I
have been wondering about Celebrity obsession and what it really does to and
for us. I have tried to consider what it does for us but I can find nothing
else except entertainment: the few chuckles here and there, the occasional rush
of excitement when a celebrity couple breaks up, the banter, the cheer, the
comedy at the expense of the real lives of other people. There is nothing more
as far as I know. But how about what it does to us? Isn’t that much more
important?
I
have been wondering about anorexia. Anorexia is a mental disorder in which
patients starve themselves or use other techniques such as vomiting to induce
weight loss. Now the exact causes of anorexia are unknown however there are psychological
and social factors that contribute greatly in the development of the disorder. And
of course, the biggest culprit is the twenty first century and this obsession. An
interesting statistic states that the incidence of anorexia (incidence of a
disease means the new cases of that disease) has doubled since 1970 and this
rise in new cases is a side-effect of a genuine increase in number of persons
affected and not merely an underreporting of cases before 1970. Plus, over 90%
of patients diagnosed with the disorder as of the year 2001 are females.
We
live in a celebrity obsessed world; this is the reason the Kardashians is a
thing, it is the reason Big Brother is a thing, it is probably also the reason
a vile Donald Trump may become the next president of the greatest country in
the world, United States of America. This obsession of ours is why a 14 or 15
year old child would want to ‘watch her weight’ and watch what she eats because
she wants to maintain a figure. A figure she does not even have in the first
place. Sixteen year old girls take pills for this same reason; they do not want
to get ‘fat’. And here, ‘fat’ means something completely different to them than
what fat really means. The celebrity obsession has turned childhood, especially
for females into this hustle to be perfect, to be an exact replica of your favourite
reality star because to them that is what it means to be happy, that is what
contentment looks like. These stars do not show us when they cry and so we
think that they do not cry, and that is perfection, isn’t it? A life where you
are always smiling, where you are posing for pictures, where everybody wants to
take a selfie with you, and the few times you are unhappy, you unhappy for
stupid reasons like person A did not show up for your party. Everyone would
love that life; but not everyone realizes that that life is false. And that is
the problem.
I
have been wondering about make-up, too and while I have no problems per se with
make-up, I feel that standards and self-esteem are very important things. The big
companies that produce these things and their advertisements and billboards
showcasing their products, feature these celebrities we are obsessed with and
it convinces these little girls (these vulnerable little girls again) that they
need make-up to be good looking, that they are not beautiful (definitely not as
beautiful) unless they wear Dior eyeliners and Avon shadows and NARS lipsticks.
But these things are lowering their self-esteem because even with those expensive
products, they will never, ever be beautiful enough to catch up with the
standards that have been subconsciously engraved into their consciousness. These
standards of beauty, they can never meet.
There
is no foreseeable solution to this obsession of ours. The damage has been done
already. But the future is always a place we can look to with hope. And hope is
one thing we can always have no matter what. So let’s hope that at some point
in the future, by some miracle, we shall be cured of this obsession that does
way, way, way more to us and our little vulnerable children than it can ever do
for us.
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