a couple of months. Her new movie comes out and suddenly she cannot complete a simple task without someone coming up to her on the street begging her for a picture or an autograph. This is her job, just like a school nurse or even a mailman. Why do we treat celebrities like gods?
The word celebrity comes from an old French word celebrite, which translates to ‘frequented or honored’. So you’re telling me that celebrities are people that we honor? Honor for what? Singing a song containing 95% curse words? Showing their face on camera in movies like 50 Shades of Grey? There seems to be a problem in today’s world regarding how celebrities are treated compared to us ‘regular’ folks.
Celebrities consume our world more than ever before. America has never been so obsessed with the ‘celebrity’ concept. This uproar in collective obsession has reached a point that is extremely unhealthy for the fabric of our society and generation.
Celebrity fame is fueled by one thing and one thing only: how much attention we give to them. Our outlets to the world of celebrity have increased immeasurably over the years. We can open a book, read a magazine, watch a television show, or simply log on to Facebook to see what celebrities are doing throughout the day. Websites like Elite Daily and Buzzfeed can’t even go one single day without posting an article regarding a breaking news article regarding who Justin Bieber is dating. Why do we care so much? Instead of engaging in personal interactions with one another, it’s much easier to ask the girl sitting next to you in math class, “Did you see what Zac Efron looked like at the awards show last night, he looked sooo dreamy…” rather than asking her about her day or how’s she’s feeling.
Sometimes we need to step back and reevaluate our lives. Do we need to follow every celebrity on twitter? Does Kim Kardashian’s tweet that reads, “What if we spelled ‘people’ like this: peephole. That would be funny I think” really need to be re-tweeted thousands of times? This obsession has gone beyond our capacity. Celebrities settle themselves inside of our minds and suddenly they are the best things since sliced bread. We look up to these people as role models, when we have amazing role models around us who go seemingly unrecognized. For example, this past August Kylie Jenner has turned 18. There were news stories covering her extravagant birthday party and her new Ferrari purchased by her rapper boyfriend for weeks on end. In the same month Malala Yousafzai turned 18. She is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Prize. I’m sure the majority have probably never heard of Yousafzai, but can definitely tell you the color of Jenner’s new $320,000 car and the color wig she was sporting that night. We need to stop making these people famous for nothing besides exposing their everyday lives to the public.
Although celebrities are extremely influential in adult lives, they are even more prominent in the lives of children. This can be a good thing, but it can also be a very bad thing. Because celebrities are such a hot commodity for media outlets, we see pictures of them everywhere at all times. Children see Victoria’s Secret models on the cover of magazines and think, “Why don’t I look like that?” This leads to them growing up before they’ve even experienced childhood. I remember trying on my first tube of mascara when I was a freshman in high school. Now whenever I’m out, I almost always see a young girl with a full face of makeup on. This is definitely contributed to the media outlets. Any child is smart enough to go on to their parent’s iPad and make an Instagram account and see how photo shopped their favorite celebrities are. The thing is, they don’t think it’s photo shopped. They think this is what they NEED to look like. This is why we need to start flooding the media with people like Malala Yousafzai. Children will grow up thinking, “That’s who I want to be when I grow up” and not “I need to have perfect eyebrows in order to be cool.”
I believe the obsession with celebrity derives from one thing: desire. We want what celebrities have. We want their good looks, their lip fillers, their billion dollar mansions, their Rolls Royce’s. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that money cannot buy you happiness. Why do you think so many celebrities go nuts? It’s because they lack something they can never buy: true happiness. They are too busy being criticized by the public to reach their eternal happiness. If the media stopped flooding our minds with these celebrities with their perfect hair and their perfect skin and started promoting people who make an actual difference in our world, then future generations will grow up to be healthy and powerful adults.
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