From the actors in your favorite movies to the singers of your beloved songs, artists in every shape and size are constantly being looked at from every angle and invalidated as performers because of their professions. Due to this, it is often encouraged in our culture to stop dreaming of becoming what we really want in order to pursue something more reasonable with a steady cash flow. To me, this is not only a wrong way to look at things, but it is ultimately a perspective that needs to be rid from the world.

In my opinion, the arts need to stop being invalidated as a legitimate profession as there are many successful people who have made it from the bottom of the barrel to complete and utter stardom in only a matter of months, yet we continuously choose, as a society, to patronize and invalidate their triumphs, and sometimes hardships, because they chose this path instead of one that may have led them to a place where they would not be nearly as happy.

For instance, Old Navy had a t-shirt designed where they crossed out things that children aspire to be such as “painter” and “actor” to steer them towards more ‘appropriate’ fields such as “doctor” or “astronaut”. Now, all the while it is not to be mistaken that these are mighty fine jobs, they should not be placed above any other field. Likewise, with the most recent publishing of the Wells Fargo ad, performers are portrayed in a terrible light as they write “A ballerina yesterday. An engineer today.” and “An actor yesterday. A botanist today.” Now, if the irony of all of this is lost on you, Wells Fargo is blatantly criticizing the performing arts as a profession while not only employing those with art degrees to create these ads, but also using actors and models to portray the arts of which they are being critical.

While some may look upon this and think that there is no problem, I, alongside many other performers, find this trend happening in our society completely and utterly outrageous as many children, and even adults, aspire to one day have their break in the performance world but are constantly scrutinized for their aspirations not being realistic enough. Due to this, performers in general must work extremely hard in order to make it to the top, and even then, some don’t make it, yet instead of encouraging those to pursue their dreams and persevere on, we tell them to have a backup plan. And why is that? Why is it that those in the performing arts profession need to have a backup plan when others in more competitive professions do not? I, for one, believe that we should not only stop the invalidation of the arts as a legitimate field but also help those who wish to pursue jobs in this field flourish because if we do not, our world will certainly begin to lack creativity and inspiration as we constantly destroy the dreams of those around us. Not only will this significantly begin to impact humanity as a whole, but it will also begin to make the world a less beautiful place as we begin to lose all of the imagination and creativity around us because it just wasn’t sensible enough.

Initially, the arts are a legitimate profession and they need to stop being looked down upon as something that is too far out of reach or impractical because who will create the movies and songs and books and things that we all love if we continue to demolish the arts and the motivation of those who aspire to become the next Beyoncé or Iron Man.