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.
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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 switched. Following the small dramas of their everyday lives remains a way for me to escape my own life, which I now do through the lens of superiority.
Celebrities have stupid and petty problems — just like us! Unlike when I read “hard” news, I can immerse myself in their dilemmas without any fear it will make me feel bad about the world. I look back on summer 2017 warmly, because that was when Lena Dunham put her rescue dog Lamby up for adoption under peculiar circumstances. Lamby, who Dunham wrote and posted about excessively for years, apparently suffered from behavioral issues that not even a stint at doggy rehab could fix. But the shelter where she adopted him disputed her claims — “when she…
