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_Culture Shift:_ Celebrities give people something to admire, envy, and aspire to

By Lillian Boodaghians

Oct. 11, 2012 12:31 a.m.

My friend recently told me, or better yet, exclaimed at me, “Michael Fassbender has ruined me for other men!”

To the best of my knowledge, she hasn’t been in a relationship or in anyway involved with the actor, so this very definite conclusion kind of surprised me. Shocked by the absurdity of it, I felt the only appropriate response was to burst out laughing. To her, Fassbender is the image of perfection, one that, in her opinion, is unequalled in the real world.

I agree he is quite attractive, and though I’m sure his parents are important contributors to his loveliness, celebrity also plays a large part in his beauty. There is somewhat of an engineered quality in celebrity appeal. Frankly, how many Scarlett Johanssons, Ryan Goslings or Emma Stones do we see walking down the street?
It used to be that the most spoken about issue that stemmed from such celebrity addiction was body image. I admit that after seeing “The Dark Knight Rises,” Anne Hathaway’s minuscule waist was (and still is) a topic of thought and amazement for me personally. And I’m sure similar thoughts have passed through the male mind upon seeing Christian Bale.

Now it seems, our celebrity-centric “problems” have extended beyond that.

With the sheer amount of celebrity we see on a daily basis ““ on TV, on the internet, in movies ““ it’s difficult to keep from becoming trapped in their world. We get so much information about these people that it’s almost like we live with them.

This type of one-sided, “intimate” relationship is what sometimes keeps us from being able to accept and experience our own reality. But, if approached with a little more rationality and a little less romanticism, I don’t think these desires to live like celebrities are such a bad thing. Sure, that may sound superficial and cause a few eye rolls, but let me explain.

Seeing something we think we like, something we want and don’t have, is a great motivator.

It’s like that guy in your physics class that always screws up the curve by getting a ridiculously high grade on the midterm: you want to be him, you want to be the one getting that grade and messing up the curve for everyone else.

That’s the negative way of thinking about it. But really, what we are striving for is to make ourselves better, to achieve our full potential.

No one can be that awesome without trying. It’s not like Anne Hathaway sat on the couch for months eating chips and watching “Gilmore Girls” marathons and somehow magically ended up with a great body. It took work, and we have to appreciate that.

It makes me think that maybe if I weren’t so lazy, I, too, could be as fit as Hathaway, but that’s on me. And so maybe we aren’t all blessed with the stunning looks of those people we see on the screen (what I wouldn’t give to be 5 inches taller and have long, smooth locks of hair), but we have other things going for us.

The real problem isn’t the fact that celebrity is out there, it’s the way we are interpreting it. They do essentially live in a world different from ours, they have access to things we don’t and we can’t help that.

We, in the regular world, have other responsibilities, like going to class or doing homework or working. Though they may not be as glamorous, in our world, they are just as important.

What is critical in both cases, however, is dedication. Celebrities are dedicated people, to both their talents and, in some cases, their image. It is this dedication that we should be obsessed with and aspire toward, not so much the material aspects.

And so, though we can bag on it as much as we like, I would like to take a moment and thank the celebrity world, not only for being entertaining, but also for making us see what we would like to improve in our own world.

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Lillian Boodaghians
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