As I am a teenager I listen to quite a bit of the 'pop' music out right now supplied to my age group by many stars including (but not limited to) Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Justin Bieber, and many other pop stars and divas. A big question I have been pondering upon is that what is it about celebrities that make us go bonkers over them? Often times we look at celebrities as perfected, celestial, and glamorous beings who, if they make a mistake in their life or take a darker path and the media finds out, society suddenly flips their perspective of them to a trashy star who doesn't deserve their fan's support and affection. In July I won a radio contest with my friend to meet Joe Jonas at a private meet and greet. I felt a little out of place as he walked in and greeted all the girls, and I watched in slight amusement as they all took out their cameras and recorded his every move. I had entered the contest for my friend since she has an unquenchable burning passion for the Jonas Brothers, and just to our luck she won and I also won seperately, so we were able to go together. Everyone was so thrilled to meet Joe including myself, but as I am not a die hard fan of the Jo Bro'sI tried to enjoy myself though I felt guilty knowing some other girl who had tried to win the radio contest was sitting at home sulking while another girl enjoyed herself, and I'm not even a fan.
As I observed Joe there came a point in the program when we were allowed to ask him one question. A few girls asked questions akin to questions such as "What hair product do you use?" He responded with 'Whatever people give him to use,' and it clicked in my head that Joe Jonas and every other celebrity in the world is just like we average citizens of the world. Johnny Depp still eats the same brands of cereal you do, Kate Beckinsale still watches the same movies that we've seen and own, Anne Hathaway uses toothpaste that we've tasted and used ourselves, Tina Fey still abides by the same laws that we do, and Joe Jonas still wakes up in the morning and uses the same kind of hair products available to us. Stars in reality aren't truly what they're cracked up to be when you truly examine that 'theory.' We see their beautiful faces and maybe even pleasing figures on the TV screen and they become so familiar to us on that square of glass that if we were able to meet them in person we'd keel over and faint from disbelief that they were actually there in front of us. But when you take a look at who they really are, aside from their trained talents and occasionally good looks, are they really much different than us? Are they really that great?
Recently my friend introduced me to Demi Lovato's new song "Skyscraper." Personally I think Demi has a gorgeous voice and is a very talented and a beautiful girl. I'd never truly given her much of my attention until my friend explained to me some of the things that have recently happened in Demi's life, and the motivation for her new hit song. To my surprise I learned that she had struggled with eating disorders and cutting herself for most of her life. She'd never sought help for these issues before until due to a misunderstanding and an argument, she hit one of her dancers. She felt terrible and that was the straw that broke the camel's back for Demi and made the decision for her to check into a rehabilitation center.
Now before treatment Demi had already written the song "Skyscraper" over a year ago and she had never performed it because her vocal abilities weren't very impressive due to her eating disorder known as bulimia. She found that the song rang true to her life currently more than ever and it has been released and become extremely popular. The chorus is definitely powerful, especially when you can match up the words to Demi's life and what the lyrics mean to her. Reading deeper into Demi Lovato's life through the past years and watching some of her current interviews off of youtube it really has given me a wake-up call concerning celebrities and how miraculous we make them seem when in reality they're not the Gods and Goddesses we live them up to be. And digging deeper into my now piqued interest I found many familiar celebrities who have (or had) bipolar disorder. Just a select few are Catherine Zeta-Jones (actress), Amy Winehouse (musician), Ozzy Osbourne (singer), Ernest Hemingway (writer), Mel Gibson (actor/director), and plenty more. In a bizarre way, my findings of these actors and actresses struggling with a disorder I've had since I was very young was the axe that severed their untouchable glory, superiority and perfection from truth, reality and the bigger picture.
And what's the bigger picture to me? They're just people. Key word: JUST. Maybe there's hundreds of factors that make them different from the bum on the street begging for change, or the lady with four children trying to get her shopping done while they're all crying, or the teenager with his head bowed with hands stuffed in pockets on the bus, or even the successful business man power-walking down the street who passes you to get to work. But maybe that bum cleaned up, sober, and lucid is a very good man who has the potential of something great. Maybe that woman shopping was once the Miss Florida pageant winner years before she had her first child. And maybe the teenager with his head bowed staring at the floor of the bus is composing a new song in his head that could get him a big break and grant him privileges to walk up the staircase of fame. And that business man? Well maybe he's got a hidden itch for influential writing that could change people's lives if he put his mind to writing something. Either way, they're still just average people, yet that's how all stars started off; average and plain.
Now this just sounds like jibberish! And I admit a lot of it is. My point five paragraphs later is that movie stars are just like us, maybe minus the money and personal chefs, hairstylists, and private beach houses but they face same things we do. They eat the same food, they wear the same perfume, they do the same things! Moreover we aren't perfect, the famous aren't perfect, and they deal with it best as they can like us. I'm not quite sure what my entire point to this long rant was since I started it back in August, but I do know that my feelings have changed about the rich and/or famous. I used to look at magazines while waiting in the grocery line to pay, and read juicy headlines bolding words about something about some star's life, and I would find myself immediately having a bias about them because of the stupid headline. I have gotten better at jumping to opinions, especially knowing quite a few of these stars struggle with the same disorder I do. I hate being bipolar but I've managed to live with it, but that doesn't mean it's gotten easy. Knowing the things I've had to go through because of my disorder and difficulties it sometimes plagues with with, I am granted with a new perspective about their lives and though we may be in different circumstances and situations, they're just an everyday person inside, just like me.
