celebrity treatment

People complain about how celebrities are treated more lenient than regular citizens; however, in my opinion, we are the ones that allow it.  If we would just stop paying attention to them and acting as if they are the gods of our socitey, then there is a good chance that people will top treating them like gods and they start being treated like everyone else.  It annoys me how we complain when we are the cause of it. 

Beneficial to our Society

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3147343.stm

I completely agree with this article.  Using celebrities as models help us strive for success in our own lives.  I also agree with the fact that those who become celebrity stalkers already have problems and would stalk anyone.  It only becomes a major issue that the person is stalking because it happens to be a celebrity.  Obviously stalking is a problem, but it does not need to be given the name “celebrity worship syndrome.”  It is exactly the same as if a person would be stalking any ramdom person and there is no name given to that besides maybe psycho. 

Is the American dream to be a celebrity?

http://www.violentacres.com/archives/204/celebrity-worship-and-the-american-dream

Obviously the “American Dream” has changed throughout time because society has made advancements and has changed throughout time.  If it had not changed, the American dream would still include the women’s role to consist of being the uneducated, stay at home mom who answers only to her husband’s orders on a daily basis.  Wow, that sounds really fun to me!  Of course the American dream is going to change; however, I believe that the American dream is based on people’s perceptions of the perfect life.  If that means getting plastic surgery and being extremely wealthy and famous, then so be it.  However, my idea of the American dream is not like that.  Who is to say that there is a definition set in stone about what the American dream is?  Today it varies and is dependent on the person’s personal experiences and preferences.  It is not fair to say that the American dream is to live the life of celebrities because people’s ideas of the American dream are not the same. 

Is it necessary?

A psychologist’s job is to help people and help people’s self esteems.  So why would psychologists make up a ”syndrome” whose characteristics basically appeal to the entire American society?  By diagnosing people (which again, is basically all Americans) with this “syndrome”  psychologists are not helping people and their self esteem’s, they are hurting them.  They are hurting them because this “syndrome” is not a problem! If everyone has it, it is normal.  Why would they want to diagnose someone as having a syndrome when, chances are, they have enough problems to deal with in the first place.  I think that they should stick to diagnosing people with real diseases and syndromes, as well as only disgnosing them when it is truly necessary as it is in most medical cases.  I just dont understand why they would want to invent something else that they can tell people they have.  Do we really need to continue to invent things that can be wrong with someone? 

its not a problem!

Celebrity worship is not a problem! We are doing nothing wrong by being interested in the people of our generation.  There have been popular people in every society since the beginning of time.  It has not ever posed a serious problem, so what makes us think that it will start?  If we would leave the issue alone and not try and “fix” it or figure out what causes it, chances are it would go away all together.  Plus, we are trying to “fix” something that doesnt even need to be fixed!  We are acting like we need something to consider a problem and are therefore choosing random issues just because we want to fix something.  However, we need to remember that there are MANY more problems that are of more importance and that are actual threats to our society.  We need to fix those before we go ahead and start making up “problems” just so we can fix something.

we focus too much attention on this issue

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/celebrity-worship

This website reinforces my opinion that we spend too much time talking about celebrity worship syndrome.  We could focus our attention on more important issues that face our society like gay rights or the War on Terror.  The people who have blogged about celebrity worship syndrome on this website are discussing something that is not even acting as a national threat.

reaction to abrooke’s blog “what defines a celebrity?”

i agree with her comments about this article.  we are the ones that makes people celebrities because without us paying attention to them, they are nothing.  for example, everyone complains that kevin federline has become a celebrity for no reason and that he is the biggest shmuck in today’s society; however, instead of just ignoring him all together which would result in the disappearance of him from the celebrity world, we and the media continue to acknowledge his presence, allowing him to gain more access into the celebrity world for doing nothing.  the criteria to become a celebrity has become blurred though.  we need to ask ourselves what exactly is a celebrity?

the familliar

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art28512.asp

i disagree with this woman’s argument that because people care about celebrities issues, they are avoiding their own problems…celebrities are the familliar in our society because they are in the spotlight…because they are familliar, we care about their issues, just like we would care about the issues of anyone in society

celebrity complaints

celebrities complain that because they are famous, people always come up to them and ask for autographs and pictures and they just “want to have a normal life.” this annoys me.  when you decide to be famous, you go into it knowing you are going to be set apart from the rest of society.  this is basically in your job description.  so i say to all celebrities that complain about being popular and famous to stop complaining.  they would complain even more if they were not successful and noone payed attention to them.  it would be like a teacher complaining that her students ask questions about the material being covered in class.  its part of the job, so deal with it or find a new one. 

popularity

my dad has always told me the more money that you  have the more money you are able to make.  celebrities reinforce this idea.  the richer the celebrity is, the more exposure they recieve, therefore causing them to become more popular.  the more popular a celebrity is, the more offers they are going to recieve, such as endorsements, movie offers, modeling contracts, etc.  the more popular a celebrity is, the more people are going to be obsessed with them because the celebrity will be saturating the media.  when the celebrity saturated the media we are basically forced to be interested in that specific celebrity because they are all we see when we look around.  they become familliar to us.