Coo Coo for Celebrities

America has become a culture obsessed with celebrity and fame. I challenge anyone to go to their local grocery store and pick out a magazine that doesn’t feature some kind of news on the “Hollywood scene.” Whether it’s the newest baby Angelina and Brad have decided to adopt (isn’t there a limit on how many Cambodian babies one celebrity can have?) or which rehab center Lindsey Lohan checked herself into this week, the public can’t seem to get enough of celebrities. And while it isn’t a big deal to pick up a magazine in the store and browse it while you shop, more and more people are taking this obsession to a whole new level.

The Teen Fangirls

Probably the scariest fan out there is the teenage or more recently the pre-teen girl. These are the girls that cover their walls in in Jacob vs. Edward posters, dedicate shrines to the Jonas Brothers, and only wear clothing from the Miley Cyrus line at Wal-Mart (who knew being Hannah Montana qualified you to be a fashion designer). Teen and pre-teen girls go insane for celebrities, male and female, but they generally pursue the younger Hollywood crowd. One reason for this is the fantasy that comes along with celebrity obsession. When you’re a pre-teen, life may be dull or boring. One way to escape reality is to obsess over a celebrity. By imagining their first meeting with Zac Efron or that one day you’ll be married to Taylor Lautner, teens create an entirely new world for themselves. According to many articles, obsession with celebrity, to some degree, is normal. Frank Sinatra had his band of “bobby soxers” and The Beatles had American girls swooning over them as soon as they crossed the pond. But the problem with teenage celebrity obsession today is two-fold. For one thing, there is no comparison between musicians like Sinatra and The Beatles to that of Demi Levato and Selena Gomez. It’s sad when the youth of America thinks that Justin Bieber is the greatest musician to ever walk the planet (not that he isn’t talented; I wouldn’t want to upset anyone currently suffering from Bieber fever). The second problem comes when these girls focus more on the life of someone they’ll probably never meet instead of their own. When a girl is dyeing her hair to match Miley or trying to lose weight so she looks like the anorexic Olsen twin, obsession becomes a problem.

The Moms

What’s even sadder than a teenager obsessed with a celebrity, is a fully-grown woman who mirrors her obsession. How can the teen girl ever grow out of her fixation with Joe Jonas when her mom’s favorite outfit includes a t-shirt with his face on it? While it’s normal to be crazed about celebrities when you’re young and impressionable, it’s not so great to have that same fascination when you’re middle-aged. Stories of women asking Robert Pattinson to bite their babies, or fainting when they see Justin Bieber in concert (why are they even at that concert by the way?) are ridiculous and a little terrifying. No wonder celebs are afraid to come out of their homes or walk down the street. It’s one thing to have 13 year olds running after you but to have a grown woman clawing at your clothes and screaming for an autograph is something straight from an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

I understand why it’s so easy to follow the life of celebrities; with social media like Facebook and tons of entertainment television shows and blogs, it’s hard not to know what’s happening with the Governator and his love child or Palin’s plastic surgery. But when our lives become more about a select group of people than ourselves, it’s time for a change. We, as “normal” people have to remember that being a celebrity is just a job, and we all have one of those. Pattinson isn’t really a 100 year old vampire (and even if he were, he’s in love with Bella Swan, not you) and Bieber is just a boy who hasn’t gone through puberty yet. Distinguishing the people from the personas they portray is something we all need to do so we can lessen this obsession with Hollywood, and start living our own lives again.

picture from mamapop.com