Come on, celebrities?
I am really, really sick of celebrity worship. Yes, it’s nice to have a favorite actor or actress and follow his or her career. It’s nice to care about the progression of an actor as he moves from bit parts to a leading role. It’s way too easy to slink into wearing the Shoes of Worship, though. I’ve been there. I totally had a thing for Heath Ledger. But I think his tragic death really woke me up to the reality that as much as I can care for someone who exists somewhere out there, elusive to an actual friendship, that person doesn’t know (and probably doesn’t care) who I am.
When (and if) I act crazy, Britney does not go grocery store shopping to find photos of me plastered to the cover of the Inquirer.
When I do something good (because in the past, all I have done is be selfish), Paris is not going to come across an article about me on cnn.com and feel better about me.
If I gain weight, get photographed on the beach looking horrendous, Nicole and Lindsay do not laugh at me on the cover of US Weekly. Maybe rumors will circulate that I am with child, but once it’s confirmed that, oh, I am just fat, maybe Kiersty Alley will call me up - but it’s not likely.
I just can’t find it in myself to continually care about these people. They are not my friends. They do not call to check up on me. They don’t send me Christmas cards or Google Map my house. They don’t search for my name online or look me up on imdb.com.
You may say I’m jealous. That I want to be famous. No, Not really. I just worry that worship these people who have an ability to get recognition because of other people we don’t know about - casters, promoters, agents, etc., their lives are no longer their own. Personally, I enjoy NOT being followed or photographed everywhere I go. I like the freedom of buying what I want, and that doesn’t have to include being fashionable, lest someone poke fun at me in writing. I like being able to travel down the road and not having to worry about getting into an accident because the paparazzi are in pursuit of an exorbitant magazine cover shot.
I also really like being friends with and caring about people I actually know. Friends that I think are just as beautiful, talented, and fashionable as any Hollywood starlet. I’m in love with the Leading Man of my life, and I will always be his Leading Lady. I love caring passionately about music, our marriage, our dog, our faith, our home - and I love that no one is documenting it other than us.
The last criticism I will offer is that caring about and spending time on celebrity worship is a distraction from the things in society that really matter, including a healthy self-image (duh, how many times have you heard that??). While I don’t oppose celebrity endorsement on the whole, I think it’s pretty sad when has-beens promote things on commercials because they need a paycheck, or when current celebrities (and that includes athletes) are paid to endorse a product that he or she might not necessarily like or use. In step with that is that focusing on materialism keeps us away from focusing on societal problems. More people my age can probably tell you more about Britney’s love life than they can about what their home state is doing through governmental agencies to help those who need aid to live their lives. We’ll complain about taxes, but then we’ll open up our latest People and forget about the homeless. We assume that when Brad and Angelina adopt another baby from overseas that they are able to do so because they are wealthy, so they took care of that to-do item for us.
I took a class in college that absolutely changed the way I see the world through the media - Media and Society. From the course book: “A course dealing with media history, uses and values. It will consider such media as newspapers, magazines, radio, television, recordings, motion pictures, theater, music and the visual arts in regard to how they affect society and the individual. Students will investigate these media and the social, economic, and historical milieu from which they emerge as well as the aesthetic and ethical values attributed to them. The course will use non-traditional approaches to the subject matter, and active participation by the students will be an essential element of the course. Enrollment limited. Students will be selected by GPA and faculty interview.”
Everything we do is connected to the media. How we get our information informs who we are, what we buy, what we think. While it’s easy to ride along with the current, I think it’s important to take time on the bank of the river and really see the world through your own eyes, not as through the eyes of a celebrity as translated through a photographer or reporter through a major news corporation through our email, television, or any other news product.

