So i have been trying to decide whether or not to post about this. I've gone back and forth so many times i was making myself dizzy. But during a rather restless night's sleep last night i decided that if i can't write about things that are on my mind on my blog then where can i. So, this may seem very off track for my normal style but there you go- i said i was scattered brained!
Ok, so when i was in University my housemates and I relied on celebrity magazines as a cheap and reliable source of entertainment. We could all name whose who, the break-up's, the make-up's, the babies, the weddings, the divorces etc you get the picture- if it was celebrity gossip we knew it. And so the trend continued and whilst working a long day in hospital i would long for my 3pm break and a chance to read and escape the sometimes overwhelming monotony in a magazine.
Then something happened. Hitting my 20's changed the desire i had and now, at the grand old age of 25 i don't actually remember when i last picked up one of the magazines. I have no clue who is who anymore, i can't name most of the faces in the magazine and nor do i care whose fallen out with whom.
So how can i explain this shift, well that's just it, i don't know whether it happens to everyone or me alone but i actually think of the cult of celebrity as something that is much more than cheap headlines and quick stories. I read MarieCalire, Vogue, Lifescape etc now because to me the fashion designers, the life changers, the hidden faces- those are the celebrity to me. Perhaps people are right when they say there is a scale of celebrities- from A class to z-what's their name class. But why would you want the whole world to know your intimate life details- why splash everything all over the glossy pages- money? Well of course money makes the world goes round and yes it's lovely to have some but making a career by living life in the spotlight just so you can drive a fancy car or live in a huge house- is it really worth sacrificing happiness, friends, trust and overall sanity for?
But yet perhaps there is more to it. Perhaps they are mainly filling the voyeuristic need embedded somewhere in all humans. You know that inner compulsion in you that when you pass an accident in the car you want to peer over and see what happened. The urge to know every little detail about celebrities, probably because we would consider it anti-social to delve into the private lives of family, friends, colleagues etc. So are these magazines just a way for us, society, to serve our own needs without being anti-social?
I'm not going to go into whether or not these magazines inspire people negatively, or positively- this is more about the cult of the so-called celebrity. I consider great actors/actresses, singers, bands, artists, writers, chefs- all celebrity but they don't have to be in the public limelight for me to think that of them. Dedication to their craft, love of their skill, passion for what they do and an eagerness never to stop. To me a celebrity is someone to whom if you took away the money, the glitz and the paparazzi would still do their trade because they love it.
In some ways i pity the people whose lives are lived out for the world to read. I worry about the future for them, the prospects for their families, their health but i also know that no-one s forcing them into this mould. I don't care if celebrity 'x' is on a diet or celebrity 'y' is getting divorced when celebrity 'd' is pregnant with celebrity '?' baby. I simply don't care- walk round your locality- you will find many dieters, divorcee's, pregnancies- why aren't they splashed all over the media? Because we know it isn't normal to be normal and we get on with it.
Perhaps reading about the escapades of celebrity life this way takes us to another world, leaves our drama behind, let's us enter an almost real-life soap opera. But why not lose yourself in a book, or an article that challenges your mind and thinking?
If someone had said to me 4 years ago i wouldn't be reading these magazines i'd have laughed, but escaping your own problems by trying to focus on absurd celebrity one's ultimately got me nowhere.
So yeah, a rant that ultimately made no sense apart from in my head most probably but yeah, i needed to say it.
Said.
xxx
