I'm a fan of Twitter. It's hard to explain why as such... it's not as versatile as Facebook or Myspace, but there is something almost voyeuristic about the glimpses we get into the lives of friends, family and ... of course... celebrities. Although it may be interesting to know that your best mate is nursing a hangover from the "party of the decade" or that your Uncle Bob is snoring over his beer in front of the Sunday Rugby game, there is something far more riveting in seeing the latest post from the multitude of celebrities that most of us follow.
The question we have to ask ourselves is "why"? Why do we follow these people that we've never met and are never likely to? Do we think that they look at their list of followers and wonder about us? Possibly... and possibly they do, but I think that the reason we love to follow them is because it allows us to see that they are as human and flawed as we are. That they find the same joy in the simple things that we do. They love their kids, pets, friends and family and they count "sleeps" until big events the same as us. It allows us to see beyond the hype and the 'celebrity' to the person who - when all is said and done - is just doing a job.
I admit that I enjoy the odd dose of tabloid magazines, newspapers, websites and TV shows and find them largely entertaining. Sometimes though, they make me really mad. Who are these journalists, and who are we as members of the public, to judge a celebrity for what they wear, don't wear, who they date, how they cope or how they raise their kids?? Not one single one of us would live up to the standards we set for them if our OWN lives were to be examined as closely and as regularly.
For example, when our own kids wear knee high boots, black clothes and make-up to a Halloween party at a young age, it's seen as "dressing up for fun", not bad parenting and advocating child porn. Our breakups are handled in private and are messy and tearful and usually full of yelling and hate and emotion, but heaven help a celebrity who doesn't manage to do things perfectly. We are soooo fallible, yet we hold others to some ideal that we cannot hope to accomplish given a hundred lifetimes.
I hear people say that celebrities need to be more responsible because they are role models. I hear people say that they have no rights to privacy because they "chose to be famous". I beg to differ. Celebrities didn't choose to be famous... they chose to follow a career in entertainment. This simply means that they were artistically inclined, be it drama, music, art, written word, sport, etc and made a career out of it. This is not the pursuit of fame (although for some, I acknowledge, fame is a big attraction), but rather the pursuit of excellence in a chosen field. That is no more the pursuit of fame than the teacher who strives to do her best or the fireman who wants to become firechief one day. Do we invade the teachers private life on a daily basis? The fireman? Do we report on their shopping habits, speculate on their lovelives or lack there of? No. We don't have the right and we shouldn't assume we have the right just because someone is widely well known.
As for making a celebrity a role model and judging them because of this.... I say STOP! As a parent, it is YOUR job to live a life that shows your children what is expected of you. YOU should be the one that they look to for guidance on how to live a good life and achieve greatness. If they aspire to be a great actress, sports star, author or singer, it should be because they want to achieve the best with the talents they have. It is OUR job as parents to ensure that they understand that the person on the poster, the person in the magazines, is a real person, with flaws. It is OUR job to steer them towards choices that don't involve public nudity, drug or alcohol abuse and it is OUR job to be role models.
If we took every criticism or expectation that we - as a society - level at celebrities and turned them against ourselves, I think we would find that none of us can live up to these standards. After all, we are all only human.
So thank you to Twitter for providing the window through which we can see that we're all just the same. That we share joys and sadness and that at the heart of every "image" is a person just trying to do the best they can.
Until next time...
Jo
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