The High School Mentality of Today's Tabloids
this entry brought to you by sleater-kinney, "let's call it love"
At some point in the late 1990s, towards the turn of the century, our perception of celebrity changed a bit. It happened right at the tabloid explosion. It used to be the only celebrity gossip tabloids at the supermarket counter were the Inquirer and the Star-- nowadays, I'm not even sure the last time I even saw someone reading the Inquirer. Now the counters are flooded with them-- In Touch, Globe, even once respectable (if fluffy) US Magazine, which used to have honest-to-god articles, actual celebrity news, actual sit-down Q&A sessions, and actual studio photography instead of just paparrazi snaps, mutated into US Weekly, which is disappointing, because while it used to simply be fluff, now it's indistinguishable from every other celebrity rag.
I think what bothers me the most about our celebrity culture is that it panders to the attention whores, who inevitably end up being grade C celebrities. Sure, there are A-listers, like Angelina and Brad, but Angie's a bad girl, because when she's not getting more adopted children she's ruining marriages. And Tom Cruise has been in the spotlight lately, but that's because he seems very happy to make his flaming burn-out as public and desperate as possible. It's not that I can't understand why people would want to know the personal lives of Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie. One is an Oscar winning actress and the other is the single most popular, highest paid actor of his generation. I try and steer away from celebrity gossip as much as possible, but hell, even I occasionally indulge in gossip about actual celebrities.
Except Angelina Jolie, as popular as she is, still does not edge out C- listers like Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton, who are quite easily the number one and number two in terms of ubiquity for the past couple years. The obsession over people who are essentially nobodies reminds me of high school.
I only know from my own personal high school experience, but I'm assuming the same went for your school. The three most popular girls in the school were never the prettiest or, for that matter, the most accomplished. Certainly, the most popular girls were pretty. And certainly, they got good grades and were captains of several sports teams, as well as being cheerleaders. But they never got the best grades. They were never class valedictorian, or on the class schoolboard, the people who did the most afterschool work. And they were never, ever the prettiest.
I remember in my own school, one of the three most popular in the school was this girl, I don't remember her name. She was ridiculously skinny, to the point where you wondered anorexia. She had no boobs; had the body of a 14 year old boy. She wore braces. You would think that she would have been endlessly ridiculed. Except she was excessively rich. Her father was the coach of the local college basketball team. She wore the nicest clothes. She knew how to network. It never ceased to amaze me that here we has this awkward, gangly girl who never even shared a class with, and yet I knew who she was, simply because her dad was the coach to a sport I didn't even care about, and this was information I didn't even know until my sophomore year. All I knew was she was everywhere.
This is much like Jessica Simpson. Certainly, she's known for a reason-- she's a singer. However, despite that her lip-synching sister has had two number one albums, she has had none. The one movie she was in, The Dukes of Hazzard, was a tremendous flop. Yes, she's attractive as far as human beings go-- she has two eye that are in the center of her face, a nose with two nostrils, and a mouth, an she has a nice body, in the way that anybody who has a personal trainer has a nice body. She is attractive in a way that everyone else in Los An gelis is attractive, but I could wander around a mall for 30 minutes and find a dozen girls her age much more attractive. Furthermore, the one thing that she is famous for is being in a reality show where she was notorious for being mentally retarded. And yet, somehow, despite the fact that no one knows why they like her, she's everywhere. Women swear they wish they could be more like her. She's everywhere, and yet no one seems to know why.
Paris Hilton represents the worst kind of new celebrity, and is without a doubt the perfect example of the high school mentality I'm talking about. Paris Hilton has in fact gotten a record contract, been in a tv show as well as a supporting cast slot in a few movies. But she got all these because she was already famous. So what, exactly, is she famous for? Well, she's rich. But there are tons of other rich people all over the country that aren't on the cover of magazines (her sister, in fact, is also a billionaire heiress, but is rarely seen). Like the cheerleader in high school, she is awkward looking and shaped like a boy. Like the cheerleader in high school, she is famous for being rich and for showing up where her face can be seen everywhere. Paris Hilton is also unanimously regarded as being a bad person. This, apparently, does not change anyone's desire to want to see her. The same was true in high school. They were all complete assholes that nobody actually like, but, miraculously, they were always voted most popular at the end of the year.
I don't see why our entire society should be subjected to C-list celebrities as if they're royalty, on the cover of a dozen tabloids a week, in the headlines of blogs, on E!, on those truly terrible Entertainment Tonight knock-offs like Access Hollywood, especially when nobody naturally cares about them, or at least wouldn't care if they weren't on the cover of every magazine. I don't see why I should have to be subjected to high school crap this long after I was actually in high school.
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with love from CRS @ 8:26 PM
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
At some point in the late 1990s, towards the turn of the century, our perception of celebrity changed a bit. It happened right at the tabloid explosion. It used to be the only celebrity gossip tabloids at the supermarket counter were the Inquirer and the Star-- nowadays, I'm not even sure the last time I even saw someone reading the Inquirer. Now the counters are flooded with them-- In Touch, Globe, even once respectable (if fluffy) US Magazine, which used to have honest-to-god articles, actual celebrity news, actual sit-down Q&A sessions, and actual studio photography instead of just paparrazi snaps, mutated into US Weekly, which is disappointing, because while it used to simply be fluff, now it's indistinguishable from every other celebrity rag.
I think what bothers me the most about our celebrity culture is that it panders to the attention whores, who inevitably end up being grade C celebrities. Sure, there are A-listers, like Angelina and Brad, but Angie's a bad girl, because when she's not getting more adopted children she's ruining marriages. And Tom Cruise has been in the spotlight lately, but that's because he seems very happy to make his flaming burn-out as public and desperate as possible. It's not that I can't understand why people would want to know the personal lives of Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie. One is an Oscar winning actress and the other is the single most popular, highest paid actor of his generation. I try and steer away from celebrity gossip as much as possible, but hell, even I occasionally indulge in gossip about actual celebrities.
Except Angelina Jolie, as popular as she is, still does not edge out C- listers like Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton, who are quite easily the number one and number two in terms of ubiquity for the past couple years. The obsession over people who are essentially nobodies reminds me of high school.
I only know from my own personal high school experience, but I'm assuming the same went for your school. The three most popular girls in the school were never the prettiest or, for that matter, the most accomplished. Certainly, the most popular girls were pretty. And certainly, they got good grades and were captains of several sports teams, as well as being cheerleaders. But they never got the best grades. They were never class valedictorian, or on the class schoolboard, the people who did the most afterschool work. And they were never, ever the prettiest.
I remember in my own school, one of the three most popular in the school was this girl, I don't remember her name. She was ridiculously skinny, to the point where you wondered anorexia. She had no boobs; had the body of a 14 year old boy. She wore braces. You would think that she would have been endlessly ridiculed. Except she was excessively rich. Her father was the coach of the local college basketball team. She wore the nicest clothes. She knew how to network. It never ceased to amaze me that here we has this awkward, gangly girl who never even shared a class with, and yet I knew who she was, simply because her dad was the coach to a sport I didn't even care about, and this was information I didn't even know until my sophomore year. All I knew was she was everywhere.
This is much like Jessica Simpson. Certainly, she's known for a reason-- she's a singer. However, despite that her lip-synching sister has had two number one albums, she has had none. The one movie she was in, The Dukes of Hazzard, was a tremendous flop. Yes, she's attractive as far as human beings go-- she has two eye that are in the center of her face, a nose with two nostrils, and a mouth, an she has a nice body, in the way that anybody who has a personal trainer has a nice body. She is attractive in a way that everyone else in Los An gelis is attractive, but I could wander around a mall for 30 minutes and find a dozen girls her age much more attractive. Furthermore, the one thing that she is famous for is being in a reality show where she was notorious for being mentally retarded. And yet, somehow, despite the fact that no one knows why they like her, she's everywhere. Women swear they wish they could be more like her. She's everywhere, and yet no one seems to know why.
Paris Hilton represents the worst kind of new celebrity, and is without a doubt the perfect example of the high school mentality I'm talking about. Paris Hilton has in fact gotten a record contract, been in a tv show as well as a supporting cast slot in a few movies. But she got all these because she was already famous. So what, exactly, is she famous for? Well, she's rich. But there are tons of other rich people all over the country that aren't on the cover of magazines (her sister, in fact, is also a billionaire heiress, but is rarely seen). Like the cheerleader in high school, she is awkward looking and shaped like a boy. Like the cheerleader in high school, she is famous for being rich and for showing up where her face can be seen everywhere. Paris Hilton is also unanimously regarded as being a bad person. This, apparently, does not change anyone's desire to want to see her. The same was true in high school. They were all complete assholes that nobody actually like, but, miraculously, they were always voted most popular at the end of the year.
I don't see why our entire society should be subjected to C-list celebrities as if they're royalty, on the cover of a dozen tabloids a week, in the headlines of blogs, on E!, on those truly terrible Entertainment Tonight knock-offs like Access Hollywood, especially when nobody naturally cares about them, or at least wouldn't care if they weren't on the cover of every magazine. I don't see why I should have to be subjected to high school crap this long after I was actually in high school.
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