Is Angelina losing weight? Did Jen call Brad? Does anyone really
care? Actually, yes
– enough to keep afloat half-a-dozen celebrity-news magazines,
the ones that peer at you from behind racks in grocery-store
check-out lines. They scream their gossip in bright-pink headlines
and super-glossy photos, and try as you might, you don’t look
away.
Is Angelina losing weight? Did Jen call Brad? Does anyone really care? Actually, yes – enough to keep afloat half-a-dozen celebrity-news magazines, the ones that peer at you from behind racks in grocery-store check-out lines. They scream their gossip in bright-pink headlines and super-glossy photos, and try as you might, you don’t look away.
Inside, their pages trumpet, scrutinize and exaggerate the latest celebrity scenes, from Renee Zellweger filling her car with gas to Katie Holmes’ grand plans to wed Tom Cruise. Relief is fleeting when you arrive home and turn on the television to find at least three different Hollywood-entertainment shows.
Sensationalist, perhaps, but America’s obsession with the celebrity isn’t going away soon. Between 2003 and 2004, single-copy sales of In Touch Weekly – a photo-heavy, roughly 50-page glossy – grew 77.6 percent, according to the Magazine Publishers of America, a consumer-magazine industry association. In Touch raked in $87.9 million in 2004 for single-copy and subscription sales combined, while Us Weekly – the leading celebrity-news magazine behind People – earned a combined $171.3 million in 2004, according to the association.
So, why this fascination with celebrities’ lives? It’s a combination of things, said Kathleen Wilson, a Morgan Hill-based marriage and family therapist who counsels teenagers and adults. Some people are looking for role models or idols, while others are searching for a sense of identity, she said.
“Some of it, I think, is glamour-seeking. We’re wanting for ourselves what we see in them and in their lives,” Wilson said. “There were always kings and queens that regular people hated but still admired. We don’t have that now, that glamorous type of leader, so we look to celebrities for that idol worship.”
A preoccupation with celebrities can be fun – it’s simple entertainment that doesn’t require much thought, and it can serve as a distraction or escape from the sometimes-drab reality of our own lives. It also can connect us – the regular old Joes – to the elusive figures we hear and see so much of. Some people feel comforted knowing even the rich and famous experience heart break, financial distress and bad career moves, said Donna Cohen Cretcher, a marriage and family therapist in Morgan Hill.
If we want to look the part, celebrity magazines also offer pages of cheap knock-off clothing and jewelry as well as tips on how to imitate the stars’ latest trends. And on the days we don’t look so glamorous, there’s something oddly satisfying in staring at paparazzi shots of the usually beautiful running errands in sweatpants, dingy T-shirts, wet hair and no makeup.
For Johanna Silvera, a 27-year-old Gilroy resident, leafing through the magazines is a fun way to relax. She doesn’t subscribe to any of the gossip magazines, but once every couple of weeks, she’ll give in to the temptation while waiting to pay for groceries and throw one in her cart.
“They’re so trashy, so I feel guilty sometimes because I do buy them,” she said recently, standing in line at Safeway in Gilroy while gazing at pictures of an apparently shrinking Angelina Jolie. “But it’s a good escape. They’re mindless. Most of it just makes me laugh because a lot of it is so stupid.”
Silvera’s interest is innocent enough, and it likely represents the motivation behind a pretty good chunk of the magazines’ buyers. But such a following can become riskier when people try too hard to emulate celebrity lifestyles, which, for most people, are unattainable.
“It especially can become a problem for females trying to emulate these stars who are doing whatever they can to be attractive to the American public, even at the extreme of their health,” Cretcher said. She mentioned stars such as 19-year-old Mary-Kate Olsen, who entered a treatment facility last summer for an eating disorder. “Our younger population and females, I think, are a lot more involved in following that sort of thing.”
For teenagers especially, celebrities’ sex scandals and latest top-dollar purchases are detours to finding what truly matters in life, Wilson said.
“We’ve become very materialistic in our culture,” she said. “There’s such an emphasis placed on youth and beauty instead of looking at developing character and developing things in our lives that really have merit. I think it’s indicative of where we’re going as a culture.”
Whether following celebrities’ lives is a good or bad thing for society, technology has played a major role in propagating the interest, said Marliyn Abad-Cardinalli, professor of theater arts and television at Gavilan Community College and executive producer for GAV-TV Channel 18. Technology also has made it easier for more “normal” people to achieve fame, she said. Think reality TV.
“Celebrity is something that’s becoming more accessible to more people – the whole ’15 minutes of fame,'” she said. “People have found more in-roads to fame. And more people have more access to information about people they want to know about. I don’t think there’s necessarily been a change in the need for people to get that information, but there has been an increase in the ability.”
