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Celebrities Have Nothing Left to Offer Us
The rich and famous once offered escapism. Now they’re just a constant reminder of how unequal things are.
As a longtime consumer of all things celebrity, I’ve been using famous people to escape from myself for as long as I can remember. When I was little, celebrities were my own personal Barbie dolls. My sister and I would play intricate games where we would pretend to be various celebs, whom we sorted into families; this allowed us to inhabit a universe where we were widely beloved, blonde, and lived on a private island. As a school kid in the late 1990s, I was uninterested in playing with my peers, some of whom bullied me, and would instead spend recess pacing back and forth across a secluded nook in the playground, pretending to be a world-famous pop star with blue eyes and a belly button ring. It wasn’t any particular celebrity I was interested in becoming, rather it was the idea of fame — of being on TV, of being the center of attention — that was so intoxicating to me.
I grew out of playing make-believe games at an appropriate age, but my celebrity obsession lives on. The older I’ve become, though, the less I actually want to be famous myself. When I was a girl, my relationship with stars was pure idol worship, but as a woman, the power dynamic in the relationship has…
