I'll admit that I like every photo that Miley Cyrus posts on Instagram, and I texted my best friend to express my joy when I found out that Chrissy Teigen and John Legend were having a baby. But why? Why did I like a grainy photo of Miley topless in bed with her dogs? And why was I so excited about Chrissy Teigen's pregnancy, as if I received an invitation to her baby shower? When you really stop and think about it, it's really messed up how we idolize people we've never met. Celebrity culture in America is totally bonkers. Putting celebrities on a pedestal the way we do is damaging to us and to them. We hold these singers, musicians, athletes, actors, and Kardashians to a higher standard than others, but at the end of the day, they're really just people.
Life is hard for everyone at times. The only difference is that, unlike you or me, if Kylie Jenner is so depressed that she can barely get herself out of bed one day, she can't go to CVS in sweatpants and no bra because there are grown men with cameras waiting on her every move to exploit her flaws. We have a whole industry of people who make money off of exactly that, glorifying famous people until they make a mistake, ready to crucify them for it.
When you look at any of Lorde's tweets, you'll see "MOM," or "QUEEN," among the replies. Before Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick broke up, any photo of them, whether they're walking out of the grocery store or on the red carpet, people would Instagram them with the caption "relationship goals." By assigning them these idolizing titles, we are erasing the fact that they are real people. Fans were genuinely upset when Kourtney and Scott broke up, as if they were a part of their relationship. But we don't know what was actually happening in their relationship, and we don't have a right to know. A television show, expensive clothes, and three million Instagram followers does not make a life perfect. We often lose sight of that. We are conditioned by everything around us to lose sight of that.
The pedestal these celebrities are on is damaging to us because we value them over ourselves. We think of them as being otherworldly, and we crave any sort of feeling that makes us seem close to them, and Instagram is the perfect outlet for that. Instagram is a science to celebrities, almost like a game that they must play in order to stay in our consciousness, and we fall for it. We spend hours scrolling through, numbed by the gratuity of flashy celebrity photos. The media throws these people and their personal lives in our faces, making us feel like we should care about them. Before E! News breaks to commercial, they "tease" their upcoming stories by saying things like, "You'll never believe who Jennifer Lawrence was caught in bed with!" Only for the story to be that she posted a photo of herself and her dog in her bed. Celebrity culture in the media is nothing but a circus, but instead of elephants, they use people. And just like how the circus treats their elephants terribly, the media treats these people terribly, and we're the paying spectators. Even though the photo of Jennifer Lawrence may not be humiliating, they set it up as if it is, because the media makes money off of the embarrassment of famous people, women in particular.
But it doesn't have to be like that. We can appreciate famous people and their art or their fashion without having to pry into every aspect of their lives. Social media gives us an insight into everyone's lives, but just because we can see a minute-by-minute update on someone's day doesn't mean that we are entitled to know everything about them. A change needs to be made in the way that we treat celebrities. What more needs to happen before we all realize this?
Apparently, hundreds of personal nude photos of various famous women being leaked onto the Internet isn't enough of a wakeup call that this culture is extremely twisted. If that happened to your neighbor, or your teacher, you'd feel terrible for them. But because they are famous, the response was a lot of "Well, if you're famous, you should be more careful." By holding these people to a higher standard than the common person erases the idea that there is a deeper meaning to life. Celebrities are often not able to live an authentic life because of the constant scrutiny they are under. To never be able to explore every possibility that this world has to offer is a life wasted, no matter how much money you make. As a musician, if you change your sound, your fans will hate you, or if as an actor, you take a year off of making movies, you're irrelevant. Your life's purpose is so much more than your job or the money you make, but by us constantly needing these famous people to entertain us, we have made the decision for them that their job is their life's purpose, and that is so unfair.
The entertainment business is a billion dollar industry, and realistically, it will probably never end, but we don't have to continue to buy into it. I'm going to continue to see every movie Leonardo DiCaprio is in, but I no longer am going to pay attention to who he is dating, and you shouldn't either.
