Table of Contents

Praise
Title Page
Copyright Page
Foreword
Introduction

Part One - What Is the Cult of Celebrity?

CHAPTER ONE - Worshipping at the Altar of In Touch

Weekly

One-named Gods and Goddesses

Challenging the Cult of Celebrity

CHAPTER TWO - Love, Hate, Awe— Our Perplexing

Relationship with the Stars

Our Friends on the Small Screen

When Worlds Collide
Why We Like to See Them Fall

CHAPTER THREE - How Stars Are Created: The Machine

Meet the Machine

Think Like a Star
Become a “Brand”

Part Two - The Impact the Cult of Celebrity

Has on Our Lives

CHAPTER FOUR - Fourteen Minutes and Counting

The Emerging Adults

Reality Check

CHAPTER FIVE - It’s Not a Generation Gap, It’s a Freakin’

Ravine

Parent vs. Celebrity Death Match

The Kurt Cobain Effect
Lollipop Land
CHAPTER SIX - I Bought It Because Jessica Simpson Said
I Should

The Human Brand

The Science of Celebrity Endorsement
Stealth Marketing
Stars Behaving Badly
What Halle Berry Knows About Makeup
What Julia Roberts Knows About Information
Technologies

CHAPTER SEVEN - Rock My World Then Save It

The Celebrity-hero
Issue Fatigue

CHAPTER EIGHT - Celebritocracy

How It All Began

Who’s Left, Who’s Right?
Politicians as Celebrities
Rock the Vote
The Celebrity Citizen

CHAPTER NINE - Success and Nuthin’ Less

Mediocrity Is Not an Option

I Play a Doctor in Real Life
What Is Success?

CHAPTER TEN - And Who Greenlights This Marriage?

The Joy of the Ex

Love-Life Archetypes
Can Two Egos Share One Relationship?

CHAPTER ELEVEN - Pumps, Humps, and Baby Bumps

Hypersex Is the New Cybersex

Entertaining Gays
Bump Watch America
At the Vanguard

In Conclusion
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Advance Praise for The Cult of Celebrity

“Cooper Lawrence’s exploration of celebrity culture is one of the

most ardent and straightforward analyses that we have. Her
expertise on all things celebrity and fame-related makes her the
ideal narrator . . . dissecting celebrity involvement in everything
from politics and world events to even what kind of lipstick we
should buy! All done with her dynamic humor and fervor.”
—RITA COSBY, EMMY AWARD-WINNING
JOURNALIST, FORMER MSNBC CORRESPONDENT

“Cooper’s vast wealth of pop culture knowledge makes her my first

choice to call when I need an expert opinion on celebrity
canoodling for OK! magazine. Her sense of humor and wit along
with her insight into personal relationships make her an invaluable
resource.”
—MEAGHAN MURPHY, WEST COAST NEWS EDITOR,
OK! MAGAZINE

“We love having Cooper contribute to the magazine. She has the
rare ability to take what’s going on in the celebrity world and break
it down in real-life terms. This book explores in depth why
‘celebrity’ is so important to our culture and why we care, yet it’s
done with that same genuine, no-pretense style.”
—PETER GROSSMAN, US WEEKLY MAGAZINE

“Need a locksmith to the door of understanding? Cooper is a

guiding light in a storm, her insight and wisdom light the path to
certainty and understanding. Cooper gave me back the power to
grow again in this business. Her book The Cult of Celebrity has
that same powerful impact.”
—CHRISTOPHER ATKINS, GOLDEN GLOBE-
NOMINATED ACTOR; COSTAR, THE BLUE LAGOON
 “Cooper Lawrence has keen, compassionate insight into the good,
the bad, and the ugly.”
—ADRIAN ZMED, ACTOR, T. J. HOOKER, GREASE 2

“Being with Cooper is like being with one of your closest friends—
one who happens to be a treasure trove of humor, wit, ease,
incredible sensibility, and a vivacious personality, all wrapped up
with intellect and experience.”
—ERIC NIES, MODEL/ACTOR, MTV’s REAL WORLD
AND FORMER HOST OF MTV’S THE GRIND

“In a world of lies, deception, ego, and the all-important ‘image,’

Cooper absolutely helped me keep a clear perception of myself,
my goals, and my beliefs. She believed in me and was a strong
voice of hope and reason in a time of dire need.”
—JEREMY JACKSON, ACTOR, BAYWATCH
 To buy books in quantity for corporate use or incentives, call (800)
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Copyright © 2009 by Cooper Lawrence

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or

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 FOREWORD

Every celebrity has that one moment when they realize

they’re famous. One actor I know said that his moment came
when he went to a Bon Jovi concert, sat in the front row, and
not only did the Bon Jovi fans want his autograph but Jon
Bon Jovi himself pointed at him from the stage. They may
deny it, but fame is a significant and vital part of celebrities’
lives, so when it first comes, they savor that moment. Trust
me.
The reason some actors thrive while others crash is
because they either do or don’t recognize the importance of
fame. And those who do, crave it. Any actor who tells you
that he doesn’t want fame is either lying or destined to be a
failure. If I said to any potential star, “Take off your clothes
and walk down Hollywood Boulevard and you will get a
starring role in the next Spielberg movie,” they’d be a fool
not to do it if they wanted to be famous. Fame brings you
power, money, freedom, and security: the power to make
choices about your own career; money to not have to take a
job you don’t want just to pay your bills; the freedom to work
when you want to and not work when you don’t; and the
security that your children will always be cared for. I would
like to add one more to this list—existence.
When I was a kid, about 8 or maybe even 10, my father
told me a story that I will never forget. My father had just
come from the funeral of a man he knew. The funeral for the
most part was ordinary except for this: In the midst of the
ceremony the son of the deceased man ran to the church
windows, flung them open, and began shouting at the top of
his lungs, “MY FATHER IS DEAD! . . . MY FATHER IS
DEAD!”
I asked my dad, “Why did the son do that?” and he told
me, “Because he wanted everyone to know that his father
had lived.”
It was at that moment that I realized the part of fame and
celebrity that has the most meaning for me. It is exactly that.
It’s proof that I have lived.
If fame is about living, then what happens to an actor who
has fame, but loses it? How does that change their view of
the life they have lived? It’s a question that my friends Jason
Hervey, Michael Swerdlick,and I had wondered about. Then
something amazing happened. Michael had heard a story
about a very famous actor who was no longer working in
Hollywood, but instead was doing regular blue-collar work.
When we heard the name we were floored. He used to be
such a star. And then the question changed to “What
happens to an actor who had fame and lost it, could he get it
back? And more importantly, to what lengths would he go to
get it back?”
This idea was crying out to be tested . . . on national
television. So we came up with Confessions of A Teen Idol.
I have a great relationship with VH1 after doing Scott Baio is
45 and Single and the subsequent Scott Baio is 46 and
Pregnant so it was a natural fit. The only piece missing was
finding our fame guru, the woman who would turn our idols of
the past into celebrities of the present. There was no
question in any of our minds: That woman was Cooper
Lawrence.
What it means to really have lived . . . as a star, and as a
celebrity from the perspective of the star makers, the fans,
and the stars themselves is revealed in this book. Cooper’s
unique perspective and unprecedented access exposes
certain truths about fame and celebrity that even I didn’t
realize. Just as there has never been a show about fame
rehab, there has never been a book that explains the roots
and power of fame and celebrity as clearly as Cooper has . .
. and now we have both.
Enjoy.
—SCOTT BAIO
 Introduction

When the hit TV show Scrubs was shooting its final season
with NBC, its star, Zach Braff, posted this on his blog: “The
show has been the most fun job I can ever imagine having;
going to work everyday and acting like a nerdy goofball with
all your friends is a pretty ideal gig for me. Plus now we have
an arcade with classic games like ‘Paperboy’ and
‘SpyHunter’ just in case the job wasn’t sweet enough.”
He left out the ridiculous amount of money the cast
members were paid to act like “nerdy goofballs” all day
together. (According to E! Online, Braff received as much as
$350,000 per episode.) No wonder a recent British survey
found that kids under ten years old believe the “very best
thing in the world” to become is a celebrity. For the 2,500
kids polled, “celebrity” beat out “God,” who ranked at only
number ten. Clearly He needs a better publicist.
Our fascination with all things celebrity has hit a historic
high. Britney Spears claims lead-story status on the AP wire;
Paris Hilton going to and from jail is considered breaking
news on CNN; and according to the Audit Bureau of
Circulations, People magazine sells better than Sports
Illustrated, Newsweek, and Playboy.
One of the great American scholars, Charles Eliot Norton,
once said, “Such things are never permanent in our country.
They burn brightly for a little while, and then burn out.” He
was referring to the likelihood of the longevity of the Atlantic,
but he may as well have been referring to celebrity culture.
He would have been wrong about both. The Atlantic,
founded in 1857, is still around today and I suspect now that
the genie is out of the bottle, celebrity culture and our
attraction to the intricacies of celebrity lives will also endure.
But what about more recent additions to our newsstands,
celebrity weeklies such as People, OK!, Us Weekly? So
fast is the turnover of celebrity news that we can barely
remember what was in those magazines a month ago—
does that mean they will “burn brightly for a little while” and
then go up in smoke?
Greta Garbo once said, “If only those who dream about
Hollywood knew how difficult it all is.” Renowned for living in
total seclusion, hidden from the photographers’ lenses, she
would no doubt be shocked by the media glare that stars
now endure 24/7 and by our ravenous appetite for details of
even the most intimate aspects of stars’ lives. The hounding
and sometimes near-total surveillance of celebrities makes
the attention stars such as Garbo received look tame.
 There was a time not too long ago when gossip and
scandal brought the famous down to earth. It humbled them
and made them appear more like us, with faults and
eccentricities, their lives not so different from ours. That is no
longer the case. Today gossip and scandal are the currency
of Hollywood: A stint in rehab brings a cache of coolness, a
DUI charge translates to extraordinary publicity. Things that
were once kept secret—an eating disorder, a childhood of
neglect—are revealed on magazine covers and in tell-all
books. While this media coverage may give the illusion that
stars are just like us, ultimately our attempt to find similarities
can only be met with disappointment.
And that’s because celebrities hold a unique position in
our society. There are only a handful of them, singled out for
attention and adoration from their anonymous mass of fans.
Their influence is great, and millions of people look to them
as experts on everything from fashion to politics. We know
their names, every person they’ve dated, how they decorate
their homes, how much they earned last year, the medical
crises they’ve faced, how they lost their baby weight, who
they voted for, what toothpaste they use, and just about every
other conceivable detail of their lives. Of us, they know . . .
nothing.
Actors, singers, and performers struggling to find fame
and establish their place in society is not new—but the idea
that they are society’s elite certainly is. Not so many
decades ago, those who we now call celebrities were
sometimes even scorned, attacked, or isolated. In his
acceptance speech at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG)
awards in 2008, actor Javier Bardem said, “My
grandparents were actors at a time when actors were not
allowed to be buried on sacred land because they were
‘homosexuals’ and ‘prostitutes’ so it’s been a long way to
come here.”
In his book The Frenzy of Renown, cultural studies expert
Leo Braudy notes that it has always been part of the human
condition for us to desire fame, but that historically, fame
was achieved only by the elite—people such as kings and
queens. He suggests that competition arose between the
reigning monarchs and artists (such as actors, writers, and
painters) over who could best understand and utilize “the
new world of media.” In the fifteenth century that might have
been Gutenberg’s printing press, while today it might be the
ability to receive news the instant it happens on your cell
phone. No matter what the technological advances have
been, it seems that the performers and artists are the ones
who have been able to capitalize the best, take the crown,
and become the new elite.
How did we get to be so celebrity obsessed? More
important, what does this obsession mean for our society,
our culture, and our daily lives? These are the questions that
inspired me to write The Cult of Celebrity.
This book is an investigation of why we idolize stars,
where their fame comes from, and why we deem them
worthy of guiding us through everything from the makeup
aisle at Wal-Mart to which candidate or charity to get behind.
I spoke to celebrities themselves. I spoke to
entertainment-industry insiders—the media, the producers,
the promoters, and the publicists who work in the shadows
to help turn ordinary human beings into stars. And I delved
into the latest research. The result is a book that explores
what makes us so fascinated by celebrities and why we
worship them. It explores the narcissism that makes so
many people—especially young people—not only want to
become celebrities but think they deserve to become
celebrities. And it looks at how constant media exposure to
celebrities affects the way we live our lives today.
Social commentators have begun discussing our
fascination with celebrities, and it has influenced the
direction of social science research. Many of us find
ourselves wondering where the obsession with celebrity
came from and what the implications are. These questions
need to be answered, as this is about more than idle interest
—it’s about issues that impact lives. Take one example: The
journal Developmental Psychology published findings in
2002 that 75 percent of adolescents had a strong attraction
to a celebrity and 59 percent were heavily influenced by their
favorite star. Great news if their idol is Amy Grant, maybe
not so great if it’s Amy Winehouse. The Cult of Celebrity
looks at the facts in order to answer parents’ fears that their
kids are learning bad habits from their hard-partying starlet
idols.
There are some positive lessons we can take from
celebrities—as long as we are aware of celebrity culture’s
negative impacts. To that end you’ll find plenty of advice
from experts so you can take control of the way you and your
family consume the celebrity stories you’re flooded with
every day, and keep them in perspective.
History will remember some of today’s stars as great
talents who led inspiring lives to be emulated and admired.
Others will be reduced to mere Trivial Pursuit questions, if
they’re lucky. Either way, why do celebrities capture
worldwide attention, and what can celebrity culture teach us
about ourselves?
 Part One

What Is the Cult of Celebrity?

 CHAPTER ONE

Worshipping at the Altar of In Touch

Weekly

Made into heroes and divine beings, stars are not simply objects
to be admired; they are objects of worship. Around them the
beginnings of a religion are born . . .
EDGAR MORIN, THE STARS

When the latest blockbuster movie comes out you know you
want to see it if George, Tom, or Brad is in it. When you hear
that Britney is at it again, there is no reason to think of
anyone other than Britney Spears. Ditto Paris and Lindsay.
And you’re not going to confuse Beyonce or Oprah with
some other Beyonce or Oprah, are you? Those at the very
peak of fame need only one name. That’s all it takes to
identify them from the other six and a half billion or so people
on the planet.
Though it may seem like a recent phenomenon, this one-
name thing is far from new. It is as old as . . . well, religion.
People known by only their first names are just as ubiquitous
in the Bible as they are on Entertainment Tonight. Moses,
Luke, Mary, for starters. I don’t need to say “Jesus of
Nazareth”—a simple “Jesus” will suffice. “God,” too—no
explanation necessary.
Okay, so Paris, Britney, and Lindsay might not quite be up
there with the Holy Trinity—but that doesn’t seem to stop us
from worshipping them and a multitude of other stars.
People and Us
Weekly sell millions of copies each week. The airwaves are
flooded with shows such as Extra! and Access Hollywood
that keep us up-to-date with the minutest details of stars’
lives. And who among us has never rushed to tell a friend
some juicy celebrity news morsel? Few can resist the
attraction of our glamorous twenty-first-century celebrity
gods and goddesses.
It has even been shown that the less strict you are about
following a religion, the greater the chances are that you will
worship celebrities. For decades John Maltby, a renowned
psychologist at the University of Leicester in the UK, has
been studying the connection between how religious a
person is and the degree to which they worship celebrities.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam forbid the worship of all else
other than God. But Maltby and his colleagues have found
that among religious folk, only the most puritan—those who
have a very strong and literal belief in Church authority and
divine law—heed this commandment when it comes to
celebrity worship. The rest don’t see a link between the
commandment “Thou shalt worship no other gods” and the
time they spend following their favorite celebrities. Or they
see the link and simply can’t resist the pull of celebrity. Either
way, they worship not in the house of the Lord, but at the
altar of In Touch Weekly. For many of us, celebrity is, in fact,
our Church.
 One-named Gods and Goddesses

Stars have a magical aura around them—a certain

indefinable glowing something that mere mortals don’t have.
You might call it the “it” factor, or star quality, or charisma—
but whatever you call it, there is no denying that stars are set
apart from the rest of us. We perform rituals in our spare
time to show our devotion to them:
We read magazines, watch certain shows, discuss them,
and in the case of true fans, collect autographs and
memorabilia—to make a kind of shrine, if you will.
But does all of that really mean celebrities have been
elevated to the status of gods and goddesses in our
society? I’m the first to admit I am no scripture scholar, but
even so, I can’t help seeing a few similarities . . .
 All-seeing, All-knowing, All-powerful

Let’s start with an important requirement: A deity has to be

present everywhere, all around us, at all times. Unless you’re
reading this book while orbiting Earth on the International
Space Station, it should be pretty apparent to you that
celebrities pass this test. Though a star may be quickly
replaced by the next “it” person who warrants having only
one name, when he or she is at the height of fame, his or her
every move is on our radar. Some celebrities remain in our
consciousness for generations (Marilyn Monroe is a good
example), while some have all the staying power of a firefly
(remember Sanjaya?), but the need for celebrity itself
endures.
Celebrity has soaked into every part of our culture.

Celebrity has soaked into every part of our culture:

Everywhere you turn you find the faces of celebrities looking
at you.
If I remember correctly, a divine being must also be all-
powerful. According to a July 2007 article in London’s Daily
Star, Madonna has the power to command that her dressing
room be supplied with 144 boxes of strawberries, Yorkshire
tea, a skipping rope, organic green tea, vanilla room spray,
and eight full-length mirrors. The Smoking Gun, a Web site
owned by Court TV, published a 2000 tour rider showing
that Christina Aguilera demanded a police escort on the way
to her shows because “under no circumstances” is she to
“be allowed to encounter any delays due to traffic.” In an
amazing (and much more humanitarian) example of celebrity
clout, in 2006 George Clooney was given the opportunity to
address the United Nations’ Security Council about the
Darfur crisis.
The latter is a good example of how celebrities’ power
and influence spreads beyond their field of expertise. At the
selfless end of the scale we have stars influencing world
leaders and the public on the environment, politics, world
debt, and world peace. And at the more self-serving end of
the scale, we have stars creating their own mini-empires.
Singers become actors, and vice versa. Then they become
successful fashion designers. They start their own movie,
TV, or recording companies. Or they launch perfume,
jewelry, watch, makeup, or handbag lines.
A god or goddess must also be all knowing. I’m certainly
not about to suggest that our favorite celebrities know the
meaning of life or have all the answers—but it doesn’t stop
them from volunteering their opinions on every conceivable
topic. And the media and fans can’t get enough of it.
Celebrities are constantly being quoted on subjects that
have nothing to do with their skill or talent. You probably
don’t know what acting techniques Tom has studied—but
you know what he thinks about psychiatry. It’s doubtful you
know what vocal exercises Madonna practices—but I bet
you know an awful lot more about Kabbalah since she
became an adherent. From relationships to evening-gown
designers, from parenting to the best type of yoga—
celebrities are portrayed as having knowledge about all
aspects of life.
Their perspective on news events even seems more
noteworthy than ordinary people’s. When Suzanne Somers
lost her Malibu house to a fire in January 2007, she got to go
on Larry King to discuss it, despite the fact that several other
homes were lost as well. Where was those poor schnooks’
chance to garner our sympathies? (Okay, okay, rich
schnooks—it is Malibu, after all; I don’t think they have poor
people there. But you get my point.)
 Up on a Pedestal

Any self-respecting god or goddess also needs to be

superior to ordinary folk; he or she has to seem special. And
from down here in everyday land, few beings in this world
appear more special than celebrities. They seem to have
more of everything—everything you want or aspire to, or
fantasize about having, that is. They have more beauty, more
talent, more confidence . . . more wealth, cars, homes,
diamonds, boats, and planes . . . more adoration and
appreciation. They also have more freedom and flexibility in
their careers and lifestyle choices, and more opportunities to
express themselves. They enjoy more excitement in their
lives, and more options. When their first marriage breaks
down, they don’t turn to match.com or their aunt who said
she’d fix them up with a blind date. No, they choose from an
array of celebrity entertainers, sports stars, businesspeople,
or models, and they have their “people” arrange the meeting.
When they get a few friends together for a party, the guest
list reads like the nominations for the Oscars and the
Grammys combined. Everything they do just appears to be
more fun and more glamorous than ordinary life.
There is no denying that on top of what celebrities have
already earned, people are constantly giving them extras
that you and I don’t receive. They get better service in
restaurants and hotels and better seats at shows and
movies. They receive gift bags of luxury products, even
though they could afford to buy them many times over.
According to a 2005 article in USA Today, some
companies had advertising divisions that catered solely to
ensuring their gifts ended up in celebrities’ hands, with the
aim that celebrities would be photographed using their
products. For many years celebrity SWAG (stands for “stuff
we all get”) was literally a free-for-all, but in January 2007 the
IRS stepped in, reminding the stars that any promotional
gifts they receive need to be declared as taxable income.
As a result the celebrity gift basket has been downsized, but
at its peak, a typical gift basket for the Oscars could be
worth upward of $100,000. Access Hollywood reported that
for the 2007 Golden Globes the gift bag, worth over
$20,000, consisted of “a $2,000 gym membership, a $1,200
diamond pendant, an $865 Chopard watch and a $475
camera phone, plus handbags, MP3 players and a slew of
gift certificates.”
At its peak, a typical gift basket for the Oscars
 could be worth upwards of $100,000.

Although the stars may be receiving less swag these

days, they still get past velvet ropes into exclusive clubs—
even if they are underage. (In 2006 it didn’t occur to anyone
to check Lindsay Lohan’s ID, apparently.) And in situations
where any one of us regular people would have immediately
been thrown in the slammer, celebrities manage to
continually postpone their court dates, à la Nicole Richie and
her DUI charge; or they get let out of jail early, as in the case
of Paris Hilton after her conviction for driving on a
suspended license. Granted, for Paris the whole debacle
didn’t work out so well in the end—but still, if it had been you
suffering from claustrophobia in that cell, I very much doubt
the authorities would’ve sent you home for hair extensions
and your favorite cupcakes, even if it was just for a day or
so.
We have no way of knowing whether celebrities’ lives are
really as peachy as they seem. Like the rest of us, they
probably have good days and bad days, concerns and
anxieties. There is, however, one desirable thing that we
have a whole lot more of than celebrities do: privacy. And if
the media coverage is any indication, there is one thing they
seem to have a lot more of that we don’t want: substance
abuse problems.
Even if our perception of stars as being better than us and
having more of the good things in life is partly fantasy, this
only heightens celebrities’ mystique and pushes their
pedestal higher and higher into the clouds. And after all,
perceptions are everything in celebland.
 Perfect Goodness

Fans treat celebrities like gods and goddesses in another

important way: by considering them to be fundamentally
perfect and good, regardless of what they do. True fans
explain away the indiscretions of their favorite stars, no
matter how reprehensible or “in your face” they may be. This
can be anything from Mel Gibson fans continuing to be
devoted to him even after his disturbing drunken anti-
Semitic tirade, to those who forgave Hugh Grant his
dalliances with a certain lady of the evening. Fans still fork
over hard-earned cash to see their movies, and spend
valuable time reading in-depth articles about them or
watching interviews on late-night talk shows.
We do not afford ordinary people the same adulation and
unconditional forgiveness. When O. J. Simpson was on trial
for murdering his wife, the nation was divided. For all who
assumed his guilt, there were as many people ready to
spring to his defense. But when Scott Peterson faced
charges for murdering his wife and unborn baby, everyone
immediately assumed he was guilty, even before the trial
began. If Julia Roberts had been the runaway bride in real
life instead of Jennifer Wilbanks of Duluth, Georgia, we
would have said, “Oh, she’s under so much pressure with the
films and the paparazzi following her; we understand poor
Julia.”
If misbehavior won’t make us reject our favorite stars, it’s
no wonder that when they do something good they seem
almost superhuman. One day during a CNN report on the
latest deadly weapon being used against our troops in Iraq,
across the crawl came a story about George Clooney
paying $20 for a cup of lemonade to a group of children who
had set up a stand near where he was filming
Leatherheads. You can just picture the production intern
saying to the group of young entrepreneurs, “This is from
George, he said to keep the change,” and it was
newsworthy.
Sometimes it really is newsworthy. There was that story all
over the media years ago about Tom Cruise encountering a
hit-and-run accident victim while driving through Santa
Monica. Not only did he stay with her until help arrived, he
paid her $7,000 medical bill when he found out she was
uninsured. And he didn’t stop there. At the London premiere
of Mission Impossible, Cruise saw two boys being crushed
by the crowd of 10,000 and pulled them to safety. Later one
of the boys said, “He’s my hero.”
 The Cult of Star Trek
Here’s something interesting: There has actually been
research done about Star Trek fans and how some of
them view Star Trek as a religion. In and of itself, this
phenomenon could fill a book, but suffice to say,
trekkies perform many religious acts and practices that
are often associated with conventional religions.
In Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry created a utopia, an
ideal world that when the series was first shown on TV
in 1966 did not reflect the real state of the country. The
crew of the starship Enterprise was made up of a mix of
races and genders, and all were considered equals, at
a time when not all races and genders were considered
equal in real-life society.
In 2001, marketing academic Robert Kozinets
explained Star Trek as “a utopian refuge for the
alienated and disenfranchised.” Like religion, Star Trek
becomes a larger social identity for these fans, just as
being Jewish or Catholic might. This explains why it has
attracted so many lost souls, again as religion
sometimes does.
Make fun of the Star Trek geek at your peril, as they
are some of the most intelligent and imaginative of
enthusiasts. In his book Textual Poachers: Television
Fans and Participatory Culture, Henry Jenkins
applauds the fertile minds of Star Trek fans who
suggest scripts and alternative plot lines for their
favorite characters to follow, in the most creative and
respectful of ways.
Why Do People Celebrity Worship?
It’s tempting to think that celebrities have some inherent
quality or special power that makes people worship and
adore them.
The name sometimes given

“There are just people who will always be famous no

matter how much or how little they promote
themselves. There’s just something about them.”
—JARETT WEISELMAN
to that notion is charisma. Max Weber, one of the founders
of modern sociology, defined charisma as “a certain quality
of an individual personality by virtue of which he is
considered extraordinary and treated as endowed with
supernatural, superhuman or at least specifically exceptional
powers or qualities.” Celebrities have that.
Former senior editor for In Touch Weekly magazine
Jarett Weiselman says that in the time he has been writing
about and observing celebrity behavior, “There are just
people who will always be famous no matter how much or
how little they promote themselves. There’s just something
about them that is so intriguing, innate, and original. We will
be drawn to them no mater what. Madonna, for example—
she has that ‘it’ factor and the minute you first saw her you
knew, and it is still true today.”
So, can the explosion in our celebrity worshipping in the
past few decades be the result of simply an excess of
charismatic individuals? I think it’s highly unlikely, when you
consider that celebrities can now be hatched from lives in
which any exceptional powers or qualities were seemingly
nonexistent—think Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. Reality TV
stars are another good example: Reality TV has perhaps
shown that the kind of charismatic aura Weber describes
isn’t necessarily inherent in stars, but is something that we
can gradually come to see in them.
Are celebrities smarter than we are; is that how they have
found a way into our psyche and our personal thoughts?
According to Jay Zagorsky, a research scientist at Ohio
State University, that is highly unlikely as well. His research
published in 2007 in the journal Intelligence finds that
people with below-average IQ scores are just as successful
as people with above-average IQ scores.
We may never fully solve the riddle of what makes human
beings worship celebrities. But as we’ve already seen, our
attitude toward religion is known to have some influence.
And one other thing researchers have been able to establish
is that our personalities play a big part too.
Celebrity Worshippers: Who Are You?
For most of us, celebrity worship is all about fun and
entertainment. We do it for social reasons—because we
enjoy talking to our friends about the latest news on, say,
Johnny Depp or Brad Pitt. If this is why you like to follow the
lives of celebrities, science shows that you probably have an
extravert personality, which means you tend to be outgoing
and like to engage with your environment and the people
around you.
A smaller percentage of celebrity worshippers are
motivated by the belief that they have an intense connection
with their favorite celebrity. They believe that if they met their
favorite celebrity, the star would understand them and
perhaps be their friend, or that their favorite celebrity is truly
their soul mate. To get an idea of this type of celebrity
worshipper, think of the film Notting Hill. When Anna, a
famous Hollywood actress (played by Julia Roberts), and
Honey, the sister of Anna’s new paramour (Hugh Grant),
meet for the first time, Honey gushes about how much she
adores the actress and how beautiful she is and says, “I
genuinely believe and have believed for some time now that
we can be best friends.”
According to studies, this type of celebrity worshipper
tends to be higher in the trait neuroticism. These are the
worriers of the world—those who tend to be nervous, a bit on
the high-strung side, and possibly insecure.
Researchers such as John Maltby have also found that
celebrity worshippers are more likely to suffer from
narcissism, a personality disorder characterized by a
grandiose sense of self, an inflated sense of superiority over
others, a lack of empathy, and an excessive need to be
admired. You may have heard the phrase “sense of
entitlement”—well, yes, that too is one of the characteristics
of a narcissistic personality. It may sound counterintuitive
that someone so into themselves, who cares very little about
others, would worship celebrities, but according to
researchers Diane Ashe, John Maltby, and Lynn E.
McCutcheon, narcissists oscillate between feeling disdain
for others and over-idealizing them, which is easy to do with
a celebrity. And narcissists like to be domineering in all
social situations. So for a narcissist is there any better role
model than a scene-stealing celebrity?
There is one more psychological factor to consider: A
person’s view on how fair the world is. In psychology there is
a theory—the Just World Theory—that deals with how
strongly a person believes the world is a fair and just place,
and that bad people get punished and good people get
rewarded. A person may fall at either the believing or
disbelieving end, or anywhere along the spectrum.
Researcher McCutcheon was interested in the Just World
Theory and how it relates to celebrity worship. What he
found was that those who believe strongly that the world is a
just place are likely to be avid celebrity worshippers. In a
2003 issue of Current Research in Social Psychology he
said, “Someone who believes that the world is ‘just’ is likely
to believe that the major components of society are fair, and
the celebrity system is a major component of contemporary
society.”
For a narcissist is there any better role model than
a scene-stealing celebrity?
 Challenging the Cult of Celebrity

There are several theories for why so many stars go by one

name—Madonna, Cher, Fergie, Rihanna, and so on. Some
have said that publicists and handlers intentionally use one
name as a way to make the celebrity seem so famous he or
she only needs one name to be recognized. Using only one
name adds to the iconic nature of the celebrity and is
designed to make him or her seem other-worldly, above us
in a stratosphere that we—mere mortals—will never attain.

The Holy Toast

I really got a sense of the intense connection that some
fans feel toward their favorite celebrities when I was
filling in at radio station Z100 in New York and Justin
Timberlake had left a half-eaten piece of French toast
behind. It was March 2000, and Justin had come in with
the rest of ’N Sync to have breakfast and chat on air.
Folks at the station decided it would be funny to put the
remnants of Justin’s French toast and the fork he’d
used on eBay.
Not only did the eBay auction make national news,
but the French toast sold for over $3,000 (the proceeds
were donated to charity). I had to wonder about that
Timberlake fan who handed over hard-earned cash for
an old, half-eaten breakfast.
True religion wins out here, though. In 2004 a ten-
year-old grilled cheese sandwich that was said to bear
the image of the Virgin Mary went for $28,000 on eBay.
Of course I can’t speculate on how much it would’ve
sold for if it had been Justin’s image on the grilled
cheese sandwich—but I’m pretty sure that the big
money would be on an image of the Virgin Mary
appearing on Justin Timberlake.
Jarett Weiselman has an opposing theory. “Referring to a
celebrity by one name actually speaks to how familiar we
feel with that celebrity. I don’t refer to my friend as ‘Jody
Miller,’ I call her ‘Jody.’ We don’t use last names with people
we are comfortable with, or with people we know well, and I
think that’s what certain celebrities—Paris, Lindsay, and
Britney in particular—are really good at,” he says.
“If I said ‘Natalie,’ you would say, ‘Natalie Imbruglia?
Natalie Merchant? Natalie Portman?’ You wouldn’t be sure
which Natalie I meant, and that is because those women
keep their lives private—but those particular girls who are
known by one name let the world into their lives in such an
unbelievable way, [the use of only one name] makes sense.
They are your friends and you know a lot about them.”
Jeannine Hill Fletcher, Th.D., professor of theology at
Fordham University, thinks there is a common root to the
adoption of a single name in both celebrity worship and
religious worship, but she points to a crucial difference: “One
offers something surface while the other offers something
lasting.” Fletcher cautions that celebrity worshippers need to
be able to recognize what is really lasting and what it is
about a celebrity’s life that they admire. “The celebrity and
your familiarity with them is not enough. What about their life
matters to you, and what images are you being offered that
have real staying power for you?” she says. “The lives of the
holy ones are lives whose persuasiveness survives. There is
a reason that after 2,000 years Jesus, Buddha, and
Mohammed still endure.” Regarding celebrities, she asks,
“Are these lives that last?”
Philosopher John Hick says that what all religious
traditions have in common is that they offer us a way to turn
away from our self-centeredness to turn to God, or other-
centeredness, and lead lives that are more authentic and full
—while celebrity worship encourages us to be self-
centered. Do we really need help being any more self-
centered than we already are? Media images have the
power to shape us, as do religious figures. The question is:
How do we want to be shaped?
Ask yourself what your ultimate concern is. Is it
fame? Popularity? Or is it something deeper and
longer lasting?

Fletcher believes that everyone, whether religious or not,

has an ultimate concern that drives his or her life. Ask
yourself what your ultimate concern is. Is it fame?
Popularity? Or is it something deeper and longer lasting?
There are other examples to follow than celebrities, she
reminds us: “The lives of the saints in the various holy
traditions emphasize the character of their lives. We
understand that they too did bad things, but the religious
narrative is that the [good] qualities do overcome, as part of
the human condition.” She believes their stories show us that
we too can “transform ourselves to become those persons
that we want to be.”

Celebrity—A Long Tradition

The concept of celebrity is not new. The majority has
long had an insatiable interest in the lives of the
privileged few. Kings and queens, gladiators and army
commanders, Olympic athletes (as in the original Greek
Olympics, 776 B.C., not Michelle Kwan and Dara
Torres)—those were the stars of their day.
Let me walk you through a historical example of
celebrity life, from Spain, circa the early 1500s. A very
prominent family had a handsome son with a taste for
all the temptations that fame and money offered,
especially the ladies. He was a renowned playboy and
addicted to gambling. He was also not above engaging
in swordplay—and everyone knew it. (In the modern
era, this is similar to scandalous photos of a celeb
holding a gun or knife surfacing on the Internet.) One
night he, his brother, and some other relatives
ambushed members of a rival family. When word got
out, he had to run and hide—sort of a 1500s equivalent
to racing off to rehab. Like many in prominent positions
today, he used his family name and his celebrity to get
him out of trouble, and he avoided prosecution.
However, unlike celebrities of today who are happy
with their “get out of jail free” card, this young man was
transformed by spiritual teachings. He spent time
studying the scriptures, renounced his old life, and
became a saint. Literally.
This is the story of St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of
the Jesuits. From playboy to saint . . . it would make a
great E! True Hollywood Story, don’t you think?
 CHAPTER TWO

Love, Hate, Awe— Our Perplexing

Relationship with the Stars

They can’t let go for the same reasons that we can’t let go. We’re
engaged in a mutually destructive relationship with the world’s
unstable citizens.
HEATHER HAVRILESKY, TV CRITIC, SALON.COM

On my radio show we do a daily segment called “News from

the Corner,” which is made up of one serious news story
(human interest mostly, like which city has the worst traffic
and other stuff that makes you say, “Huh, that’s interesting”),
two celebrity stories, and two offbeat news stories.
Much like the rule of etiquette that one must not discuss
politics or religion at the dinner table, I have a rule for this
segment, which in fact applies to my whole show: Ridicule or
harsh words are forbidden when discussing Tori Spelling, or
as I call her, “ my Tori.” I love her so much that I was about to
fly out to her Studio City, California, home when she had her
public yard sale—until I learned that she doesn’t wear a size
7 shoe (my size) and I figured, “What’s the point, it was her
shoe collection I was after. ”
One time on my show, actor Zachary Quinto came on to
discuss his television series Heroes, but all I wanted to know
about was Tori, since he played her best friend on her
sitcom, So noTORIOUS. I love Tori like a gay man loves . . .
well, Tori, I suppose. I have never met her, never will, and I
suspect that in real life she would not be seen with the likes
of me—yet I defend her to the death. You are not allowed to
say anything negative about my Tori. You can imagine how
thrilled I was when Tori let us into her life with her first reality
show Tori & Dean Inn Love and her subsequent Tori &
Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood. Now I know private details
that I may have missed otherwise.
You probably know more intimate details of some
celebrities’ lives than of the colleagues you sit next to at
work every day. You might know the latest on everything in a
star’s life (whom they’re dating this month, where they went
for their vacation, how much they paid for their house, how
many grams of carbs they eat a day) but have trouble
remembering your best friend’s birthday or how old your
niece is so you don’t buy her a Barbie doll for Christmas
when she comes to visit with her husband. You might know
more of a celebrity’s closely guarded secrets and inner
feelings than of your own teenage son or daughter. And this
is a person who has no idea that you even exist.
Most other relationships in your life are a two-way street.
You can talk freely to the other person and ask questions;
the two of you respond to each other, exchange your
opinions and news; you can read each other’s facial
expressions and gauge each other’s tone of voice.
Celebrities, on the other hand, are the ones doing all the
talking. They speak to you from the movie screen, the TV,
the radio, or the pages of a magazine. Sometimes it even
seems as if they are talking directly to you—when they
happen to sing, play a role, or say something that strikes a
chord with you. But the communication is all one-way. Of
course, you could always talk back to the TV, the radio, or
your iPod, but if you receive an answer, you probably need
something a little stronger than this book to help you.
The number of people we know in the “artificial
world”—actors, singers, sportspeople, TV hosts—
is much larger than the number of people we
know in the real world.

The Illusion of Intimacy Researchers have a few fancy-

pants terms for the puzzling relationship we have with
celebrities, but perhaps the best one is also the oldest. Back
in the 1950s, when television was taking off in a big way and
bringing celebrities into lounge rooms all across the country,
two researchers (Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl)
became intrigued by the one-sided relationship between a
viewer and the celebrity on the screen. In a 1956 article in
the journal Psychiatry, they argued that it all came down to
“the illusion of intimacy.” We have a seemingly intimate
relationship with celebrities: We become very familiar with
them because they’re continually looking out at us from a
screen or the pages of a magazine. Let’s be honest here,
we probably see their faces as often as we see some of our
friends’. And we know an extraordinary amount of personal
information about them.
The intimacy is all an illusion, though, because these
celebrities don’t know us from Eve. The truth is, if we see
Nicole Kidman on the street, no matter how big a fan we are
or how much we’ve read about her, she still won’t have any
idea who we are.
In the 1970s, University of Maryland researcher J.L.
Caughey coined the term artificial social relations, and in an
article that appeared in American Quarterly suggested that
the number of people we know in the “artificial world”—
actors, singers, sportspeople, TV hosts—is much larger
than the number of people we know in the real world.
And it makes us want to get closer and closer to these
people. As we become caught up in a song we love, or the
storyline of an addictive TV show, we inevitably find
ourselves wanting to know more about the real people
behind them. According to a 2006 report titled “State of the
News Media” published by Journalism .org, in the early
2000s sales of major news magazines such as Time and
Newsweek went down noticeably. Meanwhile sales of
entertainment magazines such as People and Us Weekly
skyrocketed, even though they faced increased competition
from a slew of new celebrity-watching mags that came on
the market. Meanwhile, celebrity “news” shows on TV
multiplied at a rapid rate. There’s a craving for knowledge
about stars’ personal lives that can never quite be satisfied,
because the feeling of real closeness will always elude us.
It’s no wonder these magazines and TV shows are such big
business. And it’s more than just commerce; our relationship
with the stars may affect us personally.
That we get caught up in these illusory relationships with
celebrities may have a lot to do with difficulties in our real
relationships. According to a 2004 study published in the
North American Journal of Psychology, people tend to turn
to celebrities to satisfy needs that are not being met in
conventional ways. For instance, if you find your real
relationships too complex and difficult to manage, you might
be happy with a one-sided relationship with a celebrity. The
ease of that relationship and the lack of challenge might be
a welcome relief. Similarly, if you tend to be shy, you might
take comfort in your connection with a celebrity—a
connection that does not require you to engage socially. You
don’t have to shower and do your hair, or get anxious about
thinking of something to add to a conversation, if you’re
watching a Matt Damon movie on your couch while flicking
through the latest issue of Star magazine.
People who feel their lives are void of interesting
experiences may follow the lives of celebrities as a way to
vicariously enjoy a more exciting lifestyle. Vicarious
enjoyment is one reason we watch movies and TV shows in
the first place—for the vivid feelings that we experience
about a fictional world. When the son doesn’t come back
from battle, we feel real loss; we may even shed a tear while
sitting there staring at the screen. Or when, at the end of a
romance, the heroine finds that he does love her—and
always did—we are overjoyed. Same goes for the
relationship we might develop with celebrities while following
their lives in the pages of a magazine: Feeling their highs
(career success, marriage, pregnancy) and their lows (box-
office flop, divorce, fertility issues).
Jarett Weiselman says, “The reason people open
celebrity weeklies is to live vicariously through these
celebrities: To wear what they wear; to go to the clubs that
they go to; and to roll in the circles that they roll in. It’s
escapism; it’s complete vicarious living.”
 Our Friends on the Small Screen

When it comes to TV stars, our relationships with them can

get complicated, because we might feel an illusory intimacy
with not only a star but with his or her character, too. This is
especially true for actors in long-running soaps or shows that
are on endless reruns, such as that perennial favorite,
Friends. The characters of these shows, and the actors who
play them, become incredibly familiar, because they are with
us all the time, like family members. Jennifer Aniston has
said that when Friends was a prime-time show, people
would approach her on the street and yell at her for
something disagreeable her character, Rachel Green, did.
Leven Rambin knows this experience all too well. She
stars as two characters—Lily Montgomery and her half-
sister Ava Benton—in the daytime drama All My Children.
She is used to fans merging her and her characters’
identities and calling her by her characters’ names. She
says, “These characters are in your life every single day if
you are a soap opera fan, so [the actors] are those people.”
Rick Hearst, who plays villain Ric Lansing on General
Hospital, spent the best part of an online chat session with
fans on the Web site SOAPnet trying to establish that he is
not the character and that the writer controls his character.
(Lansing is notorious for kidnapping, adultery, deception—
oh, and for sleeping with his stepdaughter—so I guess it’s
no wonder Hearst was keen to claim his own identity.) Fans
kept asking him to defend or justify his character’s bad-boy
antics, and he responded by saying things such as, “I guess
you’d have to ask the writers!” or “People seem to think that
I’m in charge of the destiny of this character.” Eventually he
simply entreated the fans to make their displeasure with his
character known to the writers so that they might give
Lansing a chance at redemption. “I throw my hands out to all
of my fans. I implore them to write in and say what you feel
about this character,” Hearst said.
Stephen Collins played Reverend Eric Camden on the
longest-running TV family drama 7th Heaven, and it seems
that being mistaken for a man of the cloth might be a little
easier to deal with. Collins told me, “The longer the show
was on, the more people tended to treat me as if I really
were a minister. This has made it easier to be gracious to
people who stop me in public or who might seek me out to
get an autograph.”
 “I’m grateful for fans. Without them, we [actors] have
no careers.”
—STEPHEN COLLINS

On the whole it doesn’t trouble him that fans feel a

powerful connection to him/Reverend Camden and
approach him in public to talk, even though he doesn’t know
them. But he does try to put a polite distance between
himself and a fan, especially when he’s out with his family.
“You don’t usually engage in long conversations or give
people a phone number or address, and 99.99% of the time
they don’t expect it,” he says. “I’m grateful for fans. Without
them, we [actors] have no careers.”
On rare occasions Collins has crossed the barrier
between himself and a fan, turning an illusory relationship
into a real one.
He struck up a lasting friendship with a child therapist in
Iowa who wrote to tell him she was using an earlier role he
played, in a series called Tales of the Gold Monkey, as part
of her therapy for a boy who had been beaten by his father
and uncle and was terrified of adult males. “The therapist
had seen my show and noticed instinctively that my
character was both physically strong and gentle. This
combination of traits turned out to be a revelation to the
child, and the therapist helped the boy fashion an imaginary
relationship with my TV character. It helped the kid to slowly
work back some trust with men,” Collins said. He went on to
correspond for years through the therapist with another child
undergoing therapy, and even flew to Iowa to attend the
boy’s high school graduation. “I’ve never regretted it,” he
said.
 When Worlds Collide

So what is it like for us regular folk to come face-to-face with

our idols? There are two kinds of celebrity encounters: the
lucky coincidences that result in a star sighting and the
planned events where star-struck fans line up for hours for
just two seconds with their favorite celeb. Each kind of
encounter can have a potentially long-lasting impact on fans.
 The Chance Celebrity Encounter

For most of us in a faux-intimate relationship with a favorite

star, the best we can hope for is that truly shocking and
amazing occurrence: the chance celebrity meeting, when a
star’s world collides with ours and suddenly, unexpectedly,
we’re sharing the same public space.
If this has ever happened to you, perhaps you felt special
and blessed—perhaps even as though some of the star’s
aura was wearing off on you. You might have called out his
or her name excitedly as you rummaged around in your
handbag looking for something he or she could sign—a
trophy.

Too Much Intimacy?

Sometimes the illusion of intimacy seems to work
against a celebrity. Becoming so familiar with a
celebrity, seeing his or her face everywhere we turn,
and learning too many details about his or her private
life, can color our perception of them. Take Angelina
Jolie. Critics praised her performance in A Mighty
Heart and said that it was the best of her career up to
that point. But even as they were predicting another
Oscar coming her way, the film was crashing and
burning at the box office. Did moviegoers know too
much about Jolie as a person to enjoy her in that role?
Did they fail to take her seriously because of all the
footage of her and Brad Pitt and the odd stories
surrounding them? Some Hollywood observers blamed
the box office disappointment on what has been termed
Brangelina fatigue. Perhaps seeing a celebrity’s face
everywhere sometimes makes us want to see them
nowhere.
Or you might have simply sat there, frozen with awe, as a
friend of mine did at Starbucks one morning when he was
sitting enjoying a latte and in walked his greatest boyhood
crush, Molly Ringwald. Now, I’m not talking just any early teen
crush. He had compulsively written her letters, and in his lofty
position as editor, had virtually turned his school newspaper
into The World According to Molly Ringwald. Even in his
thirties, he still has an ancient Pretty in Pink video he
refuses to part with. In Starbucks that morning his wife
couldn’t understand why he’d stopped responding to her as
she tried to discuss something in the paper. Then she
looked up and saw his pale, stricken face and thought, “Oh
my God, I’ve got to call 911.” Turned out Molly had been at
the counter for a few minutes, but he had been unable to say
or do anything. She slipped straight past them and out the
door into a waiting limo with her iced mocha before he even
had a chance to regain full consciousness, let alone ask for
an autograph.
Star sightings can have this kind of effect on us ordinary
human beings. There is a touch of the religious experience
to it and the shock of reality meeting fantasy. It’s as if we’re
going about our business when all of a sudden this being
steps out of the screen or off the page of a magazine into
our everyday lives. And there’s a hint of the mythical in it as
well. Even though we know celebrities are human beings, in
our minds they also exist on some higher plane, out of reach.
Let’s break the whole celebrity-sighting thing down and
look at why it has this effect on people. Say you happen to
be visiting New York City with a girlfriend and you go eat at a
deli. You’re about to sink your teeth into a delicious-looking
Reuben sandwich when you notice something out of the
corner of your eye: a swish of blonde hair, a familiar face.
Your brain registers: “Who do I know in New York?” You turn
to look properly, and it takes you a couple of seconds to
realize it’s in fact Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew
Broderick having pastrami on rye two tables away.
You kick your friend under the table and whisper to her
who it is. While your friend takes out her cell phone and tries
to look like she’s casually making a call (though she’s taking
a snapshot of the celebrity couple), you phone your friends
back home to say, “Hey, guess who is eating a few tables
away from us?!” All the while, you’re taking what you hope
are subtle glances at the pair, cataloging important details
you have to remember for the stories you’ll tell later: What
they’re wearing and eating; whether they’re polite to the
waiter; how loving they’re acting toward each other and their
son, James; how well behaved James is; and so on.
It’s given you a thrill, it’s made your trip to New York more
memorable, and you feel kinda special. You just know that
your friends back home—with whom you discussed every
nuance of Sex and the City as intensely as a book club
discusses the latest Oprah pick—are going to be steamed
they didn’t come on vacation with you.
Now let’s say Sarah Jessica gets up and walks over to
ask if she can borrow the spicy mustard off your table.
Dumbfounded, you hand her the mustard, unable to speak
because you weren’t expecting to actually interact with this
celebrity. Then she says, “Thanks. You can’t have a pastrami
sandwich without the spicy mustard, right?”
 “I’ve never tried spicy mustard,” you manage to say.
And the celebrity says, with her winning smile, “Really, you
should, it’s New York 101.” And off she goes to her lucky
sandwich at her lucky table with her famous husband and
their adorable child. This has taken things to the next level:
You’ve gone from celebrity sighting to celebrity encounter. If
Sarah Jessica sees you the next day, she might recognize
you.
A celebrity encounter really rocks our world because
celebrities’ lives seem greater than ours. Theirs is an
existence of remarkable occurrences and lucky tables,
wonderful husbands, and perfect offspring. Most people
idealize what a celebrity must be like in person, which is why
it is so startling when he or she steps out of that idealized
realm for a moment and enters our own ordinary existence.
For a moment, the celebrity’s universe is our universe; her
bottle of spicy mustard is our bottle of spicy mustard. Our
mundane life has intersected with the glamorous and exotic.
We matter now on a whole new level, and will be able to tell
this story at parties forever . . . or at least until the celebrity
stops being famous. But now we have something very
special that makes the celebrity encounter even juicer, and
that is exclusive information: Something we alone know or
experienced with this celebrity. This exclusivity makes the
occurrence all the more sweet and us all the more
entertaining when we recount the story later on, especially if
what the star did is something mundane our listeners can
relate to.
Magazines that publish photos of celebrities doing
everyday things are operating on this very principle. It’s news
when a celebrity pushes a grocery cart in Brentwood, grabs
a shake at Baja Fresh, walks their dog in Beverly Hills . . . or
passes gas in public. Case in point: I was living in New York
when Woody Harrelson was filming one of his movies.
Harrelson, a renowned yoga enthusiast, and his yoga
instructor began coming to my gym to do their yoga. They
were kind enough to allow the rest of us into their class, and
we downward-dogged right alongside the movie star. One
day in class, my mat was situated behind the Cheers star
when all of a sudden—poot!— Harrelson let rip a mighty
wind. He was such a lovely man, I felt terrible gossiping
about it, but how could I resist? It was news; and the
headline reads “Woody Harrelson is human and does stuff
that humans do, like pass gas.” C’mon, admit it, you enjoyed
finding out that little tidbit, didn’t you? That’s because it is
exclusive information that only I knew—and now you know.
One theory suggests that celebrity sightings and
encounters are exciting for the same reason that
overhearing or spying something gossipworthy in everyday
life is exciting. Research published in the journal the
Psychological Record in 2006 says that what we really
enjoy about gossip is the entertainment factor we provide to
others in the telling of it. It actually enhances our social
relationship with our friends and family. Similarly, if we
entertain our friends and family by sharing a story of a
celebrity experience, we improve our social bond. It brings
us closer together.
My grand-father used to talk about the time he met
Albert Einstein at a party as if it were happening to
him over and over again.

Another explanation comes from Social Identity Theory,

developed by social psychologists Henri Tajfel and John C.
Turner to explain why we favor some folks over others. We
each feel better about who we are and our own identity when
we belong to a group, especially one that we deem superior
to other groups. When you or someone in your social circle
—known as your in-group—shares news of a celebrity
sighting or encounter, it suddenly expands your in-group to
include a celebrity. Your social identity is now one of
someone who, in a sense, knows a person with a privileged
and superior status in society.
The thrill of bumping into a celebrity can also be explained
by something social psychologists call BIRGing, which
stands for “basking in reflected glory.” This happens in
everyday life, too.
For instance, say your sister wins a book award. You might
find that you take a vicarious pride in her accomplishments,
and you start telling everyone in your social circle about her
award so that they can congratulate you for having such an
impressive sister. (This is similar to when siblings of
celebrities garner attention despite their lack of talent or lack
of desire to be in the industry.)
In the situation of the celebrity encounter, we may feel as if
some part of the celebrity has rubbed off on us—the air he
or she breathes or his or her energy, charisma, or in the
case of the time I interviewed Renée Zellweger and she
accidentally sprayed a tiny bit of spit on me, saliva. When we
have a celebrity encounter, it’s not so much that we bask in
his or her glow, the way we might if our sibling won an award
—it’s more that we bask in the heat of a raging fire, gripped
by a torrid fervor.
For some us, that feeling lingers our whole life. My grand-
father used to talk about the time he met Albert Einstein at a
party as if it were happening to him over and over again.
Decades after the encounter he still felt an intimate
connection to the great thinker because they had actually
had a conversation, the way colleagues or friends might at a
party, even if it was for only a few precious moments.
 The Planned Celebrity Encounter

Of course the random encounter with a celebrity might be a

bit too random for your liking. Never fear, celebrities (or their
agents and publicists, at least) love nothing better than a line
of adoring fans snaking out the door and around the block,
waiting patiently for an autograph, a handshake, and a
smile. To find out what drives fans to spend their whole day
in line for a few precious moments with their favorite star, I
went to the Virgin Megastore at New York’s Union
Square, where scores of committed KISS fans had started
lining up on the sidewalk early that morning. They were there
for an appearance that evening by Peter Criss, founding
member, drummer, and vocalist of the iconic rock group—
you might know him best as “the Cat Man.” He would be
signing copies of his solo CD One for All.
Some fans had called in sick to be there; one was waiting
in line for a solid day after clocking off his nightshift. Another
guy, a forty-six-year-old schoolteacher, had come down from
Toronto—about an eight-hour drive. He looked like a rank
amateur compared to the twenty-seven-year-old who had
trekked all the way from Melbourne, Australia—more than
10,000 miles—on a kind of KISS pilgrimage. For the last
thirty-plus years and forty-five gold albums, the members of
KISS have inspired the kind of fan devotion that many other
bands can only dream about. Probably all those in the line
agreed with Dave, who said: “KISS has been the soundtrack
to my life.”
Was the signing a way for these fans to feel closer to one
of the founding members of KISS, to turn the illusion of
intimacy into reality? A couple of the more hard-core fans—
who each had KISS rooms at home, one displaying $45,000
worth of memorabilia, the other $100,000 worth—felt that if
they had the chance to sit down with any of the members of
KISS, they would definitely be friends. Others, though, didn’t
want to think of the members of the band that way. They
looked a little horrified at the thought that they could be
friends with the band members and said things like, “No!
These guys are my heroes.”
But many felt a sense of brotherhood with the boys in the
band. (Yeah, you guessed it, pretty much everyone in line
was a guy. Oh, except for one little girl who came along with
her father and was wearing a pastel pink T-shirt depicting
each of the members of KISS in the guise of Hello Kitty . . .
aww, cute!) Bob summed up the feeling of many of the fans
when he said the members of KISS were “like brothers,
because they have been there with me the whole time,
through my life over the last thirty years.”
Everyone was an avid watcher of Gene Simmons Family
Jewels , a reality TV show that followed the life of the KISS
guitarist and his family. What was interesting was that they
watched every episode, even though they all agreed that it
made Simmons look money hungry and just plain foolish.
That didn’t bother them at all. They said things like, “Oh, but
that’s just Gene for you,” in a gentle tone, the way you might
excuse an embarrassing but beloved relative who’s just
wrecked yet another public family outing.
Criss and Ace Frehley (the “Space Man”) have both had
well-documented battles with substance abuse, and yet
many of the fans credited KISS with helping them fight their
own demons and get through troubled periods of their lives.
Dave said the reason for his devotion to the band was that
“KISS has helped me through the hard times.” Bob, now a
successful sportswriter, said, “KISS has helped me get
through some very bad personal troubles to now have a
successful career, wife, and two children.”
Mike, a fan since 1976, is covered in KISS tattoos. When
asked how much of his time he spends on his devotion to
the band, he immediately said, “One hundred percent of the
day.” He works as a delivery driver and plays KISS all day
long in his truck, singing along; then he gets home and
cranks up KISS on the stereo. Mike described following
KISS as his “high.”
I interviewed Peter Criss, a man renowned for keeping his
life private. He told me he loves his fans and is glad that he
can help them get through the tough times. His reponse to
Mike? “Thank you for being a fan for so long; that’s a safer
high than drugs or alcohol.”
Criss says that he maintains his privacy by not making
many appearances or attending many public events. When
he does meet fans, he tries to counteract whatever
preconceptions they might have of him as a rock star by
simply being himself, by “being real with them.” He doesn’t
complain about the demands of fame but instead describes
being on the receiving end of fans’ attention as “wonderful, a
dream come true, an overwhelming feeling.”
When asked why so many complete strangers feel an
intense closeness to him, he says, “I have a lot of fans who
say they feel close to me because they can relate to me, or
from my music I have helped them, so I feel it’s from an
emotional level. They feel close to me, and sometimes your
feelings are not rational.”
In fact, it seems that the old illusion of intimacy cuts both
ways. Criss says, “Being a founding member of one of the
most visually stimulating bands in rock and roll and having
fans love you for so long, you can’t help but feel intimacy with
them, and I want to hold on to that for as long as I can.
“I will always feel KISS has the greatest fans in rock and
roll.”
And no doubt they would agree. Out there on the sidewalk
at Union Square they caught up with friends they hadn’t seen
since the last KISS event, and they seemed genuinely at
peace. One, trying to describe what it was like being among
other fans, struggled to find the words, before it suddenly
struck him: “You could actually say it is religious.”
 Why We Like to See Them Fall

So, we have an illusory intimacy with celebrities; we feel

close and familiar with them. We get a thrill from seeing
them or learning about even the most mundane aspects of
their lives. We build them up, and we place them on a
pedestal. Which all raises the question: Why do we love it so
much when they topple off?
For ages you’ve kept track of a talented, gorgeous, rich
young starlet who has three movies about to come out, a
recording contract, and more houses than you have
handbags. Then you see a story about her being totally
trashed at a Hollywood hot spot, complete with a photo of
her bleary-eyed self in the back of a limo. Maybe she was
drunk, or maybe the paparazzi caught her midblink—you’re
not willing to condemn her yet. Then rumors about cocaine
surface, along with whispers about a sex tape. When the
starlet is arrested for DUI and goes to rehab for a month, you
don’t bother going to see her latest release at the cinema—
you’ve decided you can wait until it’s on cable. A couple of
months later, when she drives the wrong way down the
highway on a suspended license, you join the masses
baying for her celebrity blood . . . well, calling for a prison
term, at least.
When she drives the wrong way down the
highway on a suspended license, you join the
masses baying for her celebrity blood.

The weird thing is, you get as much—maybe even more—

joy from reveling in the details of the starlet’s demise as you
did from watching her climb up the stairway to fame. The
Germans have a term for this: schadenfreude—“pleasure
taken from someone else’s misfortune.”
Schadenfreude is often directed to those in our out-group,
because people tend to wish ill upon those who aren’t like
them. Human beings need to categorize things in order to
make sense of the world. The minute we spot a new
celebrity, we put them in a category, deciding if he or she
should be in our in-group or our out-group. Is he or she
attractive or unattractive to us? Does he or she share the
same values as us, and behave the way we like people to
behave? We compare the celebrity to our in-group and
decide if he or she is like us or different from us (leaving
aside a couple of obvious differences: his or her fame and
wealth).
When a celebrity in our out-group fails in his or her career
or is caught red-handed with six prostitutes and eleven
ounces of cocaine, we take a small pleasure in that. Serves
him or her right for not being more like us!
Envy can also be a strong motivator for schadenfreude,
according to a recent study by Richard Smith published in
the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Not that we
need a social psychologist to tell us this, as there are plenty
of examples in everyday life. Let’s say you work with an
impossibly attractive woman who is continually being
promoted, has a giant rock on her ring finger, is in the midst
of planning a lavish wedding, and just won’t shut up about
how much her wonderful, rich, handsome fiancé treats her
like a princess . . . and then he leaves her standing at the
altar. You might not be proud of it, but for a split-second
something inside you rejoices and does a little happy dance.
Now think about this in relation to celebrities. They parade
by us with their entourage, with all of their bling, living a life of
glitz and glamour. We are aware of all the expensive
designer outfits they own, because we see them wearing
them in magazines and on TV. The stars are so beautiful
and iconic that they can make designers famous simply by
wearing their clothes. They travel around the world on dream
vacations and seem to spend every night in exclusive clubs
and restaurants. It all looks so posh. We want that life, and
we envy celebrities for having it. So when we find out that a
celebrity has in fact lost it, the schadenfreude truly starts to
flow.
In addition to being envious, I believe we find joy in stars’
misfortunes because we resent the pressure to strive for a
star-like lifestyle, which is unrealistic and unachievable for
most. The idea that we should all aspire to wealth is deeply
ingrained in our society. Most of us grew up hearing the
message that we have to find a way to make a good living
and that making money will somehow make us happy. The
lesson is very general and unspecific; it’s just, “Be rich.”
What does that mean? When we see all these images of the
luxurious celebrity life, we say to ourselves, “Oh, this is what
having money is all about.” It helps us answer the question,
“What am I supposed to be striving for?”
Media coverage of celebrities’ glamorous, rich
lives, along with celebrity advertising, put a lot of
pressure on us to spend.

Media coverage of celebrities’ glamorous, rich lives,

along with celebrity advertising, put a lot of pressure on us to
spend. There are conflicting forces at work: We want to live
like a celebrity, but we also resent our credit card bill each
month. We blame the media, because celebrity and fashion
magazines, TV shows, and increasingly even the news
media are filled with tempting images of celebrity excess.
When a wealthy celebrity with a lifestyle we aspire to
descends into substance abuse—or better yet, we hear he
or she has filed for bankruptcy or been charged with tax
evasion—we realize that he or she can’t keep up with the
celebrity lifestyle either. We are happy to see the celebrity
fall, and we are relieved that fame and wealth aren’t all they
are cracked up to be. “If it ends in ruin and your business
manager steals everything you have, then I don’t want that
life,” we think to ourselves.
For the same reason, we love to see celebrity cellulite and
stars without makeup. It makes them more real and takes
the pressure off of us. Even though they have a personal
trainer for each body part, a nutritionist for each meal, and a
hair and makeup person at the ready, they can still look bad,
so why on earth are we worrying?
David Levine, executive producer of CNN Headline
News’s Showbiz Tonight, sums it up: “People live the
vicarious life through celebrities by following their stories. It’s
why [people] root for them when they’re up.” But when
celebrities get too big, “people also get a cheap thrill
because it makes them feel better there’s somebody who’s
so rich and so powerful and so famous, like a Lindsay
Lohan, and it happens to her too . . . she has the same
addiction problems as we do.” When stars fall, people can
say, “See, I’m not so bad after all.”
 CHAPTER THREE

How Stars Are Created: The Machine

Above her, beneath her, and around her, the Machine hummed
eternally; she did not notice the noise, for she had been born with
it in her ears.
E. M. FORSTER, THE MACHINE STOPS

Try to picture a universe in which Demi Moore was

Demetria Gene Guynes, algebra teacher. Or Johnny Depp,
suburban bank manager. There’s just something about stars
that makes it seem as if they were born for fame, as if the
high school yearbook picture of that 1980s perm existed for
no other reason than to appear on an E! True Hollywood
Story. Any day now, they’ll find the gene for stardom, surely.
But scratch away at the glowing aura around celebrities
and things begin to look a little less straightforward. A star
isn’t a star simply because of acting talent or good looks or
an angelic singing voice. As fans, we may like to think that
we’re the ones who make celebrities; that we decide which
actors, singers, or athletes to like. In fact there are other
forces at work.
They call it the entertainment industry for a reason.
Working behind the scenes is a whole team of people—
movie-studio, record-company, and network executives;
agents, managers, and promoters; marketers and
advertising gurus; tabloid and magazine editors: the
Machine. These are the people in the shadows, the ones
who help decide who it is we will admire, who we will root
for, and who we will pity. They are the ones who help decide
who will become a celebrity.
 Meet the Machine

The idea of puppet masters pulling the strings, of secret

agencies at work in the wings, is not new. Just think of Yale
University’s Skull and Bones Society, which, since it was
formed in the 1830s, has been said to have had a hand in
selecting not only the university’s student government but
even state and federal governments. (George Bush and his
son George W. are both known to have been members, as
is John Kerry and a whole slew of high-profile law-makers . .
. I guess it’s not that secret.)
The thought of mysterious agents controlling things in the
background has long captured the imagination of writers,
too. E. M. Forster’s science fiction short story “The Machine
Stops” imagines a world where everything is controlled by
“the Machine,” a force set in motion by man’s own
technology. When Esquire magazine did a cover story in
1992 about “the Machine,” a Southern university secret
society, the term entered everyday use. It became a way to
describe all those people who devote their lives and careers
to bringing one person to power or prominence. In the world
of celebrity, it refers to the star makers—the handlers,
agents, publicists, and everyone else who works hard in the
background to make a celebrity a household name. No
matter how talented he or she may be, no star can do it
alone. Stars need the Machine to make it all happen.
 The Actor’s Agent

In the acting world, an all-important part of the Machine is the

talent agent. This is the person whose job it is to spot the
star-in-the-making amid the busloads of bright, shining
young things arriving every day in Hollywood. Agents make
the pivotal first connections with people who might one day
help the wannabe star pay the rent: casting directors,
producers, directors, and film and TV development folks.
The agent gets his or her clients out to meetings with the
people who matter and off to auditions for upcoming roles.
How do agents find work for their clients? Well,
relationships for sure: Most deals in Hollywood are made
because of personal introductions, or because a person,
show, or movie is pitched through the agent’s contacts. In
addition, something the industry calls “breakdown” lands on
agents’ desks every day. This is a list of roles casting
directors are holding auditions for. Mark Turner of the
prestigious Abrams Artists Agency explains that the daily
breakdowns “are mostly for films and acting roles for TV,
with some commercials and some hosting thrown in.” He
says that while anyone can have access to breakdowns,
“casting directors and producers tend to respond much
better when a submission is made through an agent.” So no
matter what, for a prospective actor, getting on an agent’s
roster is important.
Robert Attermann is vice president of the Abrams Artists
Agency and head of the theatrical department, which
includes stage, television, and film. I asked him what the job
of an agent is, and he told me, “Finding talent and getting
them the right opportunities; also, negotiating deals and
advising them why they should take project X over project Y,
as well as choosing projects based on the people who are
attached to them.”
If anyone should know how to become famous it’s
Attermann, so I asked him how one goes about it (ya know,
for your benefit, of course). He replied that it can actually be
tricky when an actor on the agency’s books shoots to fame
and becomes a celebrity quickly. “Sometimes it just
happens to them and we have to remind them to stay on the
path and make the right choices,” he said. That didn’t really
answer my question. I wanted to know, How do I . . . I mean,
does someone . . . become famous? He said, “Everyone
thinks they should be famous because they are watching the
press of people like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, and
they think it’s cool. Shows like Entourage [which, by the way,
he claims is quite a realistic depiction of the industry] and all
of the reality shows send the message that anyone can be
famous. They make it look like it’s an easy thing to do.”
Sadly, he assures me, it isn’t.
Agents are powerful, but even they have to acknowledge
that there are some factors beyond the control of the
Machine. Having talent, you’ll be happy to hear, does have
some bearing on an entertainer’s chance for success. But
some far more random factors can be just as important.
According to Attermann, “The bottom line is certainly talent.
The people who are talented will have longevity. That said,
there are people out there who are incredibly talented but
will never have the opportunity, unfortunately. Maybe they just
don’t have the look or are not at the right place at the right
time. We have people who come in here and you would
never guess they would ever go anywhere, then they book a
TV series and it takes off from there and you couldn’t have
predicted it.” I asked him how to get some of that kind of
success. “Well,” he said simply, “luck.”
Attermann has seen firsthand that, talent aside, having
someone who believes in you, plus luck, may be just what an
actor needs in order to make it big versus fade away into
oblivion: “Julia Roberts came in years ago and the
commercial agent who met with her at the time said, ‘Nah,
she’s too trailer park.’ As a matter of fact, when we moved
[offices] we were going through old rejection files and in
there was Annette Benning, Robin Givens, Julia Roberts,
and a couple of others.”
 The Music Biz

There are numerous cogs in the Machine if you want to

become a musician—probably more than in any other area
of the entertainment industry. They include the band’s
management, the music agent, the label, the tour manager,
and the publicist, just to name a few. There is a lot of
crossover among their roles, too, so there needs to be a
delicate balance between each one.
New York-based music and entertainment publicist Jenn
Nuccio explains, “The manager is responsible for making
sure all the elements are together for their artist on a day-to-
day basis. The agent, however, will have the role of booking
an artist on a tour.” It is incredibly important for an artist who
is just starting out to have an agent, because “if it’s an
unknown band the agent will get them on a tour like, for
example, Ozfest, or they may get them to open for an
established band like Green Day.” Another role the agent
has is negotiating contracts on an artist’s behalf, for instance
for podcasts or TV endorsements deals.
Barbara Skydel, now of the legendary William Morris
Agency, is probably one of the most prolific agents in the
music industry. She and partner Frank Barcelona ran the
influential agency Premier Talent, and together they
discovered several now-huge acts and guided them through
years of hard work to become the successful musicians they
are today. On Skydel and Barcelona’s résumé are, among
others, U2, The Who, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers,
Journey, Roger Waters, The Pretenders, Bon Jovi, and Van
Halen.
Skydel’s talent is being able to hear something unique in
an artist’s sound that she knows will translate across cultures
and generations. The perfect example is U2, whose global
success has endured for almost three decades. “We signed
them before the first record was out. We heard the music
and said, ‘This is fantastic. ’. . . Sometimes you hear
something and you just know.”

“We signed [U2] before the first record was out. . . .

Sometimes you hear something and you just know.”
—BARBARA SKYDEL
 Well who wouldn’t know? Take one look into Bono’s sultry
blue eyes and how could you not hand him a contract, the
keys to your summerhouse, and the rights to father your
firstborn? This shows my post-MTV way of thinking and how
shallow I am, because when Premier signed U2, it wasn’t
like that at all. “It was the music. We heard the music before
we saw what they looked like. We didn’t even know what
they looked like.”
This is one of the core differences between the music
industry then and now, when looks are crucial to a
musician’s success. “The truth is, that all started with MTV—
how you looked became important—but before MTV, artists
were creating something that a lot of those MTV acts
couldn’t duplicate on stage.” Growing up as I have in a pop-
culture, celebrity-driven, looks-oriented world, I cannot
imagine the freedom that musicians must have felt when it
didn’t matter what they looked like. Skydel tells me, “The first
time I saw the Jefferson Airplane, they didn’t even face the
audience! They played with their backs to the crowd, they
were dressed in the clothes that they woke up in that
morning, and it didn’t matter what people looked like. You
didn’t have to have your teeth fixed, your hair colored, or
whatever you do now. The only thing that mattered was your
songwriting ability and your performing ability. When MTV
came in, it really changed all that.”
I commented to Barbara Skydel that I think something else
has changed in the music industry, too: It seems easier to
become a star, thanks to American Idol. She tried to
disavow me of my bias: “American Idol is just a quicker way
to get there, but if a person’s got the goods it depends on
their own limitations, how far they can go with it, what is the
marketplace, and who’s behind them.” And if they don’t have
real talent and are instead created by the AI machine, with
nothing substantial to back it up, they “might not have a long
shelf life.”
Constantine Maroulis, who as an American Idol finalist in
2005 has an insider’s viewpoint, agrees with Skydel. As he
sees it, the major benefit to a singer’s career from
appearing on Idol is that a record label might look at a
contestant and think, “Maybe they didn’t win, but they’ve
been on TV and millions of people do like them and have
been voting for them . . . and wow, it’s a great training
program. They are a better performer, they’re seasoned
already—what most people go through in thirty years they’ve
gone through in thirty days.”
But future success depends on putting in the effort. “I grew
up in the theater,” says Maroulis, “so I understand the
progression and the hard work involved and am not afraid to
do what it takes to work my way up, like from ensemble to
leading role when you are a Broadway guy. . . . It’s a blue
collar mentality. It’s about the job and not the bull. Millions of
actors are not working, and there are plenty of singers who
have no record deals.”

“If you start out wanting to be a celebrity, you’re in big

trouble.”
—BARBARA SKYDEL

So I asked Skydel to explain how one becomes a

celebrity in the music industry. (Not that I have any talent, but
just in case one day singing off key and being tone deaf is
in.) She explained, “If you start out wanting to be a celebrity,
you’re in big trouble.” This is advice that young artists need
to heed, given that every music insider I speak with says that
on a regular basis they have potential clients walk in stating
that they “want to be famous” and that’s about it.
According to Skydel, “To start out, you have to have a
passion for what you are doing, and the passion is in the art.
It’s in songwriting and performing. This industry is hard
work.” She offers words of caution to those whose sole goal
is to become a big star: “For those who make it, celebrity is
an outgrowth of what happens to them, and many artists
don’t look for celebrity. They don’t look to be chased by
paparazzi, and they don’t look to never have a personal life.
Instead, they have a life of art, and to some the unfortunate
part of it is the celebrity part, where they no longer have a
private existence out of the public eye.”
Darryll Brooks, a promoter and artist manager, has been
a big part of the Machine since the early 1970s, managing
the careers and promoting the live shows of acts such as
Prince, Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind and Fire, Ray Parker,
Parliament-Funkadelic, Run-DMC, Salt-N-Pepa, Kid ’n Play,
and Mya. Brooks goes on his gut instinct when he meets a
potential artist, and, as with a love connection, relies on
chemistry. “I look for artists I’m compatible with. I’ve had
record labels like Interscope and Sony send me people that
they were interested in, but if the chemistry isn’t there, it’s not
going to work.” Like Attermann, he recognizes the role that
finding the right backer at the right time plays in the making
of a star. “Jimmy Iovine [who formed Interscope Records,
famous for launching Tupac, No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails, and
later Death Row Records] had a tape laying around that Dr
Dre picked up, and it happened to be Eminem. Dre is one
of those amazing producers who can hear something and it
grabs them in a certain way.” But, says Brooks, a star’s
fortunate break can just as easily come to nothing. “It can
turn over like the seasons. A guy at a label really believes in
an artist, but then he gets fired and the new people aren’t
interested.”
Brooks makes a clear distinction between talented
musicians whose careers have longevity and those who are
solely celebrities. He says there is a science to building
character and integrity in the music industry: “That’s why you
have artists who are still around after all these years; their
connection grows as the audience does.” Prince, who has
been a highly respected and popular performer for thirty
years, is a great example, according to Brooks. “He writes
music, sings well, and tells a story that brings you into the
character.” Celebrity is another beast, Brooks believes, and
has nothing to do with real talent and staying power as an
artist. In his many years in the industry, he has seen the rise
and fall of many “stars” who really weren’t the talent behind
their hits but simply what he calls “puppets.”

“Most of these performers who can’t perform are just

puppets of producers and computers. Record labels
keep manufacturing them because it’s a business.”
—DARRYLL BROOKS
 “We glamorize celebrity more than any other entity,” says
Brooks. “Most of these performers who can’t perform are
just puppets of producers and computers. Record labels
keep manufacturing them because it’s a business. They
need to keep making them up. Which one is the shiniest?
And then it becomes like going down to a used car lot:
‘Paint it red, send it out, we need three more red ones.’”
Sometimes a genuine star, a supernova, breaks through
all the noise with something to say or a fresh sound, which
then becomes the “it” thing.
On seeing this star’s success, the Machine tries to
manufacture more of the same. As Brooks says, “When
something works, like the Supremes for example, all the
record companies mimic the formula. ‘Its time for an all-
female group,’ and they keep doing it until that one falls off
the vine. Then it’s like, here we go again.”
 The Publicity Machine

Another vital cog in the Machine is the media—magazines,

tabloids, radio, TV, and the galaxy of Web sites and blogs
devoted to celebrities. Actor, author, and musician Stephen
Collins notes, “The whole present-day celebrity culture barely
existed when I was starting out in the early 1970s. Keep in
mind that there was no People magazine, no Us, no E!, no
ET, no Insider, no cable TV, and most people were
embarrassed to be caught looking at the National Enquirer,
even in the supermarket.”
Attermann adds, “There are so many more channels now
and so many more places where people can become
famous. The amount of channels we have has more than
doubled. It used to be just ABC, NBC, and CBS; now there
are so many channels—UPN, the CW, Lifetime, TNT, FX,
Showtime, HBO [to name a few]—and there is some great
programming on all of those channels.” And some not so
great—but regardless, while TV channels proliferate, the
celebrity-gossip magazines, TV shows, and Web sites
proliferate, too.
This profusion of media outlets means not only more
television, film, and YouTube roles for those who want to
become stars, it also means more opportunities for us to get
our daily gossip jones. And the celebrity-gossip media is a
star factory. How do you know that someone is a celebrity,
that this is a person you should pay attention to? You know
because you see his or her image splashed on every
celebrity-gossip magazine while you’re standing in line at
the supermarket, or you regularly catch sight of them posing
on the red carpet or on Extra or the Insider. Media attention
is like oxygen to stars’ careers.
While sometimes it may seem that stars spend their days
trying to escape the paparazzi, they know that they need the
media—to sell their image or their latest movie, TV show,
album, perfume, clothing line, and so on. This is where the
publicist steps in, to help the star navigate his or her way
through the sometimes vicious world of the media. Much the
way agents provide actors with connections to producers,
directors, and studios, publicists provide connections with
the right magazine and newspaper editors and radio and TV
producers. They know how to sell the star’s story and put the
star in the best light. They know how to court controversy,
capture headlines, and run damage control.
Publicist Susan Blond, a protégé of Andy Warhol and a
giant in the music industry, has represented some of the
biggest celebrities. You’ll want names, I’m guessing. Okay,
but you might want to put on some hefty shoes, because I’m
about to drop a lot of them. Susan has helped package,
polish, and promote the public image of everyone from
Janet and Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, the Osbournes,
Usher, LL Cool J, Snoop Dogg, P. Diddy, and Nelly to the
Clash, Duran Duran, and David Bowie; she has worked with
Prince, and she’s worked with Star Jones (during her
hardest times, I may add).
I asked her how she takes an unknown talent and turns
him or her into a household name. “Get them that first buzz,
the first column. . . . You are working with a career, and you
want them to be happy with the choices you’ve made. It can
go from a little line in a paper where you’re just the expert, to
a big feature in Vanity Fair, to cover stories or a TV show.”
The best example of Blond building the profile of a star is
the young Michael Jackson, with whom she worked early on
in his solo career. “I worked with Michael Jackson for about
thirteen years and then again in 2001 for the thirtieth
anniversary [of his first single as a solo act].” She
understands the power that the publicist wields: “If people
are very, very talented and are very interesting, and they’re
entertainers, we can get them their dreams.”
But even Michael Jackson had to struggle through it for a
while; it was not until his fifth solo album, Off the Wall, that
anyone really knew who he was. Even though Off the Wall
sold seven million copies in the United States, Susan still
had to persuade Rolling Stone to put Michael on the cover.
“Getting him on that cover was very tough, because people
from Rolling Stone would sit with me, the editors, who said,
‘It’s not our audience,’ and it wasn’t until you could convince
them, ‘Yes, this is your audience now, and this is bigger than
whoever you think your audience is. The world wants to hear
about Michael Jackson.’”
Sometimes clients know what they want, and they can
dictate to their publicists what to do. Janet Jackson was one
such client. “When I met with Janet, she’d say, ‘I just wanna
be in the columns,” . . . and she wanted sixty things in those
columns. She just wanted to keep hot, and that’s what she
wanted—to just keep that name on ‘Page Six.’” (‘Page Six’
is the quintessential gossip column in the New York Post. It
is said to be where the celebrities and Hollywood insiders
have always turned for the best gossip. Technically, it has
been on page ten or even page twelve for the past five
years, yet it is still referred to as ‘Page Six.’ If your name
appears there, you are somebody.)
 Think Like a Star

One of the Machine’s tried-and-true techniques is to have a

would-be celebrity simply adopt the mantle of a star. Behave
like a star, think like a star, and create an atmosphere of
glamour and importance around you, and you just might
convince enough people you are a star.

“They hired kids to create a hysteria and appear to be

fans running after them, to bring out the look of folks
running after the star.”
—DARRYLL BROOKS

This tool has been used to great effect in the music

industry. Brooks says that early in his career “the Jacksons
were doing a pictorial for Ebony magazine, and they hired
kids to create a hysteria and appear to be fans running after
them, to bring out the look of folks running after the star.
Readers didn’t know it was staged.” Music insiders also
hired fake fans to rush the stage as they were arriving at
concerts. “It was to hype the image,” Brooks says.
Actor Stephen Collins has been a celebrity and a fly on
the wall for many major events in entertainment. He believes
there is an element of choice in becoming a high-profile
celebrity who is hounded by paparazzi and obsessive fans.
In his view being a successful entertainer doesn’t
necessarily mean you have to become the kind of celebrity
we see plastered all over the tabloids on a daily basis. “I’ve
known and worked with countless huge stars and found that
they can pretty much all be divided into two groups: those
who—at least subconsciously—desperately need the ego
gratification that comes from being noticed wherever they
go, and those who get over themselves and move quietly
through the world attracting little attention. It’s a conscious
decision that one has to make.”
Collins, who worked with Jessica Biel for nearly ten years
on his show 7th Heaven, goes on to recall: “I worked with
Robert Redford when he was pretty much at the height of his
fame. He just walked down Fifth Avenue in New York, and
there’s something about him that says, ‘Yeah, it’s me. No big
deal. You don’t have to make a fuss.’ No bodyguards, no
entourage. And people left him alone. I’ve known others, who
shall remain nameless, who just seemed to invite people to
notice them and make a fuss. I mean, if you walk around the
streets of Manhattan with a phalanx of bodyguards, as I once
saw a big star do—six bodyguards surrounding him—
people wonder who the hell it is and need to know, to see
more, to get closer.”
Platinum-selling singer-songwriter Edwin McCain has
garnered the attention of millions with his top-ten smash “I’ll
Be” and the Diane Warren-penned top-forty hit “I Could Not
Ask for More.” His songs get a lot of wedding play and radio
airtime and are perennial favorites of American Idol
contestants year after year. He believes that when it comes
to fame and celebrity, there are two ways to go about
achieving it: “Work the media and develop this notion of
fame and act famous so in turn [you] become famous, or like
Ani DiFranco, where you say, ‘Fame and celebrity are not
real,’ so you reject it, and in that rejection you become
famous to those who agree with your point of view and
become more and more popular among the proletariat of
folks who agree with you and your artistic endeavor. The
crowd seems to swell when that happens.”
McCain tells a great story about David Bowie, when he
was just starting to be recognized. “When Bowie and his
manager came to New York, they were riding around in a
limo wearing furs, staying at the Waldorf, creating the image
that he was a star, even though they were flat broke. It was a
‘fake-it-till-you-make-it’ mentality, and then the perception
becomes the reality. All you need to do is project what you
want to be true, and sometimes it does—and sometimes it
doesn’t, which is why fame can only carry you so far, and
then the music has to be good. Your music has to speak for
itself; celebrity is fleeting, music is lasting.”

“Your music has to speak for itself; celebrity is fleeting,

music is lasting.”
—EDWIN MCCAIN
 In McCain’s case, the Machine did not start working until
he made a name for himself on his own. “I was turned down
nine billion times and kept on pounding away until someone
said ‘Yes.’ I played show after show after show; I was not to
be denied.”
Once he achieved fame, he experienced what he calls
“the curse of the famous.” He says this means that deep
down you don’t believe the compliments and adulation that
other people give you. “You feel it’s both untrue and unreal,
and think, ‘I don’t deserve to be here,’” he says. McCain has
now matured into a musician as opposed to a celebrity, but
he does admit that at first he did buy in to the whole fame
thing. He had several humbling moments that snapped him
back to reality. “I remember when my song was number five
on the charts, the Atlantic [Records] representative and a
major radio programmer took me to Sky Bar—at the time it
was the place to go in LA. We go up to the big bouncer guy
at the velvet rope to get into the club and the rep says, ‘Do
you know who this is?’ and he said, ‘I know who he is; he’s
not on the list.’”
 Become a “Brand”

Übermanager Benny Medina, one of the most famous star

makers of the past decade—and the real-life inspiration for
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which he coproduced—knows
that the secret to creating an intergalactic level of stardom is
branding. Here’s how you know when an entertainer is in the
good hands of Medina: He or she is more than just a
“singer” or an “actor”; he or she is a franchise, a brand.
Medina is credited with “creating” Jennifer Lopez, Will
Smith, Brandy, Tyra Banks, and others.
He made Jennifer Lopez more than just a dancer—he
made her a singer whose albums have sold millions; an
actress (despite what you may think of her acting ability,
she’s been in more films than you have); a television
producer (of the reality show Dance Life); an entrepreneur
with her own clothing line, perfume, and restaurant; and the
spokesperson for everyone from L’Oreal to Louis Vuitton. In
1999 I was at a party Medina was throwing for Lopez’s
debut album On the 6 (a reference to the 6 train she used to
take up to the Bronx when she really was “Jenny from the
block”). It was at a small club in downtown New York City . . .
but before I continue, I should probably tell you I was not one
of the distinguished guests but was there because my
mother had organized the event and I was her assistant for
the night. Everyone who was anyone in the radio and music
industry was there for this listening party, the aim of which
was to encourage stations to add her single “If You Had My
Love” to their playlists. It was a magical night, and when the
guest of honor arrived in her tight salmon-pink leather skirt
and beautiful shimmery sequined top and flipped her hair in
my face, I didn’t care. Instead I was in awe of Medina and
the folks he had assembled for this musical coming-out
party. To see the Machine operating in all its glory—turning a
then moderately successful actress and dancer into an all-
round superstar—was really something.
Publicist Susan Blond tells me that Russell Simmons was
really the first entertainment entrepreneur to grasp the
opportunity to create a multifaceted brand. “When we
represented Russell, he already had the Def Comedy Jam
[an HBO series showcasing the work of African-American
comics], he had the beginnings of Phat Farm clothing, he
had a movie company, and he managed to be the record
company [Def Jam]. He was one of the first, and now
everyone does it.” Simmons sold Phat Farm in 2004 for a
reported $140 million. He has added everything from
“author” (of a self-help book, in 2007) and financier (he has a
line of Baby Phat credit cards) to the Simmons brand.
Simmons may have been the first to realize that the artist
can be more than just a musician, but he wasn’t the first to
connect music with an existing brand in order to generate
publicity, brand loyalty, and—let’s face it—capital. According
to Brooks, that honor may go to Run-DMC. In 1986, way
before Simmons’s Phat Farm and associated branding,
Brooks was helping to make Run-DMC’s song “My Adidas”
(the hip-hop trio were big fans of the sports shoes) much
more than a music track. “Russell is a very unique
commodity because he paid attention to more than just one
thing,” says Brooks, “but we did a promotion in Baltimore
during the Raising Hell tour with Run-DMC called ‘Show
Your Adidas,’ and this was the beginning of what branding
was all about. The kids all came wearing Adidas, took them
off, and raised them in the air. It was incredible and it blew
everybody away.”
This may have been the first time a brand and a group
shared synchronicity, and it paid off for everyone. “Adidas
gave the group money and a necklace with a speaker to
wear around their necks. It’s clear that when you represent a
certain demographic, those companies want to pay
attention.” Adidas continues to benefit from the association,
still using the brand’s connection to Run-DMC in its
marketing campaigns.
Since then, everyone has cashed in; it’s a trend that has
kept on keeping on. According to Brooks, “Everyone who
came through Def Jam came from that same camp.” He
cites rapper Jay-Z, who in 1995 cofounded the fashion label
Rocawear, which has annual retail sales over $700 million;
and Beanie Sigel, a hip-hop artist who epitomizes the
celebrity-as-brand concept by having a fashion label, State
Property Wear (a subsidiary of Rocawear), named after his
group, State Property. Rappers from other labels also know
how to brand themselves on a scale never seen before.
Sean “Diddy” Combs’s clothing line, Sean John, captures an
estimated $400 million of the $42 billion we spend to look
good each year.
We are more apt to buy into the brand if we like the
celebrity. As Blond says, “Celebrities become everything to
people.” As a case in point she uses her client Napoleon
Perdis, whose cosmetics line is featured at Target and was
chosen as the official makeup sponsor of the Fifty-ninth
Primetime Emmy Awards in 2007. “You don’t buy anything
until your favorite star wears it. . . . If you want the girl down
the street to buy it, it helps that Charlize Theron wears
[Napoleon’s] makeup.”
 Celebrities license their name, market themselves the
same way a company would sell a widget, and keep their
image front and center. Blond has even begun to see the
branding trend in her youngest clients. “When I meet with
thirteen-year-olds now they all want to be ‘brands,’” she
says.
When I asked Maroulis if he has any advice for young
people who want to become stars, branding is definitely on
the top of his list. “Even with the record companies, it’s not
about selling just a record,” he says. “It’s about merchandise,
ringtones, etc.—they supplement lack of record sales with
other things. The music industry is not what it used to be.
Look at Justin Timberlake. He has his clothing line and
restaurants.”
This trend toward the entertainer becoming the
multitasking entrepreneur may explain why we use the word
celebrity so often now. It is a catchall term that can describe
so many levels and types of stardom. Take the Olsen twins,
for example—Mary-Kate and Ashley. They rose to fame as
child actors in the TV show Full House and have gone on to
star in movies, but would you call them simply actors? Not
really, because they are so much more. Take a quick look at
their Web site (www.mary-kateandashley.com) and you’ll
find that tween fans can purchase a mind-boggling array of
merchandise from the Olsen twin empire: jackets, tops,
pants, underwear, shoes, sunglasses, iPod cases, lip gloss,
fragrance, the twins’ DVDs and books, handbags, floor rugs,
and more. In fact the Web site covers just about every
conceivable aspect of a girl’s life: personal advice, beauty
tips, horoscopes, and the skinny on what clothes she should
be wearing this season, movies she should be watching this
month, and songs she should be listening to this week. She
can even go deep with “Today’s Thought” from the twins.
(Okay, maybe not that deep if “Give yourself a spring
manicure. Paint your nails a cool new color!” is anything to
go by. But you get the idea.) Mogul might be a more
appropriate term for the Olsens, but somehow that just
doesn’t do the trick, either. Celebrity seems to fit just right.
But while Mary-Kate and Ashley have worked hard for
years to establish acting careers and are clearly astute
businesswomen, the term celebrity has also become
synonymous with people who are famous yet have no
distinguishable talent whatsoever, people who are famous
for simply being famous. Does being in the tabloids make
you a celebrity? Does scandal? Does being called a
“celebrity” sometimes mean little more than “You’re in the
public eye, but we can’t categorize you, so we’ll lump you
into that grab bag called ‘celebrity’”?
 Pop culture expert Jarett Weiselman breaks it all down:
“The term celebrity has become so all encompassing;
everybody—from a D-list reality star to Jessica Simpson,
who has so much going on [the clothing line, the acting, the
singing, the hair extensions she licenses, etc.]—falls under
the same umbrella term of celebrity. The term has become
so watered down that there is no distinction between the A-
list star and the D-list nobody, which is why celebutant
became a new term [which combines the words celebrity
and debutante and describes people such as the Hiltons
and distinguishes them from those such as the Olsens]. This
understanding of the word celebrity also explains why so
many people feel they can become celebrities. One could
apply the term to someone doing even the minimal amount
of work.” Just so long as they do it in the public eye.
Oprah can no longer be classified a “talk show host,” as
she runs not only her own TV show but also a production
company, magazine, and philanthropic school for girls in
South Africa. She’s a celebrity. But so are the latest reality-
show participants who share little in common with Oprah but
the skill of multitasking. Since their show finished, they might
have spun a career out of going to nightclub openings or
commentating on other reality shows. They might not get the
same amount of respect and admiration as Oprah, but for a
time at least, they may get the same amount of column
inches in the paper and the same attention from TV and
radio stations. It’s no wonder that for a growing number of
people, celebrity looks like an easy thing to achieve and
something that they, too, deserve.
 Part Two

The Impact the Cult of Celebrity Has on

Our Lives
 CHAPTER FOUR

Fourteen Minutes and Counting

If you come to fame not understanding who you are, it will define
who you are.
OPRAH WINFREY

When I was four years old, I made a very important career

decision : I was going to be a ballerina. I was not like the
other kids in my class, who were choosing between fairy
princess and unicorn. I was in tap, jazz dance, and ballet
class with my friend Debbie, and we were going to the top.
By the time I reached the ripe old age of six, I had
abandoned my dreams of the American Ballet Theater for
the simple farm life of horse doctor. (Which was odd since I
lived in a city where the nearest horse farm was well over
250 miles away.) Then at ten I declared I would someday
coach the Pittsburgh Steelers. Chuck Noll had to retire
sometime. I may have been a girl, but I was also the son my
mother never had. I was a total jock, and while I thought it
might be a problem getting into the locker room as a woman
and all, it was a barrier I was willing to break. I never
considered that football coaches were indeed ex-football
players. And that’s the key to achieving your dreams:
knowing what it takes to actually do whatever it is you want
to do. My dream of “football coach” was dashed when I
learned that I would need to play for the NFL, or at least be a
star college football player. Not so realistic at 5 feet, 2
inches and 105 pounds . . . oh yeah, and a girl.
My friend Debbie thought she would easily make the jump
from ballerina to astronaut. Too bad she didn’t stick with it,
because that dream wasn’t so far-fetched. It would have
required going to graduate school to get her doctorate in
aeronautics, accompanied by years of piloting or military
experience. Then she could apply to NASA’s space
program and maybe one day become an astronaut. Had she
followed that trajectory, she might have been on her way into
space.
It isn’t like that in the entertainment industry. There is no
such clear linear path to success. You can’t do A, B, and C
and then end up at job D. Interview fifty celebrities and they
will give you fifty different stories as to how they got where
they are. And for each one who makes it to the height of
stardom, there are thousands who fall away, giving up their
dream after years of spending all their hard-earned cash on
singing or acting coaches, schlepping to auditions,
recording demo tapes, and meeting endless rejection. Let’s
face it: The vast majority of people who seek fame and
fortune are about as likely to ever deliver an Oscar or
Grammy acceptance speech as I am to deliver the halftime
motivational speech in the Steelers’ locker room.
So why is it that greater numbers of young people than
ever before believe that they can—and should—be famous?
Why has “celebrity” become a career goal, and why are so
many young people (even those with meager talents) willing
to give themselves to the pursuit of stardom?
 The Emerging Adults

In May 2000, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Ph.D., published an

article in a journal called American Psychologist, the
psychology equivalent of Playboy in that when it arrives we
can’t wait to open it up because we know something juicy
will be inside; it is psychology porn (that we read for the
articles, of course). In it he described a new generation of
kids in their late teens through twenties, the eighteen to thirty
set, which he called the “emerging adults.” He became a
rock star in the world of psychology for coining a term,
spawning new research, and identifying something
important happening in our culture.
Over the past thirty years, the concept of adulthood has
changed. The transition from adolescence to adulthood has
become prolonged, and young people are moving back
home after college and marrying later in life. Increasing
numbers are choosing careers such as movie actress or
pop star. Many are extending their education rather than
entering the workforce—or rejecting formal schooling and
going for singing or acting lessons instead. Amoung other
career ambitions, many emerging adults want to be famous.
 Entitled to Fame

If you are skeptical about that statement, consider the

research of psychologist Jean Twenge. In her fourteen-year
study, 16,475 college students nationwide completed a
questionnaire designed to assess where they ranked in the
personality trait of narcissism. This is one of the few
personality traits that psychologists judge to be largely
negative, as it features self-focused behavior, arrogance, a
sense of entitlement, and a lack of empathy and concern for
others. Twenge and her colleagues found that two-thirds of
the students rated above average in narcissism. As you can
imagine, Twenge made headlines with these findings. They
signaled that there had been an enormous shift in the
personalities of an entire generation, often referred to as
Gen Y. “College students think they’re so special,” one
headline read. “Big Babies: Think the Boomers are self-
absorbed? Wait until you meet their kids,” read another.
Twenge also found that the emerging adults’ higher rating
in narcissism was linked to an increased desire to be
famous. In her book Generation Me: Why Today’s Young
Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and
More Miserable than Ever Before, she says, “Many kids
today grow up thinking that they will eventually be movie
stars, sports figures, or at least rich . . . a lot of young people
also assume that success will come quickly.”
An alarming number of kids believe they will
“likely be famous at whatever career they
choose.”

In my own research for my master’s thesis, I found that an

alarming number of kids believe they will “likely be famous at
whatever career they choose.” And most of the research
done today finds that more than half of the emerging adult
population feels that way.
 This may explain why so many emerging adults are
choosing to delay the responsibilities of work and family until
later on. Decades ago many people in that age group might
have been setting up their own homes and families, but
studies show that now most eighteen- to twenty-five-years-
olds do not yet consider themselves to be adults. And if you
don’t yet consider yourself an adult, you can do things like
audition for American Idol over and over or take acting
classes in the middle of the day.
One mother I interviewed for this book told me about a
friend’s daughter who did just that—auditioned for American
Idol. I asked how far the girl got, to which she replied, “She
made it to Hollywood. Simon really liked her, but then she
was cut.” And then she added, “She still thinks she’s going
to be a star.”
“Oh,” I said, “is she taking singing lessons or going on
auditions? Did she sign with a label, that sort of thing?”
“No. So far she is still waiting to be discovered. She
doesn’t want to work, it’s not the life she’s accustomed to, so
she’s living at home and hoping that someone will find her.
It’s been four years so far.”

“You feel entitled to get the best in life: the best

clothes, the best house, the best car. You’re special;
you deserve special things.”
—JEAN TWENGE

This girl is not alone. There are kids in their teens and
early twenties who feel they deserve to be “found” and that
they don’t need to do anything to make it happen. And why
not live that way? Their parents aren’t kicking them out
anytime soon. Over the past thirty years there has been a
steadily increasing trend for people in the eighteen to thirty
age group to live with their parents. The most recent
research shows that over eighteen million emerging adults—
or 40 percent of single people in that age range—have
moved back home. Higher housing costs and lower wages
for entry-level jobs have contributed to this trend, but several
experts cite something else. For example, Twenge, whose
latest book is The Narcissism Epidemic, argues that it is
because emerging adults will not settle for second best. She
writes: “You feel entitled to get the best in life: the best
clothes, the best house, the best car. You’re special; you
deserve special things.”
On my radio show one night a twenty-five-year-old caller
agreed. He said, “Why should I have a not-so-nice car and a
crummy apartment, when I can live in my parents’ beautiful
house with good food and clean towels? It wouldn’t be as
nice if I lived on my own. Why should I spend my hard-earned
money on bills and rent when I can just move home?”
 Stars Don’t Have to Grow Up

In two studies, one conducted by Jeffrey Arnett and another

by researcher Frederick Lopez, people age eighteen to
twenty-five were asked to define what it means to be an
adult. For example, is it financial freedom from parents, or
being married and running a household? Is it chronological
age? Does it mean you have to stop partying?
The researchers found that for people in that age group,
adulthood is mostly about being in control of one’s emotions,
dealing with critical life events, and making mature career
decisions—all milestones that typically take place
somewhere near the age of thirty. Calling this population
“young adult” is wrong, they argued, since they do not yet
consider themselves adults—that’s why the term “emerging
adult” is more appropriate.
Ban freeloading. If you have a child over eighteen still
living at home who is waiting to be discovered by a
talent scout—and his or her technique basically involves
watching a lot of TV, talking on the cell phone, and
doing two shifts a week at the local video store—it’s
time to make that child take some responsibility. All
kids need to learn life skills and to learn to be
independent, as they will eventually have to move out on
their own. You are not doing them any favors by
coddling them if deep down you don’t believe there is a
future star sitting on your couch playing X-Box.
Many stars cite their parents as being their greatest
mentors and supporters in the early part of their career,
and they say it was their parents’ faith and sacrifices
that assured their success. But these are celebrities
such as Tyra Banks, Katherine Heigl, Beyoncé
Knowles, Charlize Theron—people who worked
incredibly hard, but who also had natural ability that was
undeniable right from the start. It’s more than fine to be
there to support your child’s attempt to make it in the
entertainment industry—so long as he or she is doing
his or her share of the heavy lifting.
The reality is that people in this age group have yet to
contend with the results of their own decision making, nor
have they reaped the benefits of their choices. Viewed from
this perspective, the fact that some people in the eighteen to
thirty age group think it’s okay to wait to be “found” and
turned into a star makes sense: They haven’t yet had to pay
the rent or a mortgage, squirrel away retirement savings, or
put their own kids through college.
To these not-yet-ready-to-be-adults, the world of fame
must seem especially appealing, given that immaturity in
stars is not just forgiven but almost celebrated. Case in
point: the celebrity tantrum. Many celebrity icons, regardless
of their chronological age, are renowned for appearing
incredibly immature and throwing temper tantrums whenever
they don’t get their way. There is Burt Reynolds’s slap heard
round the world at the premiere of the remake of The
Longest Yard (Reynolds is said to have slapped a reporter
in the face for not having seen the original version, which
starred . . . Burt Reynolds); Kanye West’s childish rant at the
MTV Video Music Awards in 2007 (he was angry for not
receiving any awards or being asked to be the opening act
for the show); and countless incidents of stars lashing out at
paparazzi (of which a nationwide favorite must be the sight
of a bald-headed Britney bashing a car with an umbrella).
Everyone will cater to your every need, just as a
mother would for her toddler. It’s one of the draws
of celebrity.

Then there are the temper tantrums that happen behind

the scenes. When Sean Combs was Puff Daddy—or maybe
he was “Puffy,” I can’t keep up—he called his publicist,
Susan Blond, before New York’s Fashion Week to request a
seat at the Versace show. “He said if we didn’t get him in,
we would be fired,” says Blond. “We called, but it was the
middle of this East Coast-West Coast rap war when
everyone was being shot.” The organizers didn’t want any
trouble and had decided that the only fair thing to do was to
avoid inviting rappers from either the East Coast or the
West Coast camps, “so they didn’t want him, and we were
fired the next day.” Despite the fact that this was a good
publicist who worked hard, she was let go in the blink of an
eye. This sort of immature behavior is indicative of what
celebrity is all about: You get to be a big baby whenever you
want to because everyone will cater to your every need, just
as a mother would for her toddler. It’s one of the draws of
celebrity.
The emerging adults see celebrities their age, and older,
living in a kind of suspended adolescence, not having to
deal with all the boring stuff in life—getting up at the same
time every day when the alarm goes off, commuting down a
congested highway, remembering to pay the cell phone bill.
Instead, they see images of celebrities studded with jewels
at red-carpet events, hanging out at clubs midweek, and
playing with their toys (luxury cars, pedigree lapdogs, class
A drugs, etc.) in the schoolyard (LA, New York).
How appealing it all must look to emerging adults. Never
mind what they don’t see: That for most stars it took a lot of
effort to get where they are, and their lives are plagued by
neuroses. (“Where is the next acting job coming from?” “Do
my fans still love me?” “Why isn’t my single selling?” “Am I
starting to look old?” “Is my manager trying to rip me off?”)
They don’t see the hard work that goes into making movies
or albums or what it takes to write a hit song. They don’t
know what it’s like to get rejected time after time at casting
calls or be a nobody touring the country 300 nights a year
until a label finally signs you.
Shows such as American Idol can appear to bless young
performers with sudden fame. But what viewers don’t see is
the years of hard work that went into their “overnight”
success. Take 2005 finalist Constantine Maroulis. Before
Idol, he earned a degree at the prestigious Boston
Conservatory and then, he says, “I went back to New York,
where I am from, and was lucky enough to land a role in the
touring company of [the musical] Rent. So I went out on the
road with Rent, playing the lead role. At the time I also had a
band and I was just hustling, like you do.”
Maroulis was working so hard out on the road that while
he knew of American Idol, he hadn’t actually seen the show.
It was a former girlfriend who encouraged him to audition.
He approached that audition not as if it would be his ticket to
instant stardom, but the way he did any other gig a working
performer might try out for. “I approached it like it was every
other audition,” he says.
Viewers don’t see how the stars have struggled. Instead
they see the glamorous end result—and they want that. The
illusion is that celebrity is an easy, luxurious life where you
feel special all the time—and that is just the kind of thing that
many emerging adults have grown up believing they need
and deserve.
 An Army of Me

The emerging adults’ need for fame has been encouraged

by their parents, who tell them how talented they are, whether
they have any real talent or not. Twenge found that the
increased level of narcissism in college students is due to
parents raising their kids to be “special” and telling them that
they can be whatever they want to be—without emphasizing
the necessary hard work and talent. The motive of these
parents isn’t a bad one: Their aim is to raise their children’s
self-esteem. But, as Twenge notes, they are going about it
the wrong way and are creating self-esteem based on a
“shaky foundation.” The emerging adults are an entire
generation who won awards for just showing up, because
everyone is equal; they were given little incentive to be
smarter or, heaven forbid, make mistakes and learn coping
skills. This is the same generation whose educators did
away with gifted programs because they were unfair to
average kids.
Get strategic. To you emerging adults out there who
have decided that, yes, a career as a performer and
celebrity is what you really want: It’s time to get
strategic. Are there any classes you can take to help
you on the way? How are your networking skills? How
many hours a day can you devote to practicing your
craft? If you need some money to follow your dream,
what skills do you have—or can you develop—to get a
job? Have you got any contacts you can call to help you
break into the industry?
It’s also time to be specific about your goals. “I want
to be famous” is not enough to make a true vocation.
Celebrity might look like one big endless party, but a
long-term career in the entertainment industry is hard
work, and you need to be sustained by something
deeper, such as a love of the craft of performing.
When I was just starting out, there was a girl in my circle
who so desperately wanted to be a singer—no, a pop star.
She worked some of the crummiest jobs at the worst of
hours to support her “craft,” as she always referred to it. She
spent every cent she had on vocal coaches, headshots, cute
pop-star outfits, and plastic surgery. When she finally got
enough money together to produce her own CD, she held a
party at her parents’ place (where she was living at age
twenty-five) to showcase her unique talent. She invited
everyone she knew, and she asked along a local newspaper
music reviewer to document this momentous occasion. We
all turned out for her musical debut to the world—after all,
wouldn’t you have wanted to be there when Christina
Aguilera sang her first note?
She got up on a makeshift stage in her backyard and
made a speech thanking us for coming and her parents for
their support and promising that she wouldn’t forget us when
she was famous. Everybody was shaking with anticipation,
the CD began, and you could hear by the first note that it
was horrible—no, excruciating. I would have preferred forty
minutes of the emergency broadcast signal tone. I looked
over at her parents and they were just overjoyed and
beaming—I think I even saw a couple of tears—as though
their little girl deserved to make it big and here she was
finally achieving that goal. Later I overheard her mother
talking to the reporter: “Isn’t she incredible? Like Mariah
Carey [more like Drew Carey]. My baby has perfect pitch!”
My young friend—who, needless to say, has not made it
big—was an early example of those children who feel
entitled to fame and special treatment because their parents
conditioned them that way. She—like the emerging adult
population today—would have benefited from parents who
were a little more, um, realistic.
But instead of realism and guidance, what many of the
current generation of emerging adults get from their parents
is an echoing of their own immaturity.
In his best seller, Balsamic Dreams: A Short but Self-
Important History of the Baby Boomer Generation, Joe
Queenan sardonically describes his thought process when
he has a cancer scare (which luckily turns out to be just that,
a scare). His reaction to what he fears is his imminent death
is a desire to climb Machu Picchu, learn to fly airplanes, and
visit every baseball stadium in the United States, rather than
do what a responsible adult with a family would and should
do if he found out he had precious months to live, such as
plan for his family’s future without him, spend his last days
with his children, and as he says, “use his few remaining
months to make this planet a better place than the way he
found it.” What Queenan is actually describing is the kind of
self-focused parenting that many emerging adults have been
raised with. Humor may be his conduit, but the lesson of this
kind of parenting is clear. Immaturity begets immaturity, and
the research bears this out.
 The New Media Generation

Baby boomers and Gen Xers grew up with television. Yet

despite their fluency in all things media, they can’t hold a
candle to the current generation of young people. Professor
Jane Brown from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill says that, culturally and developmentally, emerging
adults growing up in the early part of the twenty-first century
are unlike any others in history. The media has an
unrelenting presence in their daily lives, so much so that
Brown refers to them as “the new media generation.”
Emerging adults turn to television not only for
entertainment but also as a source of information, and
according to researcher L. Monique Ward, this has lead
them to have a greater level of involvement with the content
they view. They don’t merely watch TV. They feel TV. They
live TV. What they see on television reflects their world or—
in the case of reality television—it is their world.
Get real. Anyone contemplating an attempt at being a
star needs to be very honest with him- or herself about
his or her true talents and assets. For any would-be
stars, getting some professional opinions rather than
going exclusively on the fact that your friends, mom, and
dad all keep telling you that you’re gonna be a big star,
should be the first step.
Moms and dads: I’m not for a minute suggesting that
you stop being supportive of your kids. What I am
suggesting is that you do your best to help your children
develop genuine self-esteem based on substantial
personal qualities, skills, and talents. Also, make sure
they are represented by professionals who know their
industry, rather than relying on the untried opinions of
the people who love them.
There is an abundance of reality shows that feature young
people striving to become America’s next top singer,
dancer, model, or soap star; vying to be selected as the fairy
tale husband or wife for a fairy tale hunk or hunkette; out-
surviving one another in a jungle or on a menacing, remote
island; attempting to stay sane while held captive under
twenty-four-hour surveillance, with apparently little more than
a swimsuit and some lip gloss; or simply struggling to get
through the dramas of young life and love in a suitably
stunning beachside location.
So, emerging adults spend a lot of time watching their
peers on TV, peers doing (relatively) normal, everyday
things that they could do just as well—no, better. All their
peers had to do to get on TV was send in audition tapes that
captured the TV producers’ attention. In many cases the
stars of reality TV have no discernible talent, just good looks.
Now they’re celebrities . . . for a while at least. And this
persuades emerging adults that celebrity is not only
desirable, but it’s within their reach.
Casting director Olivia Harris confirms that there has been
a change in the industry, away from talent toward youth and
good looks. Even for dramatic roles, actors regularly show
up cute, yet unprepared, something that would never have
happened twenty years ago. “Your chances of getting a job
are a lot greater [if you are beautiful], since there are so
many shows demanding pretty young people,” she says.
Another big change she has seen over the years is that “now
they walk in and say, ‘I want to be famous,’” whereas in the
past “even if you were thinking it you wouldn’t say it.”
Paris Hilton is my favorite example of this era of kids, and
I have been on Showbiz Tonight and the Fox News Channel
many times saying that she is the “hood ornament” for this
generation, their icon. Famous for being famous, she seems
to have it all—money, celebrity, power, looks, glamour—
without having to really do anything. Despite the fact that they
don’t have the riches, opportunity, or upbringing that she has
had, many emerging adults harbor fantasies of enjoying the
same lifestyle as her. And with it all looking so easy on TV,
and parents saying, “Yes, you are special,” it’s no wonder it
seems attainable.
Reality TV is making celebrities out of people who should
not be, and it’s encouraging others to follow in their
footsteps. We are raising a generation of kids who think
they’re special, therefore we should want to watch their
every boring humdrum move. Despite the fact that MTV ran
out of interesting people on The Real World after season
four, they trudge on. So far they’ve shot twenty seasons, and
I’m sure there is no shortage of kids lining up to audition for
seasons twenty-one, twenty-two, and twenty-three.
Reality TV is making celebrities out of people who
should not be, and it’s encouraging others to
follow in their footsteps.
 Reality Check

While the lure of fame is tempting, and it may look easy to

achieve, members of the new media generation need to
consider a few things before they give up their day jobs or
trade college for singing lessons.
Of all the reality-show stars churned out each year, most
never actually go on to “make it” by true success standards,
nor do they become enduringly famous. Maybe they do for
just a few seconds, or for their “15 minutes,” as Andy Warhol
predicted. (Although I’ve read that as a celebrity himself
Warhol got so sick of commenting on that famous quote that
he changed it each time he was asked about it: “In the future,
fifteen people will be famous,” or “In the future, everyone will
be famous to fifteen people,” which is probably true if you
consider the blogosphere and YouTube.) I can list a litany of
names that were everywhere and have now sunk back into
obscurity. Colleen Haskell—who? Dat Phan—huh? Yeah,
that’s the point.
Keep your bases covered. Even teenagers who are
brilliantly gifted at something—music, acting, a sport—
need a well-rounded education. If the going gets tough,
they will need solid skills to fall back on. Peter Scales,
Ph.D., of the Search Institute, a nonprofit organization
devoted to the raising of healthy children and youth,
warns talented young sportspeople not to fall for what
he calls the “NBA fallacy.” Only 1 in 10,000 kids actually
has enough talent to compete at the college level, and
then 1 in every 100,000 of them actually makes it into
the pros. “The odds are astronomically against them,
but a lot of young people want to be NBA stars. They
figure, ‘I don’t have to worry about English or math, I’ll let
my agent deal with all of that.’ They can’t string an actual
grammatical sentence together and, worse, some brag
about their lack of education.”
Many of the agents, producers, and casting people whom
I spoke with were very clear that only the most talented of
reality-TV stars are likely to continue to find work in the
entertainment industry. As an agent for TV show hosts, Mark
Turner of the Abrams Artists Agency sees former reality-TV
stars almost daily. “Over the past ten years, I’ve had more
and more people who’ve been contestants or participants
on reality shows contact me looking to turn what they’ve
done into a full-time TV career. While some have been
fortunate enough to make the difficult transition, I’ve found
that it’s far and away the exception, rather than the rule.”
Anyone who hopes to follow the lead of Elizabeth
Hasselbeck—former Survivor contestant, now panelist on
The View—is likely to be sorely disappointed, as she is a
rarity.
Maroulis cautions: “It’s a marathon, not a sprint. There are
people wondering what happened to me [after American
Idol], but if they even knew how hard I’ve worked and about
my family and the struggles . . . I had a giant sitcom deal
lined up right after AI, starring Kelsey Grammer. I spent that
vital year right after AI doing that show.” But as so often
happens in TV land, the network canned the show before it
made it on air. “But I have big shoulders . . . I’ve always been
a survivor. I always hustle. Even as a kid, I always had jobs; I
had more Mcjobs than anyone I know.” Since Idol Maroulis
has had a role on The Bold and the Beautiful, owns and
runs his own record label (Sixth Place Records/Sony Red),
and has released a self-titled album.
A few minutes of fame might be relatively easy to snatch,
but forging an entire career based on that quick fame is hard
to do. Ereka Vetrini, who was a contestant on the first
season of The Apprentice , is a great example of the
struggle a reality-show contestant can have making the
transition to working TV host. After The Apprentice , Vetrini
went on to work as Tony Danza’s sidekick for the first
season of The Tony Danza Show. By the second season
she was gone, literally replaced by a parrot—and the rumors
began to fly.
Speculation about the reason Vetrini was fired varied
from her lack of experience and ability to the opposite, that
she was so camera friendly and likeable that Danza felt
threatened by her. While in Chicago shooting the now
defunct In the Loop with iVillage , she explained to me, “My
role was never fully defined [on The Tony Danza Show] and
proved not to fit in with the formula of the show, but in just
one season I learned so much.” I asked if she felt prepared
to go from a network reality show to a network talk show.
“Absolutely not. I had no idea what I was in for, and in
retrospect that was a good thing . . . I think what the
executive producers liked about me was that I was not
overtrained.” The Tony Danza Show was canceled after the
second season.
So what is it like to be an instant celebrity because of a
reality show? Vetrini says that while she did become a
celebrity “of sorts,” it wasn’t all that you would imagine. “For
a while I made the most of it. I went to the parties, got the
VIP treatment, and walked the red carpet, but I remember
feeling like a phony. What was I ‘famous’ for?”
After it all faded—as it always does—she remembered
who she was and where she came from and realized, “I take
pride in working hard and being good at what I do. I was not
good at being famous just for being famous.”
Reality-show contestants and reality shows in general are
the bane of an actor’s existence and certainly of writers, film
directors, and casting directors. These people worked very
hard to get where they are, honed their crafts, and worked
as gofers, extras, and assistants, getting coffee for the
people whose jobs they so desperately wanted. True artists
know the feeling of rejection, a hard day’s work, and how
long real success can take. So of course they resent reality
stars, because they just show up. Imagine if you went to work
tomorrow and someone walked in off the street with
absolutely no experience and replaced you? You wouldn’t
like it much either. Harris told me: “I actually got a call once
to cast [a reality show]. It’s anti casting! I said, ‘What is there
to cast? Just open the door.’”
According to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), acting roles
are disappearing at an alarming rate. In 2005, for the
second year in a row, theatrical and television employment
statistics took a downward turn, due to the major networks
adding yet another 5.1 hours per week of nonscripted (read:
reality show) programming. The latest casting data released
by SAG put the number of roles for performers, especially in
the field of prime-time television, at an all-time low.
Millions of young people want to be actors, but only
120,000 even get into SAG. And of that number, very few—
only about fifty—might be considered stars. We’ve all heard
of big-name stars earning notoriously huge salaries, such as
Kiefer Sutherland, who signed on to do 24 for a reported
$40 million. This creates the false impression that acting is a
highly paid job, but according to the U.S. Department of
Labor, the median hourly rate for actors is $11.28. The
average income that a SAG member earns from acting?
Less than $5,000 a year.
Beyond the fact that for most chasing a career in the
entertainment industry is a wasted effort, it’s also important
to remember that even if you do manage to grasp fame, it
doesn’t necessarily equal happiness.
Singer-songwriter Edwin McCain has some insight—he
lived it: “I went through years where I thought my [expletive]
didn’t stink, and I became the worst version of myself. I
traveled in a private jet, had limo drivers, and acted like a
complete idiot. I guarantee if you were with me then, you
were having a good ole’ time. But fame robs pieces of your
soul that you are never getting back, and self-respect goes
out the window. It’s irretrievable.” McCain now chooses not
to live in Hollywood or New York. He lives in the town where
he was born—Greenville, South Carolina—because, he
says, “At the end of the day, you are still a friend to your
friends and a son to your parents.”

“Fame robs pieces of your soul that you are never

getting back.”
—EDWIN MCCAIN

Celebrity should be the result, not the goal. It’s time for
emerging adults to focus on developing skills and useful
personal traits instead of just chasing the fame ideal.
McCain advises, “There’s a certain amount of trial by fire,
and while I welcome all comers, the incinerator is 220
degrees and they’ll get burned up. Only the ones who are
Teflon coated will survive.”
Strengthen your core. I’m not talking abs. I mean that
we all need to focus on the personal qualities that really
matter, that really endure, such as competency,
compassion, empathy, social skills, and solid self-
esteem. These things, much more than the fleeting joys
of fame, are what are important. Once the sparkle has
faded, what really matters is a strong sense of self and
your place in your family and community.
 CHAPTER FIVE

It’s Not a Generation Gap, It’s a Freakin’

Ravine

I think young girls look up to people who are older than they are,
because you’re always looking ahead.
AMANDA BYNES, QUOTED IN USA TODAY, AUGUST 15, 2005

Since the dawn of time, community elders have been

shocked by the behavior of the young. Way back in 400
B.C., Socrates famously carped, “The children now love
luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they
show disrespect for elders, and love chatter in place of
exercise.” (What did he know? Pilates, yoga, personal
trainers, and gym memberships are at an all-time high.) That
statement could have been made at any time in history to
illustrate how the older generation looks at the next one,
shaking their heads in despair of what the future holds.
Down through the millennia it has always been the role of the
younger generation to take their lives in a radically different
direction than their parents’.
In living memory it’s the baby boomers who raised Cain in
a truly significant way. They outraged their parents with
social statements and antiwar protests. They forced society
to change its attitudes on marriage, women’s rights, and
race. All in all they shook the very foundations of society.
Some of the younger baby boomers and subsequent Gen-X
parents are worried—not that their children will become
antiestablishment rebels like the boomers, but the opposite.
They’re concerned their daughters might conform to the
worst of standards and end up like Paris Hilton, Lindsay
Lohan, or Britney Spears, with goals that don’t go much
further than getting off a charge for a traffic violation or
buying the latest Chanel bag. They hope their sons will
aspire to more than a life of bling, luxury cars, Cristal, and a
regular supply of whatever the latest class-A drug is.
Even young celebrities are worried about their children
developing the habits of other young celebrities. On my
radio show I interviewed Kevin Federline, at the time still
Britney Spears’s husband, and the father of her two sons.
Their firstborn, only a year old, was already showing talent,
Federline told me. “It’s funny, I watch Preston doing his thing
to a beat and really having rhythm.” Stage moms and dads
all over the country were dyspeptic with envy, but through his
then bride Federline knew enough about the world of
celebrity to be cautious. “I don’t plan on letting any of my kids
be in the industry until they are eighteen and ready to make
decisions like that for themselves. . . . I’m the dad that
doesn’t want to put my kids out there. Y’know, I think child
stars grow up with a lot of problems. I’m gonna avoid that as
much as possible.”

“I think child stars grow up with a lot of problems.”

—KEVIN FEDERLINE

Just about every day it seems that a celebrity commits

some new outrage against human decency. I don’t know
how anyone is brave enough to drive in LA—aren’t the roads
filled with drunk-driving and/or drug-addled starlets? If you’re
not seeing a star’s wasted-looking mug shot on your TV
screen, you’re hearing about the latest leaked nude photo or
sex tape. Talk shows, newspapers, magazines, and blogs
are alive with debate about what kind of damage these role
models are doing to the young people who idolize them.
It is young girls that parents seem to be the most worried
about when it comes to these celebrity role models. No
doubt this is because there is so much more airtime
devoted to the antics of a certain clique of young female
celebrities—the ones that little girls just happen to adore.
While there are no doubt plenty of male stars getting into all
kinds of trouble, and while we’d prefer our sons didn’t follow
in their footsteps either, they just don’t seem to be under
quite the same media microscope.
That’s not to say boys are not influenced. Several studies
have been published in the past few years that suggest male
body-image issues are on the rise. But there doesn’t seem
to be such a glut of information about male celebrities.
This topic is so hot that I have been asked on to an
increasing number of television shows to offer my opinion—
from the developmental psychology point of view—about the
effect the constant media exposure to stars’ behavior is
having on young girls. When Lindsay Lohan was arrested for
DUI the second time, it was like DEFCON 1 at my place.
Everyone wanted to know what this meant for her career,
what kind of role model she was becoming, and what
parents could do to protect their children from following in
her footsteps. And when I say everyone, I mean not only
programs such as Showbiz Tonight that cover celebrity
news exclusively, but also news channels rarely known for
lengthy discussions of celebrity culture like The O’Reilly
Factor on the Fox News Channel. The stories would center
not on the demise of a starlet’s career, but on the effect it
was having on the youth who admire her. Parents were
indeed concerned, and understandably so.
Let’s not forget that the youth have always pulled
through, got jobs, set up their own homes, and
raised their very own generation of youth.

Children of the Celebrity Age Parenting is stressful

enough. You want your children to have the best education
possible so they can have a secure career. Then there are
all those other concerns you are reminded of daily. What if
they’re being pressured into drugs, alcohol, or smoking by
their friends? What about bullying, youth suicide, self-
esteem?
And now should you have to add celebrity role models to
your list?
Well, let’s not forget our old friend Socrates and his
version of, “Oye, kids today!” Keep in mind that every grown-
up generation has despaired of the problems besetting their
youth. And let’s also not forget that the youth have always
pulled through, got jobs, set up their own homes, and raised
their very own generation of youth . . . to angst about. My
mother was just as horrified when my friends and I were
walking around dressed like Madonna, who back in the
1980s was the “Don’t be like her” woman of the day. We
turned out okay.
Focus on positive celebrity role models. It may
seem that all young female Hollywood does is drink,
take drugs, and drive. They forget they had babies and
think, “Yeah, great idea,” everytime a boyfriend
suggests turning on the video camera. But there are a
host of young female stars leading lives of
accomplishment and dignity—it’s just that they’re
focusing on their education, career, family, and
community, and that doesn’t make such a juicy Access
Hollywood story.
It seems as though our expectations of stars’
behavior is directly proportional to the caliber of actor
we perceive them to be. Could you picture Natalie
Portman speeding away from the paparazzi after
leaving a club at 4 a.m. and driving into oncoming traffic
with Harrison Ford in the passenger seat? She is
known for her consistency, talent, and integrity—not for
showing up hours late to a film set still on a bender from
the night before. There is a level of professionalism and
respect some actors have for their profession that we
all wish young Hollywood possessed.
You might not have much control over your kids’ taste
in entertainers, but next time you get palpitations when
they’re looking at pictures of bleary-eyed starlets
hobbling out of a limo at a nightclub, it might help to
remember girls such as Natalie Portman, Mandy
Moore, Claire Danes, Rachel McAdams, Rosario
Dawson, and America Ferrera, among others.
We are so inundated with different forms of media and
technology bringing celebrity images into our lives that it’s
easy to get overwhelmed. And because we may be
overwhelmed, it’s natural to assume that children and teens
are, too. We fear that they will be unable to sift through all the
media images of celebrities, edit out the “noise,” and
absorb the right kind of messages.
But let’s put this into perspective. I’ll bet that you had to
deal with a lot more technology, bringing many more media
images into your life, than your own mother did. As the pace
of technological change speeds up, each previous
generation inevitably feels overwhelmed or out of touch.
Take my grandmother, who still doesn’t understand the
answering machine. She still—to this day—calls and leaves
the following message: “Tell her it’s Grandma,” like I’m going
to come home and a robot of some kind will tap me on the
shoulder and say, “Good day, madam, I’m sorry to disturb
you, but I just wanted to inform you that your grandmother
has telephoned.” Or sometimes she will say her piece and
then sign it, “Love always, Grandma,” like it’s teletyping my
messages to me. “This just in—STOP—Grandma has called
—STOP.” She has the voicemail feature on her phone but
doesn’t know how to use it, so when you call her and she
isn’t home, it just rings and rings. We could teach her what to
do, but since she didn’t grow up with any of this kind of
technology, she doesn’t really understand what she’s
missing—other than calls from her doting . . . make that
frustrated . . . grandchildren. To her, technology was a
typewriter, which was a very big deal (although she never
learned to use that, either).
To my grandmother it seems impossible, or at least
improbable, that we are actually capable of using the kinds
of communication we have today. When she was twenty-two
and the guy she was dating wanted to dump her, he had to
do it in person and not over (choke) e-mail. When she got to
know a guy, she went to places that young grandmas and
their gentlemen callers went to, talked face-to-face, and
shared a milkshake or whatever they drank back then.
These are the babies of the information
technology age; an endless stream of media
images of celebrities is what they were born into.

My point is, the way her generation, and even our parents’
generation, process information is different from the way we
do. And yep, that means the ability of the current crop of
children and teens to process information—editing and
weeding out what is not relevant—is evolving at a faster rate
than we perhaps give them credit for. These are the babies
of the information technology age; an endless stream of
media images of celebrities is what they were born into, and
we need to recognize that they, too, just as other
generations have done before them, are constantly adapting
and learning how to process all this information and
imagery. Just as you have no trouble leaving an answering
machine message for someone, your kids are probably
doing a better job of editing down the flood of celebrity
information than you realize.
Children are becoming comfortable with technology at
younger and younger ages. When I was doing my practicum
at Nickelodeon for grad school, I worked on a study that
found that kids as young as two and three years old were
able to turn on a computer and click on their icon on the
desktop. Maybe they couldn’t read yet, but they knew how to
work the computer and what their icon looked like. This
speaks to not just the ease with which technology makes its
way into each generation, but how young people learn to
adapt. Part of being able to adapt is making technology fit
into your life and not the other way around. But when children
at any age participate in normal social developmental stuff
such as e-mailing, watching entertainment TV, and reading
celebrity blogs, it seems to parents as if it’s just everywhere
and that kids must be absorbing more than they can handle.
The fact that celebrities are all pervasive doesn’t
necessarily mean that they are all-powerful, though. Sure,
kids today may be exposed to the most extreme volume of
images of celebrities that anyone up to this point in human
history has been, but is this endless stream of celebrity
images turning them all into drunk drivers? Cocaine
addicts? Pole dancers? Happily, no.
 Parent vs. Celebrity Death Match

You may be relieved to hear that the likelihood of your child

ending up with self-esteem problems, aggression, a drug or
alcohol addiction, or a jail term has little to do with the
celebrity images he or she is exposed to every day. Youth
have had their troubles for as long as there have been youth
—way, way before MTV hit the airwaves—before there even
were airwaves. But don’t put your feet up just yet. The stars
might be largely off the hook, but that leaves the onus on us,
the grown-ups at home, to be ever more vigilant.
In the past twenty years or so, the trend has been to blame
kids’ problems—everything from violent behavior to poor
self-image, learning and concentration problems, and
narcissism—on too much exposure to TV, the Internet,
movies, and video games. And a major component of what
kids see in the media is celebrity images. James Steyer,
who teaches civil rights and civil liberties at Stanford
University, is an advocate for children. On CNN one day he
said, “The average American child today spends
approximately forty hours per week with various forms of
media—television, music, video games, films. Maybe about
seventeen hours per week with their parents, and about thirty
hours per week in school. So you tell me, who’s the parent in
this picture?” Well, Jim, the parent. The parent is still the
parent. That’s something we all have to remember: Parents
have the final say over what their kids do and what they
watch. Anyone who leaves the parenting to video games,
TV, and the Internet has only him- or herself to blame.
Peter Scales, Ph.D., is a developmental psychologist,
author, speaker, and researcher who is widely recognized
as one of the nation’s foremost authorities on children, youth,
and families. He agrees that the parent is still responsible
for teaching children constructive use of their time, values,
and social competencies. He has a theory about why
celebrities don’t make great role models: “If kids are trying
to imitate people whose lives are not about authenticity,
where all we know about them is superficiality and
appearances, where they are playing a role for the camera,
there is no humility or giving to others there.
“Celebrity worship, in its worst manifestations, is
counterproductive. The right kinds of positive values can
have an impact on an adolescent’s identity, but if the culture
of celebrity . . . [is about the stars] promoting themselves
[and] high self-esteem is demonstrated on a superficial
level, it’s not the right kind of positive impact.
 “What Britney and Lindsay actually signify are behaviors
that are not evidence of high self-esteem but a shallow idea
of what it looks like. Acting as if the world revolves around
you may come across as high self-esteem, but it is
completely superficial.”

“What Britney and Lindsay actually signify are

behaviors that are not evidence of high self-esteem but
a shallow idea of what it looks like.”
—PETER SCALES, PH.D.

Scales and Peter Benson, Ph.D., through their Search

Institute facility, have come up with 40 Developmental
Assets for Adolescents™, which are the positive
experiences and qualities they believe are essential to
raising successful young people. They focus not on celebrity
role models or TV but on the importance of things such as
positive family communication, where young people feel
willing to seek advice and counsel from their parents, and
family boundaries, which means there are clear rules within
the home and consequences for a child’s behavior. They
advocate adolescents getting involved in community service,
pursuing creative endeavors, and having convictions.
Communicate positively. If you have concerns about
how your children are being influenced by the media
and celebrity culture, Scales advises that you “talk with
your children about your fears and concerns, but expect
an amount of good decision making on their part and
reward it.” This is a way to keep them close.
Remember: “It’s trial and error to be a teen, and trial
and error to be a parent of a teen. You have to always
give them the opportunity to reject you, but keep inviting
them to be with you, while expecting to hear ‘No.’” You
need to expect a certain amount of rejection, because
“that’s the process; that’s how it works.”
 Set family boundaries. Setting boundaries is about
being as consistent as possible with rules, but
understanding that as your child’s needs change, the
rules and boundaries need to change as well. Scales
suggests: “Lessen the parental reins sooner on clothing
and music but continue to have the family computer in a
family room with parental filters on it.” Parental
monitoring “has to get negotiated, and your child tells
you at what age that starts, just as they tell you when it’s
time [you] stop accompanying them to the restroom.” In
terms of how strict you should be with your children,
Scales believes that “extremes are not good at either
end. It’s not good to be too permissive and trying to be
their friend—they don’t want you or need you as a
friend, they need you as a parent. Authoritarian
parenting leads to fear, which is not a good long-term
motivator. What you have to do is, you have to be
loving.”
Scales notes that parents and the media often discuss the
negative influence of celebrity and pop culture on
adolescents, and he is keen to put the issue in perspective.
“There is probably a subgroup who are more vulnerable, but
it’s a distinct minority. The majority are quite close to their
parents, they are not doing poorly at school.” Nor, he adds,
is the majority engaging in the worst kinds of celebrity
behavior. Scales points out that teen pregnancy and teen
smoking rates are down, and teenagers are the most likely
to volunteer their time to charities and community groups.
For the most part parents need not worry that their kids are
copying trashy young celebrities.
In 2007 I was on The Star Jones Show on the former
Court TV discussing the main influences and role models for
teen girls. “I can see that it is harder than it used to be to get
through adolescence today,” Star said, “especially as it
seems that young girls have very few young role models that
. . . the media elevates for them to emulate.” And she
was100 percent right.
But fortunately most girls turn elsewhere for their role
models. I shared with the panel that day a study that I had
conducted a few years back, in which I interviewed 238 girls
between the ages of thirteen and twenty-four asking, among
other questions, who their role models were. The largest
percentage, over 70 percent of the girls polled, said that
their role model was a parent or an older sister. Very few
chose a celebrity; one or two chose a political figure. Star
agreed and said that she, too, felt that her main role model
was indeed her mother. These findings speak to how
influential a parent, or an older sibling, can be in a girl’s life.
You are the role model. No matter how much time
children spend absorbing media images of celebrities,
their role model will always be their mother, sister, or
other close female guardian. And that means they will
model their behavior on yours. Be careful that you’re not
saying one thing to children—“You don’t need to be
skinny and perfect-looking like those stars”—but then
actually doing another, such as going on crash diets,
working out to excess, and toying with the idea of
plastic surgery.
 The Kurt Cobain Effect

Perhaps the ultimate nightmare scenario for any parent is

that their child might become so depressed, isolated, or
troubled that they take their own life. And when a celebrity
who happens to be an idol for young people does just that,
we all fear the copycat suicides of their young fans. It just
seems to make sense that if someone kids look up to takes
a certain course of action, it gives it credence and validity.
As so often in life, though, what seems like an obvious
conclusion to draw might not be so obvious after all.
Some researchers, such as psychologist David Phillips,
claim to have found links between highly publicized suicides
and increases in the suicide rate—but there is just as much
evidence that contradicts this theory. A prime example is the
suicide of rock idol Kurt Cobain in April 1994.
Lead singer of the Seattle band Nirvana, Cobain’s music
spoke to the anger that many of his generation felt. As one
of the authors of the grunge movement, he was embraced by
millions of Gen Xers who felt that the preceding generation,
the boomers, had partied for thirty years and left them with
the bill. Cobain’s lyrics, presence, and supernova stardom
deeply touched an entire generation of teens and young
adults like no one else’s had in quite some time. His truth
was their truth. He was not supposed to commit suicide; he
was supposed to continue to be a prolific artist and an
iconoclast to be admired. The story of his dramatic death,
from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, was told in
unprecedented detail in newspapers and on TV, complete
with photographs of the gruesome scene.
Would his suicide, and the media coverage of it, have a
negative influence on depressed, suicidal teenagers who
identified with their fallen hero? Researchers Graham Martin
and Lisa Koo decided to find out, and they published a study
in the Archives of Suicide Research in 1997. Teen suicides
had dropped between 1981 and 1984, according to the
American Journal of Psychiatry. Martin and Koo wanted to
know: Would the Cobain suicide coverage undo all of that,
just a decade later?
Seattle crisis clinics received an increased number of
phone calls for counseling after the news of Cobain’s
suicide broke. Talking about your feelings in these situations
is helpful, so that was good. However, in the thirty days
following Cobain’s death, there were six suicide deaths of
young people by gunshot wounds to the head. That sounds
grim, I know, but what that figure actually represented was a
marked decrease in suicides compared to the rate during
the previous five years. The researchers concluded that
Cobain’s suicide had not encouraged young people to take
their lives (but that those who did take their lives were
statistically destined to do so but may have been influenced
to use the same method he did).
Clearly this celebrity’s action had affected his young
followers—just not exactly the way everybody expected it to.
So why did the suicide of a rock icon, particularly one who
projected an antiestablishment ethos, fail to inspire his
vulnerable population of fans to do the same? The
researchers offered a couple of possible explanations: Many
of Cobain’s fans learned of his death through music Web
sites and entertainment news reports that speculated the
death to be a murder, and many believed that theory. But
perhaps most interesting, the researchers made a link to the
way his widow, Courtney Love, responded to his suicide:
publicly condemning his actions and repeatedly referring to
him in foul language. She read aloud his suicide note and
shocked his fans with her honesty, perhaps helping them to
understand the anguish suicide causes to the ones left
behind. No matter how you feel about Love, she may have
saved lives that day by opening up to the fans. Celebrities
can use their powers for good.
No matter how you feel about Courtney Love, she
may have saved lives that day by opening up to
the fans. Celebrities can use their powers for
good.

Other researchers have speculated that Cobain’s death

may have made the public more sensitive to youth suicide,
prompting parents, teachers, and friends to take extra care
with those they felt might have been at risk.
All of this reminds us that hiding things from people is
worse than telling the painful truth; and danger lies in the
unspoken rather than in the spoken. It makes Dr. Scales’
point all the more relevant, that what families really need is
positive communication.
 Lollipop Land

Who among us has not gasped in horror at the sight of a

formerly healthy-looking star on the red carpet now looking
too thin, with shoulder blades jutting out like dangerous
weapons and a lollipop head that’s way too big for her
body? Angelina Jolie, Renée Zellweger, Teri Hatcher, the
Olsen twins, Nicole Richie, Keira Knightley, Kate Bosworth.
The list of famous women who have been cited for their
dramatic weight loss goes on and on.
Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, and the
trend among girls to begin dieting at younger ages, cause
as much anxiety among parents as the obesity epidemic.
And when girls are bombarded daily—if not hourly—with
media images of thin and gorgeous female stars, it leaves
many parents wondering whether it may push their
daughters toward poor body image and eventually an eating
disorder. A group of mothers I interviewed for this book had
daughters in the same dance school, and one of the moms
had this to say, “We don’t put any pressure on her to look a
certain way, nor do we even discuss weight at home, yet I
wonder why my daughter, who doesn’t have a weight
problem at all, is always dieting. She’s a dancer, so is it the
girls in her dance class who are sending her this message,
or are the body image problems due to celebrities who are
thin?”

Celebrity Beauty Fest

That we are surrounded by images of beautiful
celebrities in the media is nothing new. Every
generation has had its beauties. Perhaps one of the
most iconic, and the woman who immediately springs
to mind, is Marilyn Monroe. There is only one Marilyn.
But if they’d had the Internet and cable TV in her day,
would she have been quite so unique? Might there have
been a profusion of Marilyn-like stars, their images
swamping TV screens and inboxes on a daily basis? In
the 1980s, for the Gen Xers, being beautiful was mainly
for models, less so for musicians, TV stars, and the like.
In the 1960s and 1970s, there were exceptional female
stars who stood out for their beauty, such as Raquel
Welch, Ali McGraw, or Barbara Bach—but every female
celebrity didn’t have to look like them.
From the 1990s onward, it has become increasingly
apparent that entertainers—be they actors, TV anchors,
 or singers—have to look a certain way in order to find
work. If you don’t think so, ask casting director Olivia
Harris, whose job it is to cast young actors for
television. She tells me, “Now [casting breakdowns] all
say: ‘Susie, 21, gorgeous. Fred, 21, gorgeous’ . . . you
perpetuate this culture where everybody is gorgeous!”
That is new.
It’s the same in the music industry. Before the advent
of music videos thirty or so years ago, singers didn’t
have to be physically attractive. Darryll Brooks (who has
worked with Prince, Stevie Wonder, and Mya, among
others) says, “Physical appearance, sex appeal, and
charisma have always mattered, it’s just that we are
now in a visual world with videos, promotion, and
marketing. Back in the day, the album cover was the
only chance you had.”
Many blame celebrities, models, and the media for eating
disorders, but that should only be one part of a wider
discussion. The causes of eating disorders are complex and
many. According to a 2006 study in the Archives of General
Psychiatry, genetics accounts for 56 percent of all eating
disorders. Everything from child abuse, depression, and
feeling a lack of control, to the search for unhealthy
perfectionism, have been implicated as well.
And when it comes to body image—and a girl’s self-
esteem as a whole—once again, it turns out parents play a
crucial role. Some parents prime their daughters with the
idea that their looks are the most important thing. They
comment constantly on their daughters’ hair, clothes, or
weight—either criticizing or praising. And while they may
think they’re helping them to learn to take care of themselves
and their appearance, these parents may be doing more
harm than they realize. The danger is that they may create
kids who view their perfect appearance as vital to their
parents’ love and attention, and they begin to see it as a
valuable currency. These girls learn to associate being thin
and perfect looking with being loved and happy—the things
that all human beings want. For vulnerable girls like this,
there is the potential that images of what seem like perfect
celebrity bodies could reinforce their own desperation for
the perfect body.
On the other hand, parents who praise their children for
more substantial qualities, such as how smart they are, what
a great friend they are, or how hard they work, provide the
ideal antidote to the images of starved celebrity glamour. A
girl who has a strong overall sense of self-esteem is more
likely to look at a picture of a beautiful, thin star such as Kate
Hudson and say to herself, “That’s her, this is me, so what?”
rather than use the star as a yardstick for how she is
supposed to look.
Clinical psychologist and eating disorder specialist
Kimberly Lawrence Kol, Psy.D., believes that eating
disorders can be tied to celebrity worship in the following
way: “When girls are constantly presented with perfect
bodies that receive love, admiration, glamour, success, and
power, there is a risk they will start to believe that having that
perfect body is the only way to get all those desirable
things.”
Kol suggests that parents talk to their kids “about
everything . . . not just drugs and sex, but also the media and
how it impacts us unless we are careful. It’s our job to help
our kids understand how and why they are being influenced,
how to withstand it, and which parts are potentially
dangerous and which parts are okay. . . . You have to
prepare your kids.”

“When girls are constantly presented with perfect

bodies that receive love, admiration, glamour, success,
and power, there is a risk they will start to believe that
having that perfect body is the only way to get all those
desirable things.”
—KIMBERLY LAWRENCE KOL, PSY.D.

It all comes down to helping your daughter build good self-

esteem based on a solid foundation. “Anorexia, weight
obsession, and body disturbance are fundamentally about
not knowing oneself,” Kol says. “So if I don’t know who I am,
how I’m supposed to be, or how to take care of myself, then
I’ll be searching for the answers outside myself and more
prone to believe what I’m told by the media.”
Help your child learn who she is. This is the key to it
all. As soon as your daughter knows herself, she is less
likely to be vulnerable to looking at celebrity images in
the media and thinking that is who she needs to be in
order to be accepted, loved, or successful. Get her on
the right track early by helping her to develop self-
esteem based on a solid foundation. Body image is
only one piece of the puzzle. All the research on
adolescent self-esteem suggests that it is complex and
is made up of many elements: How a girl feels about
not just her body but also the quality of her friendships,
how competent she feels at school or in her job, how
much empathy she possesses, and how good her
overall life skills are.
 CHAPTER SIX

I Bought It Because Jessica Simpson

Said I Should

I don’t use my “celebrity” to make a living. I don’t do ads for suits

in Spain like George Clooney, or cigarettes in Japan like Harrison
Ford . . . . It’s a complete contradiction of the social contract you
have with your audience. I mean, Robert De Niro’s advertising
American Express.
RUSSELL CROWE, FROM AN INTERVIEW IN GQ

When I take my dog, whose name is Mr. Dog (don’t ask), for
a walk, he likes to sniff everything thoroughly, even though
yesterday he sniffed the same tree, the same newspaper
kiosk, the same trash can. My husband and I have decided
that’s how he catches up on his neighborhood news—it’s his
daily celebrity jones. We don’t know exactly what reports he
is getting or how his gathering of doggie data helps him
make decisions—in fact, what goes on inside his head is a
mystery to us. He’s smart and loving, yet he’ll think nothing of
cleaning himself in front of guests; he has a great sense of
smell, yet he sometimes growls at his own reflection. Why?
Because he has no self-awareness.
Not like you. As a human, you have a clear idea of who
you are. You have the ability to make conscious decisions
about what to do with your life, where to live, what to eat,
what to wear, what to buy . . . don’t you?
Before you start to feel too superior to Mr. Dog, consider
this: Scientists still can’t agree on where human
consciousness and self-awareness even come from. The
truth is, just as my dog relies on the aroma of a lamppost to
decide which way he wants to walk each morning, you rely
on a whole range of influences—your culture, society, family,
peers, the media—to help form your consciousness. It’s as if
your parents went away for the weekend: No adult is in
charge, anything goes, and from one moment to the next
your choices can be influenced by the many varied
messages you receive from the world around you. (If you
could just sniff a lamppost to get your cues as to how you
should behave, imagine how much simpler life would be!)
While this vulnerability may be news to you, it is something
that advertisers and marketers know only too well and have
been taking advantage of for many years in advertising, as
well as in product placement in TV shows and movies. One
of the key weapons in their arsenal is the celebrity
endorsement. If we worship celebrities and aspire to their
lifestyle, who better to influence our decisions; who better to
tell us what we need to buy, who we need to be, which
products and services we need to surround ourselves with?
When a star makes a judgment from up high on their
celebrity pedestal—I prefer this brand of cola, mascara,
credit card, car insurance—it enters our consciousness,
even though we may not be aware it’s happening.
I don’t think Mr. Dog was ever too concerned about what
Eddie, the dog from Frasier, ate, and I don’t think he’s
desperate to have the new cute outfit Jessica Simpson just
put her dog, Daisy, in. But advertisers are banking on the
fact that because Simpson is a celebrity, I will want to wear
whatever she’s wearing and buy whatever products she’s
endorsing. We are heavily influenced by celebrity culture, so
it’s no wonder that everywhere we turn there’s a celebrity
telling us what to buy.

Celebrity-endorsed Childhood
If I had any doubts about whether spending habits are
affected by celebrities, they vanished one night during
my radio show when I had listeners call in to talk about
the expensive things they’d bought their children. A
divorced mom called to say that she purchased a $300
cell phone for her six-year-old daughter. The little girl
had seen Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus carrying
one and begged her for it until she succumbed to guilt
and bought it.
According to Teenage Research Unlimited, $53.8
billion is spent each year by families with children
between three and twelve years old. The stakes get
even higher when kids reach their teenage years. In
2006 alone, teenagers spent $189.7 billion, says a
report by the market research company Packaged
Facts, and it is predicted that figure will rise to $208.7
billion by 2011. And what are children and teens
consuming? Anything a celebrity tells them to. A study
published by the Journal of Marketing in 2006 found
that one of the key assets advertisers have when they
market to your children is . . . the celebrity endorsement.
The fastest-growing consumer group for celebrity-
endorsed goods is indeed teenagers.
 The Human Brand

Most market researchers agree that celebrity is a powerful

selling tool—not only for teens and children but for
consumers of all ages.
Advertisers aim to make a psychological connection
between the product and a celebrity, to create what is called
a “human brand.” According to a study published by the
American Marketing Association in 2006, we have a very
strong attachment to human brands because early in life we
learn to attach ourselves to humans. It is deeply embedded
in us that human faces elicit emotional responses.
We are heavily influenced by celebrity culture, so
it’s no wonder that everywhere we turn there’s a
celebrity telling us what to buy.

We also learn to attend to the wants of other humans

whom we trust, listen to what they tell us, and trust that what
they say is true. As we grow, the same psychological
process causes us to generalize to trusting celebrities when
they tell us that we should buy brand A over brand B. Some
research has also shown that a celebrity-endorsed product
has a higher product recall rate, meaning you tend to
remember a product in an ad better when a celebrity has
lent his or her face and name to it.
Thanks to researchers Richard Petty and John Cacioppo,
we know more about consumer psychology than ever
before. They have a theory that says there are two ways we
make up our minds about which products to buy. First, there
is practical decision making based on diligent consideration
and weighing the true merits of the available products. For
example, you don’t just buy a car based on how cute Lindsay
Lohan looked crashing hers. You do some real investigation;
you decide what your needs are, which car gets the best gas
mileage, and which fits into your price range.
 You tend to remember a product in an ad better
when a celebrity has lent his or her face and name
to it.

The second way we can choose a product is based on

whether the product is associated with either a positive or a
negative cue; that is, whether it gives us a good or a bad
feeling. In this situation, you may buy a particular lipstick
because you like the celebrity who endorses it or because it
looks cute on Kelly Ripa. It is this second type of decision
making that companies bank on—literally—when they hire a
popular celebrity to be their spokesperson.
Take control. It’s easy to be persuaded by celebrities,
but when faced with a barrage of them telling you what
you need to buy, you can stop, think, and question
whether you really do need to make a purchase. I’m not
suggesting that you treat every shopping decision in the
analytical, detailed way you would select a new car, but
bringing a little bit of that way of thinking into your
everyday shopping certainly can’t hurt. Don’t get swept
up in a celebrity fantasy and buy things you don’t need .
. . or worse, can’t afford. Suze Orman always says, “We
spend money we don’t have to impress people we don’t
know or don’t even like.”
 The Science of Celebrity Endorsement

According to Michael Kamins, Ph.D., of the University of

Southern California, when a company chooses to use a
celebrity in an advertisement, rather than an expert or an
ordinary person, there is a science to choosing which
celebrity to use. An ad agency must consider the celebrity’s
social risk: Is he married but rumored to be gay? Has she
been divorced too many times? Is he a known drug addict?
Another aspect to consider is the celebrity’s level of
exposure. Is this a celebrity who has too many endorsement
deals that will conflict with the product or confuse the
consumer? Or is it a celebrity who is already too much of a
“brand”? Does she come with an image that is hard to
change, an image that is larger than life—or in this case,
larger than the product’s image?
The demographic appropriateness of the star is crucial,
too. In other words, who is it that the company is marketing
to, and which celebrities do those people like? Shakira
might be the perfect person if a company is selling a new
lipstick to Latina women, but maybe she’s not such a great
choice for the Jazzy Power Chair.
Of course recognizability is vital. On a billboard you don’t
have time to explain that the guy holding the cola bottle
played the guy who got killed in the second episode of
Heroes, so it has to be someone who people can quickly
identify. For a celebrity ad to work, you have to be able to
look at it and immediately say, for instance, “Oh, that’s
Beyoncé in that [fill in the blank] ad—got it.” And marketers
want a celebrity who is attractive, likable, popular, and most
important, honest.
Read the fine print. Should stars be trusted to give
advice about financial products? I’m fairly certain they
have someone who handles their investments, so they
probably aren’t the greatest experts on how to save for
retirement. That guy from Law & Order, Sam Waterston,
is a fine performer, but I doubt they taught him much
about stock trading at acting school. Will you be any
less up to your neck in debt because you have the
same credit card as Robert De Niro and Ellen
DeGeneres? Being persuaded by a star to buy a
lipstick is not that big a deal, but being talked into the
wrong financial product—or anything else with fine print,
such as insurance or health care—certainly is.
The Rise of the Celebrity Designer . . . or, Kimora Lee
Simmons Has Expensive Taste
Earlier I spoke of the Machine, that entity made up of
production companies, agents, managers, and so on that
creates celebrities. Now I’d like to add one more contributor
to the list: You.
You create and nurture celebrity with your wallet. You help
keep a star’s career alive by consuming not only his or her
movies, TV shows, or albums but also the products he or
she advertises and endorses. Stars such as Scarlett
Johansson and Penelope Cruz seem to be making a
significant amount of their income not from film salaries but
from endorsement deals.
Stars such as Scarlett Johansson and Penelope
Cruz seem to be making a significant amount of
their income not from film salaries but from
endorsement deals.

Daniel Boorstin, credited as being the world’s first social

critic, has been quoted as saying, “A sign of celebrity is that
his name is often worth more than his services.” And how
right he was, when you consider the explosion of clothing
labels branded with celebrities’ names. Lower-end
department stores are aligning themselves with celebrity
names daily, almost as if it’s a race just to prove Boorstin’s
point.
It all began with Audrey Hepburn according to Dana
Thomas, author of Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster. In
her book she contends that the first celebrity-product
alliance was between designer Hubert de Givenchy who,
after dressing Hepburn for Breakfast At Tiffany’s and
Charade, “convinced her to pose for the advertising
campaign for his perfume L’Interdit.” In this day and age, the
delicate, swanlike Audrey Hepburn might well have been
lending her name to sweat pants or bed linens at Target. For
that is the hold that celebrities now have on the marketing of
products: It doesn’t matter what your age group or income,
there’s a celebrity product for you. All of us are being asked
to buy into a celebrity lifestyle.
But make no mistake, this doesn’t mean we are living in a
new age of equality with the stars. By way of illustration, let
me tell you a little story about the shoes I wore to my
wedding . . .
In this day and age, the delicate, swanlike Audrey
Hepburn might well have been lending her name
to sweat pants or bed linens at Target.

Those shoes were art. The moment I laid eyes on their

heart-stopping splendor, I understood the power, sexiness,
and utter opulence that men who flaunt expensive race cars
or women who lavish themselves in sensational jewels must
feel. The shoes were five inches of silver Etain napa leather-
covered spike heels with a glittering, bejeweled ankle strap.
A second, entirely decorative, jewel-encrusted strap hung
down as an ankle bracelet. It was by far the finest pair of
shoes designer Manolo Blahnik had created. Although they
cost almost as much as my gown, I did not hesitate to buy
them. They were extraordinary, and I gave them their own
bio in the wedding program.
A few weeks after my wedding, I saw a photograph of a
casually dressed Kimora Lee Simmons coming out of a
restaurant, or perhaps she was shopping for light bulbs—I
forget exactly where she was or what she was doing, but it
was something uneventful. I was less than delighted when I
saw that she—on an ordinary day—was wearing my
wedding shoes . . . with jeans, no less, as if they were
ordinary shoes and not the precious works of art the I
deemed them to be.
It was yet another reminder of how different stars are from
the rest of us. With her popular Baby Phat and KLS fashion
labels, the former high-fashion model and now reality-TV
star and self-proclaimed “First Lady of Hip-Hop,” has built a
fashion empire based on what has been termed “the urban
luxury movement.” She sells us lower-end but glamorous-
looking fashion, jewelry, cosmetics, and fragrances with her
name on them—a pair of her strappy silver heels will set you
back about $80. Meanwhile, though, her wardrobe is filled
with Manolo Blahnik and designers so exclusive most of us
wouldn’t even recognize the names.
I don’t begrudge the woman her luxury. If I had her wealth, I
too would wear my wedding shoes to the grocery store. But
what she is selling us is an image of wealth, taste, and high
fashion and a message that says, “Yes, I know you cannot
afford to live like I do, but here are some things you can
afford that I completely approve of.” To give credit where it’s
due, Simmons is regularly spotted at events wearing outfits
from her own KLS line, but I doubt many other stars would
wear their own label at a red-carpet event. It’s one rule for
them and another for us, despite the fact that it is our
consumption of their products that affords them this lifestyle.
Somehow it just doesn’t seem right.
In Simmons’s case, celebrity was her entree into
establishing a successful fashion empire. Starting out as a
Chanel model at the age of thirteen and later marrying hip-
hop magnate Russell Simmons (the two are no longer
together), she made the jump from celebrity to celebrity
designer, a role that has fueled her iconic status. Thank
goodness her clothes are as fabulous as she promised they
would be.
It’s one rule for them and another for us, despite
the fact that it is our consumption of their
products that affords them this lifestyle.

Most other successful designers start out as struggling

young creative types, happy to simply have their clothes
seen outside the workroom. Then one day, fashion and
celebrity met. Retailers began to see the value of a
designer’s clothes when they were photographed on the
personal-trainer-toned bodies of the Hollywood elite,
launching unknown clothing engineers into highly sought-
after fashion designers. The first question on the lips of red-
carpet reporters is never about the movie being premiered
or the star’s nomination, it’s “Who are you wearing?” This
cements the reputations of a clique of exclusive designers
whose clothes are worn by celebrities and coveted by the
rest of us. It’s no surprise, then, that budget fashion retailer
H&M contracted Stella McCartney and Karl Lagerfeld to
create a lower-end line to sell to us, or that Vera Wang
designed a line for Kohls. But one of the first to expand his
market from celebrity haute couture to suburban mall (and
corresponding massive increase in turnover) may have been
Isaac Mizrahi.
Mizrahi joined Target in 2002 to create an affordable
version of his high-end couture clothing line. Clothes from his
run-way collections sell for thousands. One of my favorite
dresses is a Mizrahi that I saw in a magazine, retailing for a
mere eight grand, but at Target you could buy his pieces for
$9.99 to $69.99. According to Target Corporation, from
2001 to 2007 the company’s profits nearly quadrupled,
which they partly attributed to the launch of high-profit
clothing lines by Mizrahi and a slew of other celebrity
designers who followed. It’s not that we didn’t shop at Target
before, it’s just that it wasn’t as cool. Bringing in names such
as Mizrahi gave the store the fashionista seal of approval.
It’s as if the clothes were blessed by the world of celebrity,
like a rabbi deeming them, and thus Target, kosher.
 Stealth Marketing

Sometimes it’s not the overt sell, the “Look who we’ve got
our Hanes on now,” as much as the influence celebrities
have when they are spotted carrying a certain handbag or
wearing UGG boots. Stars can set off a consumer craze
simply by being snapped with a product when they’re out
strolling with their baby or shopping with a girlfriend.
Paparazzi shots of celebrities such as Madonna and
Oprah wearing Juicy Couture helped the company turn cute
velour track pants into a multi-million-dollar business. There
was no doubt stars loved hanging out in Beverly Hills in the
comfy yet stylish gear, and Juicy Couture was able to
capitalize on that. The design pair, Pam Skaist-Levy and
Gela Taylor, didn’t just hand out gift bags at awards
ceremonies. Instead they might spend as much as $100,000
to take a suite in a five-star Hollywood hotel for a day,
inviting celebrities and the all-important media to drop in and
pick up samples of their latest line. Skaist-Levy and Taylor
are smart ladies, because every time female stars such as
Hilary Duff, Reese Witherspoon, Jessica Alba, Mischa
Barton, or my Tori is snapped on the streets of LA or New
York wearing Juicy, it’s like free advertising for the label.
According to the Media Awareness Network, we are
exposed to, on average, 3,000 ads per day. Advertising is
becoming just white noise all around us and, especially
since the advent of TiVo, it’s becoming harder for
advertisers to make us sit up and take notice of their
products. So over the last decade or so, they have been
using all sorts of new tricks—guerilla marketing, viral
marketing, and product placement.
Starbucks has been said to indulge in this kind of
marketing, but has it gone too far? In almost every celebrity
weekly featuring Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner, and their
family, one of them, if not all, were seen carrying a venti
Mocha Skim Latte Whatever. These pictures appeared so
often that rumors began to fly that Starbucks had a seven-
digit contract with the couple to be seen in public with their
product, something the company and the actors’ reps
vehemently denied.
Before that it was the Olsen twins, who seemed to have
Starbucks cups surgically attached to their lips at one point,
and then it was Renée Zellweger. Those of you who get your
caffeine fix from the popular chain are probably familiar with
having your name scrawled on the side of the cup on a busy
day, but do you walk down the street presenting your cup as
if it were a nametag? I remember seeing one shot of
Zellweger holding her Starbucks cup and in big black letters
directly facing the camera, there was “Renée.” Okay, it could
have been a coincidence—but my point is, would you really
blame a company for exploiting this not-so-subliminal effect?
 Stars Behaving Badly

When an advertiser brings a celebrity onboard, it’s a gamble

in some regard. What if the celebrity gets caught doing
something wrong, dragging the reputation of the product
down with his or her own? This fear was given weight by the
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science , which
warned marketers in 2006 that if a star behaves badly,
consumers take it as a negative cue, fusing the star’s
tarnished image with the product he or she represents.
Which is why every celebrity who gets involved in a scandal
worries not only about his or her box office or album sales
but about the income he or she will lose from advertising and
endorsement deals. Companies pay millions to get the right
celebrity, but many of their contracts stipulate that if the star
behaves in a way that adversely affects the brand, the star
can be dropped. You would think that would give stars an
incentive to keep their noses clean, but that isn’t always the
case.
In one week in September 2007, Kiefer Sutherland made
the news not once but twice, when it was announced that he
was the only prime-time actor to make the Forbes list of top
television earners, coming in at number twenty behind such
notables as Oprah, who earned a reported $260 million, and
David Letterman, with his measly $40 million. But only days
before the list was published, Sutherland (which could work
well as a single name—who else is named Kiefer?) had
been caught making an illegal U-turn, failed a sobriety test,
and was booked on yet another DUI, a charge that he had
already pleaded “no contest” to back in 2004. But my
concern was: Would Kiefer lose his Calorie Mate
endorsement deal in Japan? How long could a company
such as Calorie Mate stand behind this reckless behavior?
Would the Japanese Mothers Against Drunk Driving (J-
MADD) still buy Calorie Mate if it was endorsed by this
rogue? Americans would never stand for such a thing, which
may be why so many celebrities endorse products
overseas. (Although in Kiefer’s case, perhaps it was just as
much to avoid the embarrassment of his fellow countrymen
seeing him in the corniest of scenarios: as Jack Bauer
saving the world from nuclear annihilation, one sip of energy-
supplement drink at a time).
Celebrities having their endorsement deals pulled after
big “oops” moments is nothing new. According to Fortune
magazine, in an effort to get us back to the grill the beef
industry hired actress Cybill Shepherd as a spokesperson in
1987, at the height of her popularity, but soon let her go
when she publicly announced that she was a vegetarian.
Also in the 1980s, Eric Clapton told Rolling Stone
magazine that while his song “After Midnight” was being
used in a Michelob Beer campaign, he was battling
alcoholism in a detox facility.
While those are big oopsies and something the
companies should have investigated thoroughly before
shelling out millions of dollars, nothing is more absurd than
Pepsi pulling Madonna’s 1989 ad campaign because of the
controversy that followed the airing of her “Like a Prayer”
video. I say “absurd” because who did Pepsi think they were
getting in bed with? Pat Boone? Marie Osmond? It was
Madonna! She has made a career out of being a contrarian
and creating controversy. It’s what she’s known for, and it’s
my guess that’s why Pepsi wanted her in the first place. But
when religious groups—inflamed by images in the video of
burning crosses and Madonna bearing stigmata and getting
intimate with a saint—threatened to boycott Pepsi products,
her ads were pulled off the air and Pepsi canceled further
campaigns she was contracted to do for the company.
Ironically they chose Britney Spears as one of their
spokes-people in 2001, which was going well until she
French-kissed Madonna on stage at the 2003 MTV Video
Music Awards, a sort of passing of the Pepsi torch, or
saliva, I suppose.
Michael Jordan had had his share of controversy, dogged
by allegations that he was a compulsive gambler who
racked up massive losses and promised to pay a former
lover $5 million to stop her from going public about his
adultery. Yet he continued to shill for McDonalds, Hanes, and
Nike. Kobe Bryant, on the other hand, was let go from his
McDonald’s contract after being accused of rape, even
though the case was dismissed when his accuser decided
not to testify. It seems that Bryant had consensual sex
outside of his marriage . . . which is, indeed, adultery. But
prior to this accusation, Bryant was squeaky clean: a
handsome man, an amazing athlete who spoke several
languages, and the perfect role model. McDonald’s dropped
him, but not Jordan. I wonder what standards they used to
make that decision.
For some brands—especially those that rely on a street-
cred image—misbehavior can actually be seen as a plus.
Supermodel Kate Moss, rumored to have been a drug
abuser, was nevertheless signed as a spokesperson by
H&M, Chanel, and Burberry. Perhaps when the rumors
remained simply that—rumors—they gave Moss a certain
hip mystique the marketers thought was good for their
brands. But when photographs of her nose deep in a few
grams of cocaine were published in 2005, they acted
surprised, canceled her contracts, and immediately
distanced themselves from her. Cosmetics company
Rimmel said they were “reviewing her contract” with them. It
looked as though her career was finished.

“Even a mantle of depravity can be worn with

panache.”
—AMY FINE COLLINS, VANITY FAIR, AUGUST 2006

But less than a year later, she had even more contracts
than before, and her income was estimated to be twice what
it was before the cocaine scandal. She had joined Audrey
Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy in Vanity Fair’s Best Dressed
Hall of Fame and was promoting Versace, Calvin Klein,
Bulgari, Stella McCartney, UK cell phone company Virgin
Mobile, and Nikon. She remained the face of Rimmel . . .
and Burberry renewed her contract. Clearly these
companies saw her not so much as a drug-addled mom
potentially endangering her young daughter but more as
someone whose dangerously chic image was just right for
their brands. As Vanity Fair’s Amy Fine Collins said in
August 2006, “Even a mantle of depravity can be worn with
panache.”
The lesson here? While companies are often quick to
express their outrage and disappointment over a celebrity’s
indiscretions, morals are a relative thing in the world of
commerce. It seems that a celebrity’s misbehavior is only
considered bad when consumers threaten to stop buying the
product he or she endorses.
 What Halle Berry Knows About Makeup

Recently I was shopping at a cosmetics counter at a local

high-end department store. Makeup artist Carmindy from
TLC’s What Not To Wear had been a guest on my radio
show again and had suggested a particular eye pencil; I was
there to see if I needed it (I did). I noticed a woman shopping
next to me who had brought with her a page she had ripped
out of a magazine, a Revlon ad featuring Halle Berry. Now, I
don’t need to remind you that Revlon isn’t sold at high-end
department stores, and as far as I know they do not have
makeup counters, so I think this woman missed the point of
the ad. Yet there she was rubbing each tester of eye shadow
on the back of her hand and holding it up to the picture,
trying to match Berry’s color with the higher-end cosmetic. I
could see the thought balloon over her head saying: “Revlon
can’t have better colors than this expensive brand, it must
be here.” She looked pensively at Berry, as if it were her
fault.
Is it so surprising that she didn’t trust the ad? As carried
away as you might get by her alluring image, you know that a
team of professionals put Halle together for that ad.
Presumably they used Revlon products, but they also had
the benefit of the best studio lighting, an army of makeup
artists and stylists, an art director, one of the finest
professional photographers in the business, and every
celebrity’s friend—someone skilled in the art of Photoshop
to smooth out even the tiniest blemish or imperfection. And
let’s not forget, they had Berry’s amazing face to use as a
canvas. When you stop and think about it, you know that you
aren’t really going to look like Halle Berry if you buy that
particular brand of eye shadow.
Perhaps there is no better illustration of the truth behind
the celebrity-ad facade than Penelope Cruz’s 2007
advertisements for a L’Oreal mascara that claimed to make
eyelashes look 60 percent longer. The ad zoomed in on her
batting the kind of beautiful long, glossy eyelashes we’ve all
stood in front of the mirror and wished for at some point in
our lives. But before you rush out and buy yourself this
magical cosmetic hoping to be transformed into a Cruz look-
alike, literally with the wave of mini wand, you might be
interested to know that in Britain the Advertising Standards
Authority found that the ads were misleading because
nowhere did they state that Cruz was wearing . . . false
eyelashes. In response to the complaints, L’Oreal said that
using fake eyelashes in ads was “common industry
practice.” Oh, well, that makes me feel so much better.
 What Julia Roberts Knows About
Information Technologies

Celebrities are used to sell just about everything. But you

have to stop and ask yourself: What expertise do they have?
Julia Roberts has done a series of voiceovers for AOL ads
—but when did she have time to become an IT expert? (In
between Ocean’s 11 and Ocean’s 12, perhaps?) “Because
Julia Roberts told me to” doesn’t sound like a logical reason
for me to choose AOL over another Internet service provider.
At least when Martha Stewart makes a line of bed sheets, I
feel like I’m buying from someone who not only knows the
product she is selling but has painstakingly investigated
every thread in the factory. I can picture her yelling, “Loom
faster!” or “Higher thread count, nobody gets out of here until
we reach Egyptian standards!” Even if it isn’t true, it feels
true . . . after all, what foolish production supervisor would
risk getting on the wrong side of Martha Stewart?
Are glamorous stars such as Sarah Jessica Parker
and Eva Longoria really in a position to advise you
on which brand of home hair dye works best?

Are glamorous stars such as Sarah Jessica Parker and

Eva Longoria really in a position to advise you on which
brand of home hair dye works best—I mean, honestly, can
you picture them donning those useless plastic gloves they
always give you, leaning over the bathroom sink, struggling
not to end up with a brunette forehead and ears?
Gene Hackman is the spokesperson for Lowes Home
Improvement, but what is his expertise in this field? I think
you’d be a little shocked if he showed up at your door to
hang dry wall. Even Harrison Ford would have been a more
realistic choice—at least he at some point in his life was in
construction.
Jay-Z, Serena Williams, and Gwen Stefani have all done
ads for Hewlett-Packard. . . . Why? I don’t think any one of
them knows the difference between a microchip and a
potato chip (hint Gwen, one of them is made out of potato).
Gwyneth Paltrow is known for her great acting ability and
her even greater taste in men, but she has never been
known for her great beauty, yet Estée Lauder reportedly
paid the Oscar winner over $30 million to be the face of their
company. This is despite the fact that she told USA Today ,
“I don’t tend to wear a lot of makeup in my daily life,” and has
also been caught saying she isn’t a big makeup fan.
Sometimes, though, advertisers have to face facts: There
are certain purchasing decisions where we won’t take a
celebrity’s word for it. This is nowhere more evident than in
the marketing of cars, big-ticket items where we need more
than just the positive association of a big star.
General Motors (GM) paid Tiger Woods a whopping $40
million to convince us that he would drive a Buick—a
Buick?!—and that we all should too. It’s a great car, but I just
can’t picture Woods driving a Buick. This is the guy who was
number two on the Forbes list of most powerful athletes a
few years back, when he was making $87 million a year. Am
I to believe that one day while out car shopping, Woods
bypassed the Maserati dealership to get himself a Buick?
Unlikely. Especially given that at the same time he had a
Rolex watch endorsement deal. If you are creating an image,
shouldn’t it be consistent? A Buick and a Rolex? I don’t think
so, and neither did the public. To save face, a GM
spokesperson told USA Today that they would use Tiger in
their corporate-level marketing instead and that they “don’t
want a celebrity at the core of any brand. We want the
message on Buick to be about Buick.”
In GM’s case, it was that the product didn’t match the
celebrity, but what about when the celebrity eclipses the
product? This was the case when Chrysler paid Celine Dion
$14 million to do a series of lovely black-and-white television
commercials for several of their car models. The ads did
wonders for sales of Dion’s new CD, but it seems no one
noticed the cars.
Check the label. A celebrity’s endorsement doesn’t
make a brand any better or worse than another brand. It
may, however, make it more expensive. The acne
medication Proactiv has the same active ingredient
(benzoyl peroxide) as other preparations you can buy at
the pharmacy for a fraction of the price. Both of them
successfully clear up mild acne. The major difference,
however, seems to be that the cheaper products don’t
have Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Vanessa
Williams, and Serena Williams rhapsodizing about
them in advertisements. The company told a Today
Show reporter in 2006 that Proactiv has a unique
formulation and manufacturing procedures, but when a
dermatologist compared the results of a woman who
used the celebrity-endorsed product for a month and
another who used cheap pharmacy products, he judged
them to be on par.
 CHAPTER SEVEN

Rock My World Then Save It

Look, I would much rather people were listening to politicians

about this than actors, but the politicians aren’t talking about this.
MATT DAMON, SPEAKING ABOUT CHILD POVERTY AND DISEASE
IN AFRICA IN MACLEAN’S MAGAZINE, NOVEMBER 2007

How much easier life must have been for celebrities during
the golden age of Hollywood, when a star just had to be a
star. No one expected Gloria Swanson to roll up the sleeves
of her mink coat and hand out aid to orphans in Africa. Cary
Grant could drink martinis all night long if he felt like it. He
never had to show up for a UN meeting the next morning or
hop a red-eye to go lobby Congress. When Marilyn Monroe
crashed and burned, she left behind a legend, not a handful
of charitable trusts and foundations. And all that was fine
with us.
Stars played heroes in Hollywood movies, but we
expected real people to take on the job of heroes—great
wartime leaders such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
Winston Churchill, civil rights campaigners such as Martin
Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. We looked to religious
leaders and elders in our own communities for inspiration
and social guidance. It wasn’t the job of a celebrity to save
the world or show us how to be the best we can be. The job
of a celebrity was to entertain us and be glamorous.
Now a growing group of A-list stars seem to spend just as
much time performing as they do campaigning for social
justice, finding cures for diseases, ending world debt, and
saving the environment. In turn the C- and D-listers feel that if
they don’t align themselves with a charity or commit to a
world-saving cause, well . . . they’re never going to be
famous. And it’s not only the bleeding-heart liberal lefties, it’s
all celebrities, no matter which way they lean or whom they
support politically. They are no one without a charitable
affiliation. Being a good performer or great beauty is no
longer enough; a star has to be a humanitarian.
Advocacy has also become the way to get back into the
good graces of the American people, especially if you’ve
screwed up publicly. Even Paris Hilton made a humanitarian
effort, or at least aimed a promise in that direction, after her
twenty-three-day jail stay in 2007. She was going to save
orphans, or somebody in Rwanda, she wasn’t sure. (Maybe
she had been advised that they were wearing last year’s
look, or she found out they didn’t have Starbucks there.) The
trip never happened, but when even the Paris Hiltons of the
world recognize the value of being—or at least being seen
as—a humanitarian, you know something big is happening.
 The Celebrity-hero

Based on what you see in the media, often it seems that

celebrities are the ones who work the hardest to make the
world a better place. Darfur, global warming, third-world
debt, finding a cure for life-threatening diseases—when you
think of these things, do you think of politicians, diplomats,
and religious or community leaders? Or do you think of
George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Bono, Michael J. Fox, and
Lance Armstrong?
At a time when politicians and community leaders seem
to have given up on solving the big problems, have
humanitarian celebrities stepped into the vacuum? Have
they become our new heroes?
Mike Farrell, best known for playing Captain B. J.
Hunnicutt in the Emmy Award-winning series M*A*S*H, has
long been involved with human rights, immigration issues,
children’s rights, and an impressive list of social programs. I
asked him whether celebrities can replace politicians as the
people we look to for solutions to the world’s problems, as
the people we look to as heroes.

“Overarching distrust hasn’t yet completely enveloped

the celebrity world, so [celebrities can] provide
examples of caring, of positive behavior, and even . . .
of heroism.”
—MIKE FARRELL

“The good politicians, those who truly understand and

believe in the value of public service, all too often find their
motives questioned by a public made cynical by the lies,
corruption, and self-serving behavior of too many of their
colleagues. Those among them who maintain their integrity
in the face of this cynicism can still triumph,” says Farrell.
“This overarching distrust hasn’t yet completely enveloped
the celebrity world, so those who continue to enjoy a degree
of public trust can, if willing, provide examples of caring, of
positive behavior, and even . . . of heroism.”
In 2005 a group of psychologists researched attitudes
toward celebrities and heroes, and their work was published
in the British Journal of Psychology. They had asked 299
Brits between the ages of eighteen and seventy-seven to
nominate their favorite hero and their favorite celebrity. They
found that people categorized the two separately, coming up
with two distinctly different sets of names. The top five
heroes were Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Martin
Luther King Jr., Diana Princess of Wales, and Jesus, while
the top five celebrities were soccer star David Beckham,
comedian and actor Billy Connolly, Michael Jackson, Sean
Connery, and pop singer Robbie Williams—okay, okay, the
Brits have peculiar taste in celebrities, but you get the idea.
What interests me is the way the researchers defined
hero and celebrity. When participants nominated a hero, it
had to be someone who did something of lasting value for
the world. Their favorite celebrity, on the other hand, was to
be someone who merely entertained and produced work
that was relatively fleeting in its impact. In defining heroes
and celebrities that way, were the researchers working with
an outdated concept of celebrity?
Perhaps in the future researchers will have to take a whole
new category into consideration when they ask this kind of
question—the celebrity-hero who blurs the line between
merely entertaining his or her fans and leaving a legacy that
will make him or her a hero to future generations.
The idea of a celebrity as someone who simply entertains
us in a trivial way is evolving into something more
substantial. Some stars remain famous only for their talents
(or for their misbehavior), and they will probably pass from
people’s memories as the years go on. But there is a
growing number of stars who are setting up schools, helping
eradicate AIDS or global warming, and fighting to cure
cancer or spinal cord injuries. They will leave behind not just
popular movies or albums but charitable trusts and
foundations that will live on in perpetuity. While future
generations may forget what they were famous for, their
names will be forever in the public eye, in big letters on the
front of hospitals, schools, and animal shelters, or in
scholarships, grants, and charities. These may be the first
stars who never fade.
Stay informed. Learn about the issues affecting you,
your community, and your environment and then decide
for yourself which issues you consider to be the most
 important—don’t just take your favorite celebrity’s word
for it. When you have a cause you care about, go to
GoodSearch.com powered by Yahoo! The site donates
50 percent of its revenue to charities designated by its
users.
Perhaps one of the earliest examples of a celebrity doing
good for the world during a non-wartime era was Danny
Kaye, who in 1956 became UNICEF’s first-ever Goodwill
Ambassador. (A number of celebrities have been Goodwill
Ambassadors since then, but the most famous must be
Audrey Hepburn, who succeeded Kaye in 1988.) Many stars
in the past were known to contribute to charities, but back
then the fund-raising events were informal: Gene Kelly, Bob
Hope, Ronald Reagan, and Frank Sinatra getting together
on the spur of the moment for a charity baseball game, or
the time, according to a November 2000 New York Times
article, Sinatra read about a destitute family with seven kids
during the holidays and impulsively sent them a plane
loaded with food, clothes, presents, and a Christmas tree.
But things began to change in the 1980s. Celebrities
became more directly and prominently involved in social and
world events, and their involvement became more than just
writing a check to an organization; it became championing a
cause and becoming the face of that cause. The world had
never seen anything quite like Bob Geldof’s 1985 Live Aid
to help the hungry in Ethiopia. Geldof galvanized a slew of
celebrities into action and paved the way for future megastar
campaigners such as Bono, Sting, and Peter Gabriel.
This was the time when celebrities became the barometer
for the zeitgeist of society. If you wanted to know what was
happening, what social movement was about to unfold, you
knew who to look to—and it wasn’t the politicos. Case in
point: Another big news story that had been brewing in the
1980s was the new deadly disease HIV-AIDS. When Rock
Hudson died of AIDS, Elizabeth Taylor spearheaded a
movement to raise awareness and funds, and she has since
been followed by everyone from Elton John to Sharon Stone.
At first the disease appeared to be something that affected
mainly homosexual men, but scientists soon discovered that
anyone was vulnerable if not careful; however, the general
public was slow to catch up. It wasn’t until about a decade
after the discovery of HIV that another celebrity would have a
valuable impact on the public’s awareness and
understanding of the disease.
 The Magic Johnson Effect

In November 1991, legendary basketball star and

heterosexual male Ervin “Magic” Johnson announced that he
was HIV positive, presenting a new image to the American
public of what HIV looks like. In a press conference at the
Great Western Forum, where he played with the Lakers for
twelve seasons, Johnson said, “Because of the HIV virus I
have obtained, I will have to announce my retirement from
the Lakers today. . . . I am saying it can happen to anybody,
even me, Magic Johnson.” Newsweek interviewed fans who
said they had been “crying for two days,” others who were
simply confounded. His supporters reacted passionately.
T h e Newsweek article reported that the National AIDS
Hotline received 40,000 calls the day after Johnson’s
speech instead of their usual 3,800, and the Centers for
Disease Control, which normally gets about 200 calls per
hour, received 10,000 in a single hour on the night of the
announcement. Newsweek called it “the biggest thing to
happen to AIDS since Rock Hudson.”
Not only did Johnson’s statement have an impact on his
fans, it put psychology and sociology researchers into a
frenzy as well. In the years following this news, study after
study pondered a phenomenon now referred to as “the
Magic Johnson Effect.”
Other stars have had public battles with serious illnesses,
but Johnson’s was in a class all its own, because as a
heterosexual African-American living out every part of the
American Dream, Johnson defied the stereotype of who
gets HIV. His announcement had a profound impact on high-
risk youth who previously were immune to messages about
the disease.
Peter Scales, Ph.D., of the Search Institute, which is
devoted to educating people about childhood and
adolescent development, believes that Johnson’s
announcement had a powerful effect because “he is an
exception that proves the rule. Magic is a well-respected
and well-loved individual, loved for his personality and
warmth long before HIV, with basketball skills that
transcended the sport. When he faced adversity he had
millions of people who cared and watched how he would
handle it, and we saw his sense of mission for other people.
Not many athletes today have that kind of respect for
character.”
A study published in 1996 in the journal Adolescence
(and other later studies) looked at whether Johnson changed
the attitudes of young people who had little knowledge of
HIV-AIDS, didn’t normally attend treatment clinics, or
distrusted the medical community. They found that a year
after Johnson’s disclosure, 60 percent of these young
people who visited clinics had an increased awareness of
AIDS and HIV. More than 65 percent said they took it upon
themselves in a sexual situation to make sure they were
protected, and almost 40 percent of girls said that they now
resisted sexual peer pressure.
This was the impact that Johnson’s announcement and his
subsequent involvement in HIV-AIDS awareness campaigns
had on his fans. These were kids who had no experience
with HIV and AIDS and thought that it was a disease for
homosexuals, which for the most part they were not. Up until
then these kids had also resisted the notion that it was a
disease that reached all races and ethnicities.
Johnson boosted public awareness that the heterosexual
population could contract HIV, and because he was so well
liked, he wielded social influence. And just as Courtney
Love’s honesty after the suicide of her husband, Kurt
Cobain, positively influenced Cobain’s fans, Johnson’s full
disclosure and honest approach to a frightening situation
made all the difference. His ability to be upfront about
something very personal bonded him to his fans in a new
way. Keep in mind: This was at a time when stars were still
fairly secretive about their private lives. We didn’t have the
glut of celebrity weeklies, tabloids, Web sites, and
information about celebrities circulating like we do now.
Johnson’s HIV awareness raising had an amazing impact,
made all the more powerful because the public had never
been let into a star’s life quite like this before.
 Cause Celeb

If Johnson was a pioneer, then numerous other celebrities

suffering from serious diseases have taken a cue from him,
setting up their own foundations to raise awareness and
fund research into a whole range of life-threatening
diseases. Former cycling champion Lance Armstrong has
not only raised awareness of testicular cancer, he has also
become a tireless campaigner, fighting on behalf of all
people with cancer. In 2004 his yellow Livestrong wristbands
started the huge fund-raising and social phenomenon that
has seen brightly colored charity wristbands appearing on
the arms of everyone from the person standing in front of you
in line at the grocery store to presidential hopefuls.
Christopher Reeve, who became a quadriplegic after a
horse-back riding accident in 1995, devoted the final
decade of his life to raising funds and fighting for changes to
the laws relating to stem cell research, to aid people with
spinal cord injuries. He appeared before Congress as a
patient advocate. Michael J. Fox continues to lobby for stem
cell research, but his goal is a cure for Parkinson’s disease,
which he was diagnosed with in 1991. He has appeared
before Congress and a Senate subcommittee and lobbied
senators to pass the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act,
which they did, in April 2007.
The stories of these three stars can be seen in a heroic
light. Certainly they were in line to benefit from advances in
these fields of medicine, but they didn’t have to work hard—
perhaps harder than they ever did in the careers that made
them famous—in order to help everyone who has or is at
risk of these illnesses. In the case of Reeve, it must have
been physically difficult for him to campaign. Perhaps he
became in real life far more of a hero than his character
Superman ever was. According to his Web site,
www.christopherreeve.org, Reeve once said that when the
fi rst Superman movie was released, interviewers kept
asking him “What is a hero?” At the time he said that “a hero
is someone who commits a courageous action without
considering the consequences,” but after his accident he
said, “Now my definition is completely different. I think of a
hero as an ordinary individual who finds the strength to
persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.
They are the real heroes, and so are the families and friends
who have stood by them.”
 “I think of a hero as an ordinary individual who finds
the strength to persevere and endure in spite of
overwhelming obstacles.”
—CHRISTOPHER REEVE

Given the severity of his symptoms, it also seems pretty

heroic that Michael J. Fox continues to rally for support. In
Case Studies in Health Communication , Christina Beck,
an expert in health communication at Ohio University, writes,
“Of course, I don’t really know Michael J. Fox, but I rejoiced
at the news of his wedding and grieved over news of his
health challenge. I’m not an obsessed ‘nut’; I’m just a fan,
similar to millions of other fans, who come to care about
someone who seems deceptively near through the magical
intimacy of contemporary media and popular culture. . . .
Connected-ness with fans fosters fame and, in the event of
illness or injury, opportunity to translate stardom into public
awareness and political advocacy.”
Perhaps another aspect of these men’s heroism is that
they had the courage to show their vulnerability to the world,
when fans were used to seeing them at the top of their game
with their star personas switched on. According to
communication researcher Mary Casey and her colleagues,
that’s the difference between a celebrity endorsing a product
and a celebrity endorsing a health message. While celebrity
ads for cola or mascara rely on the persona of the star,
communicating a health message is all about shedding the
persona and revealing the personal side of the star.
It seems that celebrity branding plays just as important a
role in promoting public health as it does in advertising and
marketing products. In a 2003 study that appeared in the
Journal of Health Communication, William Brown,
professor and research fellow at Regent University, says
“When a celebrity becomes closely aligned with a health
issue, like Christopher Reeve and stem cell research, or
Michael J. Fox and Parkinson’s disease, then the media
attention given to that celebrity draws public involvement into
his or her health issue. . . . Just as products are branded with
the help of celebrity endorsements . . . perhaps celebrities
may brand even specific diseases.”
Ladies, I don’t mean to single out the men as heroes.
There are plenty of female celebrity health warriors who are
just as much heroes as Armstrong, Reeve, and Fox. In 2005,
one year after Christopher Reeve’s death, his wife, Dana,
was named Mother of the Year by the American Cancer
Society. At the time, she was raising her son singlehanded,
running the Christopher Reeve Foundation, and raising
awareness of lung cancer, which took her life in 2006
despite the fact she had never smoked. Not to mention the
candor, courage, and hard work of the many female
celebrities—such as Sheryl Crow, Edie Falco, Melissa
Etheridge, Suzanne Somers, and Olivia Newton-John—who
have survived breast cancer and gone public about it.
Practice early detection and prevention. If
increased awareness of celebrity illnesses means that
the public is more likely to seek testing and treatment,
or change their lifestyle, that’s a positive thing. And if
you have an illness, you should take comfort and
strength from whatever sources you can find—and
sometimes that includes inspirational celebrities who
are also fighting or have survived a similar health crisis.
But don’t forget to pay attention to less high-profile
health issues. Heart disease is the leading killer in this
country, and stroke and diabetes also take a heavy toll,
yet they tend not to capture the headlines. They might
not have as m ny celebrities championing them, but
they do take thousands of lives each year. And in many
cases, you can reduce your risk with straightforward
lifestyle changes, preventative testing, and awareness.
Does all this extra public awareness make us look after
our health better? Just as Johnson encouraged people to
find out more about preventing HIV, it seems that celebrities
do influence people to go for cancer screening tests. A study
in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 2005
showed that hearing Katie Couric talk about getting a
colonoscopy made people 37 percent more likely to go have
that test. Similar responses were seen when women heard
Nancy Reagan and Rosie O’Donnell talk about the need for
mammograms, and when men heard Norman Schwarzkopf
talk about prostate cancer screening. A 2005 study reported
in the Medical Journal of Australia found that there was a
40 percent increase in bookings for mammograms for two
weeks following the news that the country’s biggest pop star,
Kylie Minogue, was diagnosed with breast cancer. And if
even one of those people had cancer detected early and got
life-saving treatment, that’s a good thing.
For some, working for a cause may help them
mollify their guilt over having great success, for
others it seems it’s true benevolence.

When Oprah opened up on her show about her battles

with menopause and her thyroid condition, the story made
its way to the celebrity entertainment news. Viewers
responded to Oprah’s revelations in the same way they do
whenever a female celebrity comes out and says, “I have
breast cancer”: They went to their doctors. Many of these
women were, like Oprah, leading busy lives—perhaps
juggling a career, children, or aging parents, meanwhile
neglecting their own health. A wake-up call from a respected
celebrity such as Oprah can be crucial to getting people to
the doctor’s office for treatment.

Not Just Skin Deep

The field of skin care tends to be strongly influenced by
celebrities, but not only in the way you might expect.
Fifth Avenue dermatologist Diane Madfes says that
patients do sometimes come in holding photos of their
favorite stars, asking for treatments to make their eyes
or lips match the photos. Madfes sees potential
medical benefits to these celebrity-inspired trends,
benefits that go far deeper than the cosmetic level: It
causes patients to think more about protecting their
skin and encourages them to visit their doctor. While
lasering and injecting, a doctor can check patients for
skin cancer, which is the third most common cancer
and treatable if detected early. Madfes’s message is
this: “Many people feel they already did the damage,
but it’s not too late!” While you are there for Botox—
which according to Madfes was a celebrity trend that
crossed over into the general public—have a full body
check.
 The Mighty Casey Helps Out

While it may be easy to understand why celebrities who

have illnesses work so hard to champion their cause and
make a difference, it’s not always clear why some healthy
and fit celebrities choose to do the same. For some,
working for a cause may help them mollify their guilt over
having great success, for others it seems to be true
benevolence. The real question is: Does their social
campaigning actually affect the way we think and act?
Regent University Professor William J. Brown and his
team tried to answer this question by studying the attitudes
of almost 400 Mark McGwire fans between the ages of
eighteen and forty. For those of you nonsporting types (like
myself), McGwire was a major league baseball player, who
in 1998 held the home run record, received an enormous
amount of publicity, and was, according to Brown, “instantly
declared an American hero and held up as a positive role
model for teenagers and young adults.”
He also happened to campaign for child abuse
prevention, and the study aimed to find out whether he
influenced people’s awareness of this issue. Indeed the
researchers found that a significant number of people said
that McGwire had made them more aware of the issue and
helped them realize that it’s important to speak out against
child abuse. They also found that people who were already
fans of McGwire were the most strongly influenced—so, the
more popular the star, the more influential he or she can be
in changing attitudes and behavior.
Brown and his colleagues found that people tend to
imitate celebrities “as a way of maintaining a desired
relationship” with them. By saying what our favorite stars
say, doing what they do, believing what they believe, we can
maintain a relationship with them, which in turn helps us
define ourselves. By identifying with stars, by adopting their
attitudes and altruistic ideals, fans can connect with their
heroes.
But celebrity influence is a double-edged sword. If you can
be positively influenced by a celebrity’s message, you can
be negatively influenced, too. In addition to being known for
his child advocacy program, the Mark McGwire Foundation
for Children, McGwire was also publicly known to use
performance-enhancing anabolic steroids. At the time
McGwire became the home run record holder, such drugs
were not banned in baseball—in other sports, yes, but not
yet in baseball.
 While 13 percent of people surveyed reported that
McGwire influenced them to speak out against child abuse,
65 percent of them reported that they were aware of his
steroid use. If celebrities can influence us to care about
social issues, they can also influence us toward drug use.
“As a credit to McGwire,” said the researchers, “he stopped
using Androstenedione as soon as he heard that young
people were emulating his behavior.”
 The Global Celeb Community

The developing world is a major area where celebrities

have raised public awareness. The Rwandan genocide is
considered one of the most complex and horrific
humanitarian crises of the 1990s, yet some people had
never even heard of the Tutsi or Hutu tribes until they saw
Don Cheadle’s performance in 2004’s Hotel Rwanda. Did it
have to receive Oscar nominations for some of us to find out
what had happened in that part of the world? Thank
goodness Hollywood cares: Entire generations have been
educated about the world not through reading newspapers
or class discussions at school but through film. Blood
diamonds? That was a fringe issue until Leonardo DiCaprio
starred in a movie about it and began speaking out publicly.
Now many women are looking at their engagement rings
thinking, hmm, did someone lose a hand so I could have
this?
Even when there is no link to their career, some stars
draw attention to issues. The Darfur crisis was unfolding for
years but barely rated a mention until celebrities such as
Clooney and Cheadle became interested. For most of us,
third-world debt might have seemed simply inevitable until
Bono put the question out there: Could the world’s wealthier
nations in fact forgive some of that debt or do more to help
poorer countries get back on their feet? And then there’s
Angelina Jolie, who seems to spend more time traveling the
globe looking for people to help than she does looking for
movie roles.
Oprah is perhaps the gold standard in celebrity
philanthropy, giving to local and overseas causes. Each year
the Giving Back Fund, a charity devoted to encouraging
philanthropy in the entertainment and sports industries,
compiles a list of the biggest celebrity donors. In 2007 they
ranked Oprah number one; she had given $58.3 million to
her Oprah’s Angel Network and Leadership Academy in
South Africa, a 50-acre $40 million venture that provides its
450 students with textbooks, meals, and an opportunity to
dream, become something, and most important, get out of
desperate poverty.
The world community didn’t listen about Darfur;
some world leaders continued to disbelieve there
even was such a thing as global warming.
 Environmentalism is another huge issue taken up by
celebrities, perhaps most notably by DiCaprio, who set up
his own foundation in 1998, the Leonardo DiCaprio
Foundation, and has made several documentaries on
saving the planet. His Web site
(www.leonardodicaprio.com) is not the usual Hollywood PR
puff page . . . his home page has two sides, one about his
career, the other entirely devoted to environmental causes.
This is clearly much more than a hobby for him.
These celebrities are like pioneering heroes, stepping in
to fill a gap because politicians and the global community
have failed to solve these problems. The world community
didn’t listen about Darfur, and some world leaders continued
to disbelieve there even was such a thing as global
warming. How much the public’s and our leaders’ attitudes
have changed thanks to celebrity activism is impossible to
quantify, but there have certainly been big shifts in our
attitudes toward the plight of the developing world.
 Issue Fatigue

There are now so many celebrity UN Goodwill Ambassadors

that the position seems to have become a revolving door, if
not a résumé requirement. Which begs the question: Is the
title UN Goodwill Ambassador losing its meaning?
Another celebrity trend, for want of a better word, is going
to Africa and returning with a baby. Overseas adoption is a
serious business, and no doubt the stars considered those
adoptions long and hard beforehand, the way we would too.
But because of all the media we are exposed to, celebrity
stories tend to blur together, hiding the fact that each star’s
adoption decision is a carefully considered, individual
success story. It has become acceptable for the media to
speak of celebrity adoptions disparagingly—at least for the
late-night comics, whose job it is to make jokes at the
expense of celebrities (even those who are trying to save
young lives). At the 2006 Academy Awards, Jon Stewart
quipped, “This broadcast is being viewed by millions of
people, nearly half of which are in the process of being
adopted by Angelina Jolie.”
Get inspired. When you see a celebrity doing
something that you think is worthy and good, turn it into
action in your own community. Sometimes it may look
as though philanthropy is only possible if you have a
spare few hundred million and can build a school or
hospital in an impoverished country. But you don’t have
to have bundles of cash to help others. There are plenty
of volunteer groups working for the good of your
community right now who are asking for nothing but a
little of your time. And you don’t have to be Al Gore or
Leonardo DiCaprio to help save the environment. Each
little step you take at home (changing to environmentally
friendly light bulbs, recycling, taking your own bags
when you do the grocery shopping) adds up. My good
friend David Frei of the Westminster Kennel Club
suggests, “If you love dogs, go to your local ASPCA or
animal shelter and train the dogs waiting for homes so
that when potential adopting families come by, they see
a good dog and will more likely want to take him home.”
With so many celebrities attached to so many causes, are
we at the point where causes don’t mean as much to us as
they used to and passionate celebrity advocates are nothing
but late-night fodder? There is an entire body of research
into how violence on TV and in video games desensitizes us
to real violence—but what about constant exposure to
celebrity causes desensitizing us to the issues? We know
through years of study that advertising tends to lose its
effectiveness when we are swamped by hundreds of
different ads each day. Let’s hope the same thing does not
happen here and that as the number of celebrities with
causes grows, our attention span for each does not shrink.

International Adoption
Although the media often portray a celebrity
international adoption as a simple, spontaneous act, in
fact it is a complex process that can involve many legal
and bureaucratic steps. The State Department cautions
that an international adoption is considered a private
matter between the adopting parents and the foreign
court, operating under the specific laws and policies of
that country. Authorities in the United States cannot
intervene on behalf of prospective parents in their
dealings with foreign courts, but the State Department
does provide extensive information about the process
of international adoption.
A tiny proportion of Americans adopt children. With
all of the children in this world who need homes and
families, we should all think twice before judging Mia
Farrow, Madonna, or Brad and Angelina because they
put their strollers where their mouths are.
 CHAPTER EIGHT

Celebritocracy

Vote or Die!
SEAN “P. DIDDY” COMBS

We have all become accustomed to celebrities voicing their

political opinions at awards ceremonies, on their
impassioned blogs, or while hosting charity events. In that
egalitarian and supportive atmosphere, there is a certain
impropriety in a celebrity launching into a speech about
Tibet or Iraq or the death penalty while clutching a shiny
statuette and adjusting the straps of her designer evening
gown. While some of us might not appreciate politics mixed
in with our entertainment, we haven’t been that bothered,
because after all, awards season doesn’t last forever. We
could always take refuge in politician-only celebrity-free
media zones. But even that is changing.
C-SPAN gives the public access to the political process,
allowing us to be flies on the wall of our democracy in action,
but lately it leaves me wondering if there is a red carpet on
Capitol Hill that I was unaware of. These days C-SPAN is
looking more like Access Hollywood than a place to watch a
six-hour debate on farm subsidies. (You can almost hear the
voiceover, “Today on a very special C-SPAN . . . ”) Granted,
celebrity advocacy makes perfect sense under some
circumstances, such as when Muhammad Ali appeared
before Congress to appeal for additional funding for
Parkinson’s research, a disease he is afflicted with. But on
another . . . ummm . . . episode . . . a random Backstreet
Boy was there calling for relief from coal slurry. Huh?
According to CBS News, the “boy” in question was Kevin
Richardson, who had concerns on behalf of his
environmental group Just Within Reach. He and his perfect
hair came to testify on the subject of mountaintop removal
mining, which according to Grist.org is a coal-extraction
process devastating Appalachia. Even though this
Backstreet Boy hails from Kentucky coal-mining country, I
suspect his presence on Capitol Hill had a lot to do with his
star status. In the powerful world of Washington, D.C.,
lobbyists, what really counts is that he brought attention and
media coverage to the issue. That’s why celebrity and
politics have such a close alliance: No one else can capture
the public’s attention quite like a celebrity. And as celebrity’s
hold grows stronger on us every day, the alliance between
celebrity and politics inevitably draws closer.
All over the world wars are being fought for the right to live
in a democracy, but in this country those battles were fought
and won long ago. We each have a right to our own opinion,
a right to have our voice heard, a right to influence how the
country is run. This right is for all of us, not just for the
politicians or the celebrities who increasingly dominate the
public stage. Your own civic responsibility is to find out the
facts, formulate your own opinion, and feel free to shout it
from the rooftops.
But in a celebrity-saturated world, how loud is your voice?
Is it as loud as famously outspoken celebrities such as
Susan Sarandon, Barbra Streisand, or Robert Duvall? Do
you have as much chance of influencing the policies of your
political party as Charlton Heston, who not only donated
thousands of dollars cash each year but also appeared at
election campaign events, lending his formidable fame to
the occasion?
In a sense, perhaps we elect our favorite celebrities—we
vote for them on American Idol, we choose whether to buy
their records or tickets to see their movies—but is that
enough? Do celebrities wield too much political power? Are
we living in a celebritocracy?
In a celebrity-saturated world, how loud is your
voice?

Lobby for what you believe in. Your leaders were

elected to represent you, so tell them how you feel and
what you want from them. Write letters, start petitions,
join lobby groups, send e-mails and faxes; however you
want to contact them—let them hear from you! Your
timing is important, however. Watch for special periods
in the legislative process when your letters and e-mails
can be especially productive, such as when a bill is
introduced and assigned to a committee. Let your
legislators know you want them to cosponsor the bill.
There are other ways to make your voice heard. Of
course I am a huge advocate of radio call-in shows. I
also love the idea of a well-put letter to the editor.
 How It All Began

Actor and activist Mike Farrell believes that celebrities can

have a positive influence on the world. He tells me, “I would
love to see more attention paid (and here the media could
actually do some good) to the true heroes in our society.
Those who too often struggle unnoticed in the trenches of
social injustice attempting to teach our children, feed, clothe,
and harbor the hungry and homeless, bind our wounds and
inspire an understanding and appreciation of fundamental
human value.” To that end celebrity and politics can be quite
a beneficial coupling, the origins of which are as fascinating
as any social movement in American history.
 God Bless America

Celebrity’s influence on politics is hardly new—it’s just

slicker, more organized, and harder to escape than ever
before. Probably the first person in this country to highlight
the merging of celebrity and politics was Columbia
University professor Robert K. Merton, one of the giants of
sociology, back in the 1940s.
Merton illustrated how powerfully the public’s opinion can
be swayed by a celebrity in his 1946 book Mass
Persuasion. He described the profound impact Kate Smith,
a very popular singer of the 1930s and 1940s, had on the
American public during wartime. Millions heard Smith’s
weekly radio show, the Kate Smith Hour, and the public
simply went crazy for her rendition of Irving Berlin’s “God
Bless America.” Such was this star’s influence that when she
began to sing the tune during every broadcast as a way of
raising money for war bonds, the public obeyed her requests
and donated over $600 million—an incredible amount of
money even by current standards—which went to help the
U.S.’s military efforts in World War II.
Smith’s passionate singing even spawned a movement to
make “God Bless America” our national anthem. The
movement picked up so much steam that the lyrics were
introduced into the Congressional Record, but Smith
addressed Congress and implored them not to change the
national anthem, arguing that since the “Star Spangled
Banner” had been written during wartime, it should remain.
Smith was so crucial to the government’s World War II
propaganda machine that when President Roosevelt
introduced her to the King of England, America’s wartime
ally, he said simply: “This is Kate Smith. Miss Smith is
America.” Even forty years after the war, politicians still
recognized the role she played. According to the New York
Times Magazine, upon her death in 1986, President
Reagan saw fit to mark her passing, saying, “Kate Smith
was a patriot in every sense of the word.” (Proceeds from
her version of “God Bless America” now go to the Girl
Scouts and Boy Scouts of America.)
 Yes, Celebrity Endorsement Really Is a Political
Strategy

Smith may no longer be the celebrity on everybody’s lips, but

in recent decades there has certainly been no shortage of
stars trying to influence public opinion. Bill Clinton’s 1993
inauguration parties looked less like political soirees and
more like a celebrity outreach program. The luminaries who
joined in the inauguration celebrations that week included, in
no particular order: Diana Ross, Jack Nicholson reciting
Abraham Lincoln, Aretha Franklin performing a song from
Les Miserables, Kermit the Frog, Barbra Streisand (of
course), Warren Beatty, En Vogue and Boys II Men doing a
cappella versions of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Michael
Jackson, Fleetwood Mac, Oprah, Little Richard, Kenny
Rogers, Bill Cosby, opera singer Kathleen Battle, Macaulay
Culkin, Harry Belafonte, Chuck Berry, L. L. Cool J, Goldie
Hawn, Quincy Jones, and Bob Dylan. It was easy to forget
these were political events, not concerts.
What I always wanted to know was whether such celebrity
endorsements are just a happy coincidence for politicians,
or if the politicos actually go out and court the stars. Sure,
politicians know that having celebs on their side adds a
certain cache to their campaign—but is it a deliberate
strategy?
The answer lies with a man named Alan R. Novak, who
back in the 1960s was senior counsel to Democratic
Senator Edward M. Kennedy. In 1964, after John F.
Kennedy had been assassinated and Lyndon Johnson had
become president, Novak sent a very telling memo to Clifton
Carter, President Johnson’s chief fund-raiser and executive
director of the Democratic National Committee.
“The entertainment world is solidly in the Democratic
camp,” he wrote. “These people, traditionally liberal, were in
the past issue-oriented. . . . This year, as a result of
Goldwater’s candidacy, performers as a group are now
identifying themselves with a party—the Democrats.” He
went on to explain that a conversation he’d had with actor
Paul Newman opened his eyes to an amazing campaign
strategy. Apparently Newman had told Novak that “a
substantial number of performers are ready, willing and able
to donate their services for campaign activities. Mr.
Newman has indicated a willingness to take on a large
burden of the recruitment on the East Coast and has
indicated that Steve Allen, or someone like him, could be
enlisted for the same task on the West Coast.” He
concluded, “There is no shortage of recruiters within the
entertainment world.”
Novak argued in the memo that a celebrity’s participation
in a politician’s campaign can be measured “in dollars and
cents” and “substantial campaign contributions.” Celebrities
also bring other, less tangible benefits, because they can
“add glamour to the Democratic campaign and to the
Democratic nominees, increase the prospects of broad
media coverage . . . and add vigor to the programs on which
performers are appearing, placing the audience in a
receptive mood for the political speeches, with which the
entertainment could be integrated.” But like advertisers who
have to be wary that a celebrity’s indiscretions will reflect
poorly on their products, political candidates need to be
cautious, too. Novak added a chilling caveat to his memo:
“Not all performers would contribute to the image the Party is
striving to create. Screening, of course, would be
necessary.” Brilliant.
Political parties and pundits take the relationship between
candidates and celebrities so seriously that in 2007, Forbes
magazine felt it was necessary to add a whole new category
to their opinion polling on presidential hopefuls: Which
celebs would be good for a campaign and which ones
political poison? Based on the results, they warned
candidates to steer clear of Rosie O’Donnell, Tom Cruise,
Madonna, Jane Fonda, Donald Trump, and Susan
Sarandon but run, don’t walk, to get Oprah, Tom Hanks,
George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Angelina Jolie, and Tiger
Woods on their side.
They warned candidates to steer clear of Rosie
O’Donnell, Tom Cruise, Madonna, Jane Fonda,
Donald Trump, and Susan Sarandon.
 Who’s Left, Who’s Right?

Actors are notoriously Democrat. If you look at campaign

contributions over the last ten years or so, you find that a
great deal of actors and Hollywood producers support the
Democrats. According to the Federal Election Commission,
since 1993 producer Steve Bing, the father of Elizabeth
Hurley’s baby, has given over $10 million to the Democratic
Party and their candidates almost exclusively. Sports stars
and country music stars, along with a few comedians, tend
to support Republican candidates. It’s probably no surprise
that Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush, who happens to be a
cousin of George W., gives to the GOP. Perhaps more
surprisingly, Candace Bushnell, of Sex and the City and
Lipstick Jungle fame, has also donated to the Republicans
—and Bob Barker has, too.
Money is like oxygen to a political campaign. Without
ample financing, candidates cannot fund advertising, pay
their campaign staff, or trek back and forth across the
country to kiss babies, shake hands, and sample regional
fast-food delicacies. The size of their bank balance also
affects how we see candidates. And the bigger and more
glamorous the celebrity fund-raiser is, the more media
coverage the campaign will get.
When it comes to running for office, we see that
Hollywood does have a Conservative side after all.
Conservative actors are the ones who actually get up and do
it—Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Fred “Gopher”
Grandy, Clint Eastwood, Sonny Bono, Fred Thompson.
While liberal Hollywood seems to be mostly interested in
lobbying for political beliefs and helping finance Democrat
campaigns, the Hollywood Republican minority seems to be
more driven to actually seize power. Is there something
about being a leading man or playing a hero on screen that
makes it easier for voters to picture a candidate leading
their state or country? Studies say, “Absolutely.”
According to the journal Gender & Society, it was
Schwarzenegger’s symbolic masculine persona that got him
elected in 2003. He crossed over from Hollywood to politics
at a time when Americans needed to see their men as more
than just masculine; they wanted them to be hypermasculine.
“Republicans utilize this masculine imagery in national
politics to gain voters’ trust in times of fear and insecurity,”
says Gender & Society. Add to that Schwarzenegger’s self-
mocking tone in films such as Kindergarten Cop and Twins,
which allowed us to see his compassionate side, and you
had the perfect candidate.
Get involved. If you feel passionately about party
politics, there is no reason you can’t get involved as a
volunteer, helping to raise funds or awareness for the
party or helping out in the next election campaign. Go to
GOP. com and Democrats.org for more information on
the two main political parties. Or if you are so inclined,
run for office in your local government.
 Politicians as Celebrities

It’s not just that celebrities are being used to bolster political
campaigns—in an increasingly celebrity-driven world,
politicians must cross the line and become entertainers, too.
If I say, “Clinton plays the saxophone,” I bet you immediately
think of Bill Clinton, who famously jammed the tenor sax at
one of his inaugural balls. (If you think of George Clinton of
the P-Funk All Stars, an actual musician, then you rock.) This
blurring of the line between politics and entertainment is a
very unique and modern phenomenon. Can you picture
George Washington blowing sax? At least John Quincy
Adams actually played the flute, but I’m guessing after
helping to create the Monroe Doctrine he did not wow his
constituents with a wicked flute solo.
During the 2008 presidential primaries, Barack Obama
couldn’t just get by on his health care platform, he had to be
seen doing that clumsy little dance with Ellen DeGeneres on
her show. In the same campaign cycle, the Clintons, Obama,
and John McCain appeared (separately) on Saturday Night
Live. Candidates Mike Huckabee, McCain, and Dennis
Kucinich also appeared on The Daily Show and The
Colbert Report—Kucinich even did a whole skit with
Colbert.
Apparently it’s no longer enough that politicians know how
to govern—they also need to know how to entertain and be
as appealing as celebrities. Along with that Ivy League
education and years of public service, you’re gonna need
media training, a personal trainer, a publicist, and image
consultants.
This politicians-as-entertainers trend began in 1960 with
the Kennedy-Nixon debates—the first ever to be televised.
Nixon, naive about TV, arrived at the studio with a five
o’clock shadow, wearing an ill-fitting shirt, and twenty
pounds overweight. He refused to wear makeup and as a
result looked sallow, sweaty, and tired on camera. Kennedy,
who was on steroids for Crohn’s Disease at the time, looked
tan, thin, young, vibrant, handsome, and all made-up like a
cover model using the cameras the way an actor would.
Intellectually the two may have been on par, but physically
they definitely were not, and it shaped how voters saw them.
Voters who listened to the debate on the radio believed
Nixon had won it, while TV viewers thought Kennedy was the
winner by a large margin.
It’s even more intense nowadays. A political insider who
asked to remain anonymous told me, “There is definitely a
hyper-vigilance now as to how our candidates should look
on camera and in photographs. But just imagine Abraham
Lincoln, arguably our greatest president, in HD. He might not
have been elected—Stephen Douglas was definitely the
better looking of the two.”

“Just imagine Abraham Lincoln, arguably our greatest

president, in HD. He might not have been elected.”
—(POLITICAL INSIDER)

Franklin D. Roosevelt had a very strong media presence

at the time of his presidency. His Fireside Chats on the
radio were equally as powerful then as the best candidate
sparring with Bill Maher on his HBO show now. I would like
to think that FDR could have made it today, but many have
said that he would struggle in the age of television.
The blurring of politics and entertainment reached a whole
new level of confusion when our TV screens became filled
with popular shows taking us “inside” the Oval office. While
celebrities are open about using their fame to try and
change opinion on political issues, TV dramas have the
ability to shape our views about politics and government,
insidiously, so that we don’t even realize it’s happening.
In 2003, researchers found that shows such as the NBC
drama series The West Wing had an impact on the way we
view political candidates. In the Journal of Communication,
they argued that research being done into how political
ideas are formed should be extended to include
entertainment television. Other studies have found that we
are persuaded by television portrayals of political figures in
other shows too, such as the 2005 ABC drama series
Commander in Chief and FOX’s 24.
 Rock the Vote

Oprah publicly endorsed Barack Obama in 2008. Bruce

Springsteen, Ashton Kutcher, Whoopi Goldberg, and Ben
Affleck all stumped for John Kerry in 2004. Benjamin
McKenzie, star of Fox’s teen drama The O.C. (2003-2007),
even addressed the Democratic National Convention in
Boston in July 2004. At the time, McKenzie was extremely
popular among young people—a symbol of young
Hollywood.
We all feel the need to identify with other people in order
to form ideas and attitudes when it comes to major
decisions, such as our own political self-concept. This is
especially true for adolescents, who are still trying to develop
their own individual identity. Young folks love to join groups
and feel a part of something; it helps them decide what kind
of adult they will become and it answers questions as to who
they are now. A lot of young people—mostly young girls—
identified with McKenzie, or at least his character, “Ryan,”
and the O.C. hunk’s involvement in the campaign was no
doubt aimed at encouraging them to vote for Kerry.
Oh, and for you fellas out there, you were covered as well:
Curt Schilling, a pitcher with the Boston Red Sox, let us
know that we should vote for Bush and then won the World
Series that year to put an exclamation point at the end of his
words.
On the other side of the aisle, sexy innocent Natalie
Portman appeared on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show in
2004 wearing a provocative black tank top with the words
“Kerry Me” in small white letters on the front of her shirt. A
subtle reminder to vote . . . or to look at her chest—either
way it had an impact.
Just because you played the president in a film,
doesn’t make you an expert in political science.
 While it doesn’t seem that celebrity affiliations really
helped Kerry in the 2004 election, there is evidence that the
efforts of his celebrity advocates did increase voter turnout,
especially among American youth (youth voter turnout
trended even higher for the 2008 election). McKenzie and
Portman were part of a celebrity crew—along with Sean “P.
Diddy” Combs, who ran a “Vote or Die” campaign, and
myriad celebrity endorsers of “Rock the Vote”—encouraging
young people to go out and vote. And according to
MTV.com, it worked. They and the Youth Vote Coalition had
set a goal of getting 20 million eighteen- to thirty-year-olds to
the polls, and in an article that ran after the election, titled
“Twenty Million Loud and Then Some: Young People Storm
the Polls,” they declared that the goal had been surpassed.
In fact 20.9 million young people voted on Election Day
2004, according to the nonpartisan group Center for
Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement
(CIRCLE). More surprising was that there were just as many
conservative young voters as there were Democrats.
Abandon your idea that the youth don’t vote and that when
they do, they vote Democrat. In 2004 more twenty-five-year-
olds than seventy-five-year-olds voted, and depending upon
which stats you look at, anywhere between 33 percent and
49 percent voted Republican.
 The Celebrity Citizen

Should a celebrity have to have personal experience with

their chosen platform, such as Michael J. Fox and
Muhammad Ali do, before they can earn the right to try and
sway public opinion and government policy? Or is it okay for
a Backstreet Boy to try and save Appalachia?
It may be appropriate for stars to be politically active when
they use their influence responsibly and stump for a
candidate who is from their home state or who champions
beliefs the star is known for. But it can seem plain arrogant
when stars act as though they know as much—if not more
than—politicians. Just because you played the president in
a film, doesn’t make you an expert in political science.
Why can’t celebrities leave politics to the politicians, who
know more about political theory and comparative
government, have studied the intricacies and history of world
affairs, and frankly, might be smarter than a celebrity?
Setting aside the obvious jokes we all like to make about
politicians and our general lack of confidence in their
integrity, it’s likely they know a lot more than a TV star or pop
idol does about governing a country. Think about what it
takes to become an actor and then think about what it takes
to become a political leader. Not quite the same criteria
now, are they?
Years ago, Sarandon was chastised by many media
watchdog groups for appearing on CBS’s The Early Show
to, rather than discuss her new made-for-TV movie, filibuster
poor unsuspecting Harry Smith about “billions of dollars” that
were going to be cut from the veterans benefits budget. It
was a toss up as to what was most disturbing to the media
groups. For some it was that her allegation seemed
unsubstantiated, for others it was her arrogance in claiming
that she had valuable information accessible only by her.
The real issue is that many folks watching that day would
have just taken her word for it and not sought out the truth for
themselves. After all, she was Sister Helen in Dead Man
Walking, for which she won an Oscar—surely that means
she knows stuff we don’t . . . right?
Stay informed on the issues. If you don’t feel like
going out—or can’t go out—to campaign speeches,
use the Internet. There isn’t a single candidate who
doesn’t use technology to inform the public of his or her
political stances. To stay informed about local, state,
and federal government, one of the best resources is
 USA.gov. Also MTV’s RocktheVote.com explains the
issues in bite-size nuggets. See what interests you and
then keep looking for more information. After you’ve
done your research, make up your own mind.
Well, maybe. She has made a point of educating herself
on the political underpinnings of many social issues; she has
also spent time fund-raising for several nonprofit
organizations, bringing in untold amounts of money. She
could spend her days shopping at Gucci or lunching at
Spago, but instead she heads up several advocacy groups
and is a champion for human rights and rallies against
AIDS, poverty, and hunger. However, the very idea that she
would know more about a bill regarding federal spending
than a political leader should at least move you to find out
the facts for yourself.
I am not questioning the rights of celebrities to become
political advocates. Celebrities are citizens, and they have a
right—just like everyone else—to express their opinion. And
most celebrities who get involved in political causes do so
for sincere and selfless reasons, because they really do
care about the issues. Actor and social advocate Mike
Farrell says, “Actors, if they choose, can take advantage of
the platform and opportunity provided by celebrity and use it
for social good. If we identify with, are attracted to, lust after,
sympathize with, admire, or just care about someone, that
connection can carry over . . . to that person’s activities
outside the theatrical arena.”
No one doubts the sincerity of Reba McEntire or Tom
Hanks. These people have strong, unwavering political
beliefs, and like anyone with enough money to do so, they
have the right to donate their money to whatever political
causes they like and support their causes however they
want. I’m sure a lot of us who are passionate about a
political issue wish that we too had a celebrity’s platform so
our message could be easily heard. But it’s important to
remember that each of us can contribute; we can make our
voices heard.
Vote! A wise man once said, “If you don’t vote, you
can’t complain.” Even if you vote solely for the privilege
of being able to complain, it’s worth it. Voting is one of
the being able to complain, it’s worth it. Voting is one of
the most American things you can do, and it’s a way to
influence your world the way a celebrity might. Your vote
is your voice, so use it.
 CHAPTER NINE

Success and Nuthin’ Less

If there’s one thing I know about myself it’s that I have never and
will never drop the ball when the chips are down. I pride myself on
that. The higher the stakes, the happier I am, the better I will be.
ROBERT DOWNEY JR.

How do you measure success? Everyone has his or her own

yardstick. My good friend, Kirk, measures it by how many
dogs a person has. As a dog lover, I get it. He will say to me,
“I met this guy who was so rich!” Knowing exactly what he
means, I will ask, “How many?” to which he might excitedly
reply, “He has not one . . . not two . . . not even four . . . but
seven Airedales!” In my friend’s eyes, the guy is just like
Warren Buffet. Other people may look at the size of their
house or their bank account as a benchmark of
achievement, while others may measure success by the size
of their family. “I am rich in children and grandchildren,” they
might say.
But we’re all aware of a whole other level of success:
fame. Actors who mesmerize us on the screen, singers who
enthrall us with their tunes, athletes with extraordinary
strength and agility—to the rest of us with humble talents,
they seem specially gifted, amazingly talented, and indeed,
many of them truly are. We live in a world that worships
success, and for many of us, celebrities are the very
embodiment of it. After all, if everyone knows their names
and they have millions of admirers, they must be the most
successful in their field . . . right?
Well, that is until their TV pilot bombs, their top falls off on
the red carpet, their long-awaited album is ridiculed by
reviewers, or they’re found stumbling around a Hollywood
parking lot in their pajamas. As we’ve seen time and time
again, a star who once seemed unassailable can suddenly
plummet to Earth, burning up in a fiery ball on reentry into the
atmosphere. (And how we love to watch each one burn.)
I wonder: Do the extreme examples of success and failure
we see in celebrities affect our own attitudes toward
success and even our chances of achieving it? Fame
seems too flimsy a foundation to base our own success
goals on—but do stars actually have something valuable to
teach us about achievement?
 Mediocrity Is Not an Option

My last book, The Cult of Perfection, was about women who

are overachievers. Women for whom good enough is never
enough, who need to reach higher and go farther than
everyone else. Women like me, who are always doing
something, trying to squeeze another achievement onto their
résumé, constantly striving harder. Many of us today are
feeling the pressure to be successful, and not just run-of-the-
mill successful but stellar. A job is not enough—you need a
career; you need to be a star in your field. A university
degree is not enough—you need two or three. Plus, you
need to run a marathon or learn Japanese or write a
children’s book—something to make you just a touch more
interesting than you already are, something to give you an
edge. The bar has been raised, and we are all stretching up
trying to reach it. If you’re not achieving something
awesome, it’s like, “What’s the point?”
The pressure many of us feel to achieve remarkable
success has many roots, and I’m not about to pin it solely on
our celebrity-obsessed culture. But you have to wonder
whether placing those with exceptional talents—gifted actors
and singers, amazing sportspeople, impossibly beautiful
models—up on a pedestal causes us to continually raise our
standards higher, until to be considered truly successful we
need to break a world record, win an Oscar, and release our
own fragrance line. Okay, you mightn’t feel as though you
need to go to that extreme, but you may feel that you have to
achieve similar success in your own career, be it employee
of the month or winning your industry’s highest honors. Good
enough is no longer good enough.
Focus on what matters. One observation we can
make from celebrities who keep their heads and lead a
happy, together life (versus those who unravel and end
up having to prove to a judge why they should be
allowed in a car with their babies) is that they are able
to keep things in perspective and focus on the stuff that
really matters, such as family, friends, and being part of
a community. Stars go off the rails when they cut
themselves off from normal life, focus entirely on their
careers, or start using alcohol and drugs to deal with the
pressures of fame and the stress of paparazzi. Though
you may not have a pack of photogs swarming outside
your house, you can apply the same principles to
dealing with the stresses of ordinary life.
 Maybe this immense pressure we feel to keep up—and
the disappointment of knowing that we can’t—is one of the
reasons we love it when celebrities fail. When their movies
bomb, their albums are panned, or they have a breakdown
and end up in a rehab facility, perhaps it makes us feel a
little better. It makes the celebrities more human, more like
us. For a moment we recognize the limitations of fame and
think, “See, this level of success must be unattainable if
[insert your favorite fallen star] can’t maintain it.” So the
pressure’s off.
A star is only as good as his or her last smash hit
or award, an athlete as invincible as his or her last
world record.

In the world of celebrity, though, the pressure is never off.

A star is only as good as his or her last smash hit or award,
an athlete as invincible as his or her last world record. If a
singer is out of the public eye for more than a year, her or
she has to release a comeback album. When Academy
Award winner Marcia Gay Harden came in to be interviewed
one day for my radio show, she had not one, not two, but
three movies to promote. She, like most stars now, are
juggling multiple big projects.
This is endemic in the whole entertainment industry, which
tends to attract overachievers determined to climb their way
to the top. Case in point: I interviewed a TV executive who is
at the helm of one of the biggest television companies—
putting her at the highest level in the television industry. She
told me, “I’m the oldest of six children, and from the time I
can remember I’ve felt compelled to be the leader of the
pack.” Her mother stuck with her abusive father, but as her
mother’s self-esteem shrunk, “somehow roles of mother and
daughter reversed and I found myself taking care of the
family. We owned a family restaurant where I worked
fourteen hours a day, seven days a week.” In her early
twenties she left the restaurant and went back to school. “To
work my way through college, I had two jobs, both at
restaurants, and received employee of the year at one, and
had the highest overall sales for the year at the other. I’ve
always believed that whatever you do, do your best.” After
college, she went for interviews at two film studios and was
hired at both the same day. “I knew it was a sign that I was to
pursue the field of entertainment, although I knew how
competitive and cutthroat it could be. And so here I am, a TV
executive, still climbing my way to the top, still supporting
family members with no regrets and having the time of my
life!”
Did she say, “Still climbing my way to the top”? In most
people’s eyes, she is at the top. I can’t imagine where she
would go—but her never-ending drive for the next pinnacle of
success sums up the attitude of most people in the
entertainment industry.
 I Play a Doctor in Real Life

Success in your chosen field relies on choosing the right

field in the first place. Lousy at English and history but great
at math and chemistry? Maybe “scientist” is looking more
promising as a career choice than “lawyer.” Clueless about
biology but excel at art? Perhaps graphic design is a better
option than medicine.

The Footprints of Success

Our relationship with celebrities is especially
complicated where attitudes toward success are
concerned. For some people, a successful celebrity is
a shining example, a role model for all that they can
achieve, someone who gives them inspiration to
accomplish their goals. But to others, a successful
celebrity is nothing more than a reminder of all they
haven’t achieved, a mirror of their worst fears and an
illustration of the fame, glittering triumph, and public
adoration they may never enjoy. Surprisingly, whether
you are inspired or deterred by the success of stars has
a great deal to do with the color of your skin.
Over the past twenty years, and backed up again
recently by a study published in the Journal of Black
Psychology, researchers have found that black people
report higher levels of self-esteem than white people.
White people, it has been found, tend to base their self-
esteem on the approval of others, while black people
do not. Also, blacks have a stronger ethnic identity,
which plays a big part in their self-esteem.
Studies out of the University of North Carolina
concluded that whites’ self-esteem tends to be
negatively affected by the success of their white
celebrity counterparts, whereas black people are
positively affected by the success of black celebrities—
and this goes beyond just the random actor; it includes
rappers and sports stars too.
Furthermore, black and Latino people are not
influenced by the “the thin ideal,” which has been found
to have a greater effect on white people than any other
race. A young white woman might look at Keira
Knightley, decide that the actress is gorgeous and she
could never look like her, and have lower self-esteem
as a result. Latinas and black girls—who have a
stronger ethnic identity and also, according to research,
 enjoy a different idea of what beauty is—would have a
different response. A young black woman, for instance,
might look at Beyoncé and think to herself, “If she can
do it, so can I.”
Having low self-esteem doesn’t necessarily mean
you won’t find success in life, but it does have a big
impact on goal-setting behaviors. The Journal of
Vocational Behavior has confirmed that lower self-
esteem can predict unemployment, cynicism, and
reduced accomplishment at work, not to mention lower
levels of job satisfaction.
In general I’d prefer not to waste my time looking at
the razor-thin celebrity ideal and feeling down about
myself, although I’m sure in my twenties it was
inevitable. Now when things are tough, I think about
Snoop Dogg. Many folks like to quote great
philosophers like Mark Twain or Winston Churchill. I like
to quote the great Snoop Dogg when he says,
“Success and nuthin’ less.” Yes, Snoop, words of
wisdom for us all to live by. Those words, in all of their
rhythmic splendor, help me barrel through a particularly
harsh day. When I’m feeling that I am getting farther
away from my goals I, like so many others, think about
Snoop Dogg—“Success and nuthin’ less”—and I feel
better.
“Duh, everyone knows that,” I hear you say.
Well, maybe choosing the right career isn’t quite so
straightforward after all. Young people get scads of
information—on jobs, relationships, and everything in
between—not just from school guidance counselors or from
their parents, but also from television and film. We have all
seen the numbers telling us how many hours of TV per day
kids watch—lots! But what we see on TV and in film doesn’t
always mirror the real world, and this is especially
problematic for young people watching and identifying with
their favorite actors and imagining themselves in their roles.
Kids coming out of college are choosing careers
based on the information they glean from
television programs.
 Regular viewers of Grey’s Anatomy, ER, or House may
think they know what it’s like to be in the operating room—
sorry, the “OR”—where scrumptious doctors are only
occasionally forced to quit their romantic intrigues and/or
backstabbing to dramatically yell “Stat!” or “Clear!” (or, in the
case of House, rule out sarcoidosis). Those who avidly
watch Law & Order and CSI may feel they know their way
around a crime scene or the courtroom as well as any
attorney or judge. We get lots of messages about
occupations and what it takes to be successful in them from
these TV shows. In fact kids coming out of college are
choosing careers based on the information they glean from
television programs, if they haven’t had an internship or seen
a real example of what kind of career they want. Don’t
believe me? Well, I have a study . . .
For three years psychologists at the University of
Pennsylvania followed a group of career seekers, who they
had asked what it took to be a doctor, psychiatrist,
paramedic, judge, lawyer, and police officer. What they
found was that those who got their information on those jobs
solely from what they saw on television were completely
unsuccessful in landing one of those jobs. The other group,
who had personal experience, for instance through an
internship or a close relative in that profession, had a much
easier time, because they understood the work involved and
the path they had to take in order to get there. This says that
the more realistic a career is to you, the better your odds are
of making it happen—in other words, an obsession with
Ellen Pompeo doesn’t mean you should try to become a
doctor.
What else does this say? It says if there is something you
always thought you wanted to do, finding a way to
experience it firsthand is your best guarantee of success.
Any time you see chef Gordon Ramsay on television trying
to salvage a restaurant that is about to close its doors
because someone thought it would be a “cool idea” to own a
restaurant, it’s usually because they saw folks such as
Ramsay, Mario Batali, or Emeril Lagasse on TV and
figured, “Hey, that looks like fun, how hard can it be?” On
Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares I have yet to see one
chef/owner who has been to culinary school, let alone one
that has ever worked in a restaurant prior to owning one.
Celebrity chefs are celebrity chefs for a reason. Talent, hard
work, and actual sweat went into making them who they are.
Unfortunately you don’t get to see that part on TV. You only
get to see how cute Bobby Flay looks grillin’ & chillin’.
Start small. Research your chosen career and what
you need to do to get there. Set yourself a clear goal
and smaller goals leading up to it; write a list if it helps.
If you know that one day you want to be a rodeo clown,
first you need to learn how to ride a horse, then you
need to go to clown school, and then buy big rubber
shoes—but take baby steps, knowing that the journey is
the most fun part of it. Often celebrities are nostalgic for
the days when they were building their careers—the
ease of it. Don’t let those moments pass you buy. Savor
each and every one of them, but keep your eye on the
prize.
 What Is Success?

In the world of celebrity, this question seems ridiculously

easy to answer. Success is Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman,
George Clooney, Brad Pitt. It’s Tiger Woods, Michael
Jordan, Tom Brady. It’s winning a Grammy, Super Bowl, or a
PGA tournament. It’s having your star on the Hollywood walk
of fame or your picture on the cover of Time magazine.
If you think this is what celebrity success is about, and thus
is what all success can ultimately be measured against, it’s
time to think again. In your own life, you probably think of
success as encompassing a balance of different things:
financial security, job fulfillment, a happy family life, health, a
group of supportive friends (or in Kirk’s case, a wealth of
dogs). Apply those standards to the world of celebrity, and
suddenly stardom doesn’t look like such a worthy
benchmark.
Success is Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, George
Clooney, Brad Pitt. It’s Tiger Woods, Michael
Jordan, Tom Brady. It’s winning a Grammy, Super
Bowl or a PGA tournament.

Winning an award can ensure you lifelong fame, but does

it mean success in the sense of lifelong fulfillment or a
steady career? Think of the “Oscar curse” that bygone stars
such as Mira Sorvino, Roberto Benigni, Halle Berry, Adrien
Brody, and Marisa Tomei have had to endure. Berry, who
won in 2002 for Monster’s Ball, disappointed us in Die
Another Day, and if that wasn’t bad enough, won a Razzie
for her atrocious stint as a superhero in Catwoman. Tomei’s
Oscar for My Cousin Vinny in 1993 left us wanting more of
her comedic talents, but she followed it up with a small part
i n Chaplin and then a series of films unbecoming of an
Oscar recipient: Only You and The Perez Family. The
others, too, fell short of our expectations of an Oscar winner.
Even Julia Roberts had a series of—let’s call them less than
successful—movies after her 2000 win for Erin Brockovich.
She followed that film up with The Mexican, America’s
Sweethearts, and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind—not
bad films, just not what we would expect from someone with
an Academy Award.
Define success. The most important thing for your own
happiness and satisfaction is deciding what success
looks like to you. Not what television programs,
celebrity weeklies, or celebrity news shows say is a
successful life.
For some, success might mean earning money, buying
a house in a chic neighborhood, or doing graduate
studies at Harvard. For others, it might be growing the
perfect azalea, having a happy home, or learning how to
knit socks. Doesn’t matter what it is, so long as it’s your
definition of success that you’re living by.
 Fame Won’t Pay the Rent

Some of the wealthiest people in the entertainment industry

are not the ones with their names in lights. My friend
Douglas is a Broadway theater actor. He’s nobody you
would have ever have heard of, but he has steady work. He
also does voiceovers—that’s when you are watching a
commercial and some disembodied voice tells you that
odors from bacteria are deep inside your comfy sofa,
invading your home so you should use Febreeze Deep
Clean to combat said bacteria. He makes a seven-figure
yearly salary and just bought a penthouse in an exclusive
area of Manhattan’s Upper West Side worth $2.5 million. I
consider him a success—he probably has more money than
Molly Ringwald, and you’ve heard of her.
Any number of reality-TV or YouTube stars are famous but
not rich. Constantine Maroulis, American Idol finalist and
soap opera actor, told me that he may be more famous than
rich: “I make personal appearances because I need that
money to do what I want to do, so I sit there and answer
questions about American Idol. I don’t want to do it every
day of my life, but I do enjoy meeting fans and hearing where
they are from, and they say things like ‘We voted for you’ or
‘We stopped watching when you were voted off.’” In those
fans’ eyes, he is talented and famous and therefore
successful. They, like most people, probably think his
success includes financial wealth, but the famous don’t
always achieve that balance.
There are plenty of well-known actors who are living
paycheck to paycheck or worrying that if their show gets
canceled they’ll be type-cast for life and won’t have a hope
of getting another big role. That seems to have happened to
some of the Seinfeld folks and to some of the Friends cast,
too.
The celebrity mentality is to live like a star even if
you haven’t had a job in two years, and even if
your last five films tanked.
 Even worse, plenty of celebrities end up broke. Would it
surprise you to learn that Burt Reynolds filed for bankruptcy?
How about Kim Basinger? More stars than you can imagine
have lived beyond their means and ended up with nothing.
Basinger had signed on to do the film Boxing Helena and
during that same time purchased the town of Braselton,
Georgia, for $20 million. When she dropped out of the film,
she was sued for breach of contract and had to not only sell
the town but file for bankruptcy. The celebrity mentality is to
live like a star even if you haven’t had a job in two years, and
even if your last five films tanked. If you are still famous, well
then you must be rich, or on your way back to it, right? And
according to the Smoking Gun, which obtained the Florida
bankruptcy documents filed by Reynolds, he’s $10 million in
the hole.
The upper echelons of the Machine—the people whom
you’ve never heard of but create celebrities and hit movies,
TV shows, and albums—are the ones who are in perhaps
the most enviable position in the entertainment industry.
They have power; they can hire and fire celebrities; they
make the serious money and have a level of job security that
stars never will. You’ve heard of only a handful of them—
Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, for instance—but
lack of fame doesn’t mean they are any less successful than
big stars.
In the music industry it’s the songwriter who makes the
real cash, not necessarily the person singing the song.
Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot was rich beyond your wildest
dreams before you ever heard of her. She was a highly
sought-after songwriter and producer who had written
number one hits for several singers, including Aaliyah and
Destiny’s Child. The same is true for Linda Perry. She
fronted a band in the 1990s called 4 Non Blondes that had a
hit called “What’s Up.” A lot of people outside the music
business might think of her as a one-hit wonder, because
her fame tapered off after that song. What most people don’t
realize is that her real cash cow is all the hits she has written
for everyone from Pink, Gwen Stefani, Alicia Keys, and
Christina Aguilera to Celine Dion and the Dixie Chicks. She
even spotted the talent of James Blunt early and signed him
to her own record label. She’s the go-to girl if you want to
take a little country out of your western, some gum out of
your pop, or add something soft to your rock. Although you
may not know her name, she is an astronomical success.
 Succeed Like a Star

As so many entertainment-industry insiders have told me,

success and fame can be a bit of a lottery. The finest actors,
singers, and artists aren’t necessarily the ones who make it
into the limelight. Though it seems self-evident that the
celebrities we know and love were destined to be
successful, it took a lot of work to claw their way to the top.
As they clambered up that golden ladder, competitors were
trying to drag them down from below or stomp on their
fingers from above. Then when they finally did reach the top
—that golden land called “success”—they found that what
they were standing on was a razor’s edge. One false move
—the wrong movie role, bad choice of record label, a
drunken indiscretion, a change in public tastes and fashions
—and they would be sent crashing down.
It takes a certain kind of person to have the persistence to
keep climbing to the top, and then once there, maintain a
footing or know how to break his or her fall. What does
psychology tell us about these people, the ones who have
the determination to just keep going until they reach their
goals?
It all comes down to their “personal theory,” according to
Carol Dweck, one of the first women to truly inspire me in
psychology. She says that we each have our own view of the
world, a theory that guides us. Your theory informs your
beliefs about who is successful and why they are successful.
You may believe they got to where they are in their career
because they worked hard, or you may think it’s because
they were lucky. And that influences the way you approach
your goals—you are either determined to work hard or to
wait for your lucky day. Luck has helped launch many people
to stardom, but the stars who endure know that without hard
work, their careers will peter out.

Live Fast, Die Young

There’s another good reason for the musically inclined
to opt for a life behind the scenes: Turns out that if living
is one of your markers for success, becoming a music
star is certainly not a good career option. Researchers
at Liverpool John Moores University found that music
stars’ death risk is two to three times higher than the
general population’s. The study found that in Britain,
those who survived the first twenty-five years of fame
ended up returning to the same death risk as normal
 folk—but sadly, American music stars continued to
have high death rates in later life. The study said the
difference “might be explained by differences in longer-
term experience of fame, with more performing in later
years . . . continued media interest and associated
stress and substance abuse in North American pop
stars.” Perhaps most interesting of all, “many [U.S.
musicians] die in poverty [since] there is not the same
type of public health provision there [as in Britain].”
Dweck believes that another important factor is your
theory about intelligence. Some people believe that
intelligence is an unchangeable, fixed kinda thing, where you
are stuck with what you were born with, like your height or
eye color. But others of us think that we can develop our
intelligence. The reason this is so important is that it
influences how you will go about achieving your own
success. According to Dweck even when people have equal
intellectual ability, their theories of intelligence shape their
outcomes. If you think that you can do nothing to improve
your abilities, you may be more likely to give up in the face of
failure, thinking, “I’m just not smart enough.” Those who think
that intelligence can grow are more likely to take a more
challenging path, do whatever they can do, and go wherever
the journey takes them, because they believe it is just as
important as the outcome. They believe that learning
something or putting in a great effort is a success all its own.
You’ve heard of so-called “overnight” celebrity successes
that took ten years. These are people who never gave up,
despite the unrelenting amount of failure they endured.
There is nothing quite so spectacular as a celebrity’s
failure. At least if you slip up at work or in your personal life,
you won’t find the evidence splashed all over the front cover
of the next Us Weekly. The odd thing about failure is that for
some people, it’s a motivation to work harder, a mere
setback but not the end of the world. For others, it marks the
end of an era, a time to move on. If a celebrity spends twelve
months making a megabudget Hollywood movie that bombs
at the box office, he or she could see it as encouragement to
make a better film next time. Or his or her response could be
a three-step process: Step one: Fall into depression. Step
two: Eat copious amounts of Chunky Monkey ice cream.
Step three: Die. Whether a person bounces back from
failure depends on his or her theory about him- or herself.
Those who survive and succeed know that when they fail, it’s
time to learn a new strategy.

“A common ‘solution’ might be self-medication . . .

 leading to poorer and poorer results. Something like
this might apply to the Britney Spearses and Amy
Winehouses of the world.”
—JASON PLAKS, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF
TORONTO

Again, it also comes down to whether a person has a

fixed mind set or a more flexible viewpoint regarding
success and failure. Many celebrities are told from
childhood onward “that they have natural, God-given talent,”
says Jason Plaks, an associate professor at the University
of Toronto. If the star has a fixed mind set and “buys into this
view of talent—‘either you got it or you don’t’—then the first
time he or she encounters failure should be particularly
devastating. . . . On the other hand, someone who perceives
his or her effort as a combination of both ‘native talent’ and
dynamic factors like effort, strategy, and even luck would be
better positioned psychologically to handle [failure].”
Plaks goes on to say that when celebrities with the more
rigid idea of talent and success are under pressure—say,
from agents and recording labels—“a common ‘solution’
might be self-medication, which then further impairs [their]
work ethic and performance, leading to poorer and poorer
results. Something like this might apply to the Britney
Spearses and Amy Winehouses of the world.
“Celebrities with a fixed perspective are likely more
concerned with what people think of them. These are the
people who obsessively track their Google hits and enter
their own fan club chatrooms under pseudonyms,” notes
Plaks. Stars who are more flexible in their thinking “are more
concerned with actually putting out the best possible product
and continually growing and developing their skills. They are
not afraid to take risks and not afraid to fail.”
There are sad cases where stars fell from grace and
never recovered, but there are also plenty of examples of
stars who hit rock bottom but gathered their strength, healed,
re-created themselves, and came back even better than
before. After the success of Lois & Clark in the 1990s, Teri
Hatcher sunk into obscurity, barring a few Radio Shack
commercials, but then reemerged and carved out an even
more successful role as a Desperate Housewife. Daryl
Hannah, after falling for Tom Hanks as a fish in Splash!, had
a long swim back until Kill Bill. The stars who make a
comeback can end up holding a special place in our
thoughts, because they show us how strong the human spirit
is. They show us that if we fall, we too can get back up
again, head held high, and start afresh.
“The people who have the biggest chance of making a
comeback are the ones who didn’t go out on bad terms with
us, the ones who faded away or self-destructed and we feel
sorry for them,” says Jarett Weiselman, pop culture expert.
“Everyone likes a comeback story because everyone, on
some level, hopes to be resilient like that in their own lives—
they can triumph over the odds; they can get fired and be
near bankruptcy but still come back and make a statement.”
Learn by example. In celebrity land, the key to
succeeding despite the odds or rising from the ashes of
failure seems to be a flexible attitude, greater emphasis
on achieving the best you can rather than being strictly
concerned about what others think of you, a desire to
develop your skills, and the ability to see failure as an
opportunity to learn a new strategy. The stars who make
it, the stars who weather humiliating failures, the stars
who keep a grip on their sanity seem to be the ones
who are resilient people with a strong sense of self and
the Terminator gene that makes them keep working
harder and trying to be better all the time.
It’s rare that I would suggest looking toward
celebrities as role models, but they do make very public
examples of the diverse ways of coping with failure, and
you can learn from that. Everyone has to face setbacks
in life; it’s just part of the human condition. Things don’t
always go the way you’d like, and sometimes you make
mistakes. What matters is your attitude and what steps
you take next. Do you see failure as the end, or do you
have a more optimistic outlook and find the opportunity
in the situation? Stars who fail in the most humiliating of
ways but regroup and return even stronger than before
can be your inspiration.
 CHAPTER TEN

And Who Greenlights This Marriage?

I’ve always had really low self-esteem, and I still do. What’s weird
about that is being onstage, and the love that you get, and the
adoration that you feel from your real fans. It’s hard for a partner to
compete . . .
MARIAH CAREY

My husband’s name is Sean. I tell you this because I am

hoping some clever sort out there will help me come up with
a catchy way to combine our names, like “Brangelina” and
“TomKat.” I lament the cleverly monikered yet short-lived
“Vaugniston.” And I secretly hope to be half of “Deppence”
one day, or perhaps if Christian Bale wouldn’t mind, we
could be “Chrisper.”
Then again, some of the seemingly more healthy
relationships in Hollywood don’t have that one-name dual-
person identity: There is no “DemiKut” or “Hankson.” So
maybe being just “Sean” and “Cooper” is okay, too.
The trend in recent years to fuse the names of star
couples seems almost symbolic of what the celebrity
relationship represents: a fusing of fame, beauty, and power.
It’s a cross-fertilization of stardom and prestige. It’s the latest
romantic-comedy leading man and leading lady hooking up,
pop stars melding their celebrity brands together, sports
heroes bonding with models (models being the one thing
that never goes out of fashion in the celebrity hookup
department). Stars almost never wed or shack up with
ordinary folk, and this only reinforces the “us and them”
aspect of our relationship with celebrities. Us down here and
them up there on Mount Olympus—sorry, I mean the
Hollywood Hills.

“She’s gorgeous, successful and has got the gorgeous

husband, the great career, and one of the best bodies
in Hollywood—this can’t be fair.”
—JARETT WEISELMAN, POP CULTURE EXPERT
 We have a voracious appetite for pictures of their fairy-
tale weddings in private castles in Scotland with budgets
way bigger than what most people pay for their houses. We
listen avidly to breathless breaking news reports on which
hunky and pert costars have just got together or cheated on
each other, which star has stormed out of the couple’s home
via Harley-Davidson, or who’s just had to pony up $150
million in a divorce settlement.
It is no great shock to us—and often has far more
entertainment value—when the fairy-tale Hollywood romance
turns into a nightmare of child custody disputes, substance
abuse, vicious recriminations, sex tapes, and kooky
behavior. Because of their fame and power, we expect
celebrities to be dysfunctional and self-absorbed to a
degree. We’re usually more surprised when their
relationships work than when they unravel publicly on
Entertainment Tonight and TMZ—but what does that, and
our insatiable craving for celeb relationship gossip, say
about us?
 The Joy of the Ex

To explain the attention we give to the love lives of

celebrities, pop culture expert Jarett Weiselman points to
the story of Jennifer Aniston and her divorce from Brad Pitt.
“The reason we tuned in is because it all seemed too
perfect, and completely unfair! She’s gorgeous, successful
and has got the gorgeous husband, the great career, and
one of the best bodies in Hollywood—this can’t be fair—so
when the whole thing fell apart it made sense to everyone
who had thought ‘I knew it couldn’t all be that perfect.’ We
know there are peaks and valleys in life, but with celebrities
we wait for the valley.”
Actress Fran Drescher brought her long-term relationship
with a much younger hunk to the small screen with her 2005-
2006 series Living with Fran. I asked her why there is so
much in the news about who is dating whom. “I think media
tends to cater to the lowest common denominator of
readership or viewership. I don’t think thinking people care
all that much. It’s a shame because I believe that most
people would take just as much pleasure in learning about
altruistic people doing meaningful things in all different walks
of life.”
Weiselman disagrees: “Unfortunately sex and scandal
sells. Humanitarian efforts may sell copies of Time
magazine, but they are not going to sell a gossip magazine
or a celebrity weekly.”
Perhaps one reason why we like to follow the highs and
lows of stars’ romances is that it’s a way to live vicariously
through them, indulging in a fantasy of the life we could have
if we were celebs. (Hey, it wouldn’t matter if your relationship
with Jake Gyllenhaal stalled—if you were a celebrity you
could move on to, I don’t know, Adrian Grenier or someone.)
And we enjoy it when stars’ relationships crumble
because the world makes sense to us again. It brings the
stars back down to a more human level, and a comforting
thought passes through our minds: “Maybe I didn’t have a
diamond-encrusted one-off wedding gown personally
designed by Vera Wang or Carolina Herrera, or a ceremony
in a medieval European cathedral, but at least my marriage
lasted.”

“I think media tends to cater to the lowest common

denominator of readership or viewership.”
—FRAN DRESCHER
 Love-Life Archetypes

Celebrities’ love lives are not unique. As Drescher reminds

me, “Although celebrities lives are focused more in media
for the most part, pain, love, death, and loss are universal.”
Over and over again you see that celebrities have the same
types of relationships and relationship problems as we have,
but theirs are on a more spectacular and public scale. In fact
we can look at celebrities’ relationships as larger-than-life
archetypes of all relationships.
 In It for the Short Haul

Pamela Anderson is famous for short, spontaneous

marriages to entertainment industry bad boys—such as
Tommy Lee, whom she married after knowing him for ninety-
six hours, or Kid Rock whom she married and divorced soon
after, and then Rick Salomon, whom she reportedly divorced
two months after their wedding. Pammie is not alone; many
celebrities are famous for marrying impulsively and for short
durations.
Britney Spears had a fifty-five-hour marriage to her
childhood friend Jason Alexander, then married Kevin
Federline after knowing him for only three months. We have
accepted that Drew Barrymore just does not do lengthy
marriages and neither does Carmen Electra. She was
briefly married to Dennis Rodman after dating him for about
four months, then had a short-lived marriage to musician
Dave Navarro.
In celebrity land, quick, impulsive marriages have been
taking place for decades: In 1964 when Ethel Merman
announced her marriage to Ernest Borgnine—which lasted
only thirty-two days and is immortalized in her autobiography
with a blank page—she had tongues wagging all over the
country. Merman and Borgnine’s marriage epitomized the
image the public had, and still has, of celebrities: They are
impulsive, unrealistic, dramatic and behave differently than
normal people do.
Before you roll your eyes at the next ill-advised celebrity
quickie marriage, though, think about this: Turns out that we
aren’t too far behind.
Stacy Schneider, a former divorce attorney and the author
of He Had It Coming: How to Outsmart Your Husband and
Win Your Divorce , says that she saw quickie marriages in
her practice all the time, mostly among younger couples.
“The new generation of those getting married seem to end
up becoming ‘quickie marriages’ because we have no-fault
divorce, where you can sail through the divorce process. I
have seen so many marriages that last no longer than a
year; some of them came to me and they were still sending
out ‘thank you’ notes from the wedding.”

“I have seen so many marriages that last no longer

than a year; some of them . . . were still sending out
‘thank you’ notes from the wedding.”
—STACY SCHNEIDER, AUTHOR OF HE HAD IT COMING
 Another factor in the short-term-marriage trend is that the
stigma of being a divorcée is gone. Schneider says, “Being
divorced is nothing to be embarrassed about anymore. As a
matter of fact, in the dating world it can be a plus to be
divorced. You meet a guy and he doesn’t feel as though you
are desperate and sizing him up for marriage.”
She notes that many of the younger couples coming to her
for divorces after short marriages had known each other for
only a short time before their wedding—just like many of the
celebrity quickie-marriage offenders.
Ted Huston, professor of human ecology and psychology
at the University of Texas, spent fifteen years studying the
relationship between the length of time a couple spends
dating and their marital success. He found that, on average,
a happy and successful couple dates for two years and four
months before getting married. If you marry sooner than that,
your marriage probably won’t be well grounded, because the
reason you fell in love quickly is that you idealized your
partner, perhaps seeing him as the perfect Prince
Charming, rather than getting to know him in all his
complexity, both the positive and negative aspects.
On average, a happy and successful couple dates
for two years and four months before getting
married.
 The Serial Bride or Groom

With such a high divorce rate, having more than one

marriage in a lifetime is hardly unique—but for celebrities
it’s almost mandatory to have several marriages under their
belt before they reach for that AARP card. It all begins with
the obscure pre-fame marriage to a gas station owner’s son
or a waitress, then they trade up to other celebrities. In
addition, there are a few called-off engagements and a few
marriages to a string of glamorous people who are each
seemingly “the One.”

Pretty Reformed Woman

Celebrity relationships can show us that there is hope
for all those who tend to rush headlong into committed
relationships. Just look at Julia Roberts.
Short-haul star brides such as Anderson and Electra
come across as flashy and showy larger-than-life
women, so we aren’t that shocked by their rapid
turnover of marriages. Roberts, on the other hand,
surprised us. In the 1990s she was on the cover of
everything and was relentlessly pursued by the
paparazzi. And with her serial romances, she didn’t
disappoint. After a multitude of engagements and a
slew of very public relationships to high-profile men—
Dylan McDermott, Kiefer Sutherland, Liam Neeson,
Daniel Day-Lewis, Jason Patric, Benjamin Bratt, and
Matthew Perry—she finally married Lyle Lovett, after
knowing him for just three weeks. She divorced him a
year or so later. But as the new millennium approached,
she settled down with cameraman Danny Moder and
forged a relationship that her fans deemed worthy of her
Oscar-winning status.
Elizabeth Taylor certainly has not married other stars
exclusively. Who can forget the construction worker, Larry
Fortensky? But she has got to be the gold-standard celebrity
serial bride. Before she hit sixty, she had racked up a
phenomenal eight marriages. And she represents a subset
of the celebrity serial bride or groom—those who get
divorced and remarry the same spouse again, in her case
Richard Burton. Lana Turner had eight husbands and also
belonged to the “I married the same man twice” club—for
her it was Stephen Crane. Film producer, actor, and writer
Robert Evans has been married seven times (and was
rumored to have had a dalliance with Lana Turner, among
others). Zsa Zsa Gabor has had nine husbands.
Some of today’s stars are doing their bit to uphold this
grand celebrity tradition. Billy Bob Thornton has had five
wives, and Geena Davis five husbands. J Lo was on her
third husband by the tender age of thirty-four, plus let’s not
forget the whole “Bennifer” engagement interlude.
Billy Bob Thornton has had five wives, and Geena
Davis five husbands. J Lo was on her third
husband by the tender age of thirty-four.

In 1999 the Journal of Divorce and Remarriage showed

that people who remarry following a divorce have a greater
risk of a subsequent divorce than those marrying for the first
time. Meaning once you are on that train, you are likely to
ride those rails again and again. However, remarriage
seems to be better for kids than remaining a single parent
after a divorce. Not only does the second income help, but
kids from a home with a remarried parent academically
outperform students who live with one divorced parent.
What makes people remarry goes back to how they
learned to attach to others during early childhood. The
Journal of Divorce and Remarriage published another
study that found “multiple marriers are more likely to be
avoidantly attached,” that is, they are more likely to be
fiercely independent, show little distress at being alone, and
are in their element when they are off doing things on their
own. Someone like that sounds perfectly suited to a life of
fame and celebrity, so I guess it’s little wonder that
celebrities are so well-known for their staggering marriage
tallies.
 The Showmance

I constantly hear celebrities describe the cast and crew of

their TV show or film sets as “like a family.” They always say
that, “We are like family.” Well, it’s a weird incestuous one
when you start dating the guy playing your brother, and it
often happens that costars soon become romantically
linked. When you spend most of your day on a TV or movie
set, how could you not carry it over into your personal life,
especially if there’s a benefit to your career? Mr. and Mrs.
Smith became a much more intriguing film when rumors
began to fly that Brad and Angelina were real-life lovers
(rumors that she substantiated in 2008), especially since he
was still married to Jennifer Aniston. Brad and Angelina’s
bond turned out to be a serious one that was to endure long
after their movie—but other stars have come together for
career-boosting (and sometimes even rumored to be
contractual) “showmances.”
Don’t do it just because they do. Does constant
exposure to nightmare celebrity relationships lower our
own relationship standards? “The issue here is that
celebrities are treated in our society as modern-day
religious icons,” says psychologist James Houran,
Ph.D. “When we see successful and respected
celebrities engaged in disposable relationships, it
gives everyday people inherent permission, and even
justification, for following suit. The idea is, “If they do it,
then it must be okay for anyone to do it.” Resist falling
into this kind of thinking. Don’t look to Hollywood to
justify your romantic choices: That validation will be
hollow and unsatisfying.
The showmance is the mirage of a real relationship for the
benefit of the press, and it can take many forms. There are
the actors who hook up for a short period; that is, long
enough to promote a movie they both star in. There are the
stars who trade up: B-listers borrowing a little of their
partners’ A-list dazzle. And there is endless speculation that
a whole pantheon of gay male Hollywood stars still believe
it’s 1950 and need to marry a gorgeous woman, and maybe
even have babies, to keep getting those leading-man roles.
All these different showmances share one thing in common:
While the relationship remains mutually beneficial, the
couple stays together, but as soon as the front is no longer
necessary, the relationship fades away.
 At first you might think the showmance doesn’t exist in the
real world, but look at the trophy-wife phenomenon or any
other relationship people enter into simply for social status
or financial security—or even, to this day, to cover up
homosexuality or gender-identity issues. Celebrity
showmances meet their demise when they have performed
their PR function, and from this we can take a lesson for our
own lives: Relationships based not on genuine affection and
shared goals, but rather on bling, prestige, and make-
believe have no solid foundation. They’re simply not built to
last.
Celebrity showmances meet their demise when
they have performed their PR function.
 The Confirmed Bachelor

Stars such as Matthew McConaughey, Leonardo DiCaprio,

Orlando Bloom, and Justin Timberlake have spent their
peak celebrity years unmarried and seem to be in no hurry
to settle down. But earning the title of “confirmed bachelor”
comes down to more a state of mind than matrimony, for this
category also includes a number of stars who did at one
time walk down the aisle. Think of Colin Farrell, who was
married to the mother of his son for about four months.
George Clooney was married once, but he has publicly
sworn (much to many women’s great disappointment) that
he will never marry again nor have children.

Solid Star Couples

Hovering beneath the radar is a relatively small but
impressive bunch of celebrities who are in a lasting
relationship. You don’t hear much about their private
lives, because they keep them just that—private—and
they don’t do the stuff that gets your mug shot on every
celebrity gossip Web site. I do not dare to even whisper
the names of these couples, for fear that I will in some
way jinx them. But perhaps the lesson we can take from
them and apply to our own lives is this: They focus on
nurturing their relationships and families above all else,
and they value time with the ones they love over
constant fame and attention.
To some men in the real world, it may look as if these
bachelor stars have the perfect life. With their good looks,
charm, and status, they can date an infinite array of hot
actresses, songstresses, and supermodels. It’s like they’re
at a Chinese restaurant with the biggest lazy Susan
imaginable. “I’ve tried the lingerie model. Hmm, I think I’ll
have a nubile young actress—then again, that pop star with
the new number one hit looks tasty.”
Many a woman has been spurred on by an emotionally
unavailable, never-quite-ready-to-settle-down guy, thinking
she’ll be the one who finally breaks or tames him. But even if
by some miracle he happens to look like Clooney, pursuing
a man who can be committed only to bachelorhood usually
ends in heartbreak.
It seems sexy, mysterious, and attractively elusive when a
male celebrity stays single well into adulthood, but in
ordinary life it is problematic. In 2000, Iowa State University
published a paper that referred to the adult bachelors (and
bachelorettes) of the world as “gender transgressors,” in that
by staying single into adulthood they have defied what we
deem appropriate for gender identity. Society says that at a
certain age men and women should be paired off, period.
Anything that deviates is . . . well, deviant.
This is one area of human relationships where there is a
double standard: one rule for celebrities, another for us. It’s
okay for Mick Jagger to be unmarried in his sixties, but if
your child’s pediatrician is in his sixties and still unmarried, it
makes you uncomfortable. “What’s wrong with him?” you
think to yourself.
 December-May

One of the most oft-recurring and recognizable celebrity

relationship patterns is the older, established male star and
his lovely, young up-and-coming bride. But plenty of female
stars are now turning the tables, most notably Demi Moore
and Ashton Kutcher, and Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon.
There is a growing trend toward December-May
relationships among celebrities and the rest of society, too.
The more familiar May-December romances are not as
scandalous as the December-May ones. A woman coupled
with a man who is younger, much younger, flies in the face of
all we know about evolution and biology. According to the
rules of those sciences, it makes sense that a younger,
more fertile, attractive woman would seek an older, more
financially stable male to attend to her offspring’s needs—
which in nonpsychology speak means you get a rich older
guy to send your kids to college and buy them their first
BMW at sixteen.
According to the journal Current Anthropology , we need
to forget about evolution and biology when looking for an
explanation for these relationships. It isn’t a reproductive
strategy, it’s a social preference. A younger man is a status
symbol in some circles, just as the new bag from Balenciaga
or the latest Jimmy Choo boot might be. The increasing
number of December-May relationships is a direct result of
women’s ability to succeed at all levels of business, as they
take the mantles of CFOs, presidents, and captains of
industry once reserved for men. Younger boyfriends or
spouses are the spoils of those achievements.
Cut to the entertainment industry and the astronomical
salaries of actresses, female pop stars, and women who are
now running film studios. With money and success come
personal trainers, fabulous vacations when they can take
them, noninvasive surgical procedures such as Botox so
they look great for their younger beaus, and access to health
professionals and preventive medicine so they can keep
working at the pace of women half their age. The same way
that rich, powerful men always enjoyed the bonus of a young
hot starlet on their arm, older women can accessorize with a
younger model (literally and figuratively).
And December-May can be a recipe for a successful
pairing. A 2003 study conducted by AARP of over 3,500
singles revealed that 34 percent of all women over the age
of forty were happily dating younger men, and 35 percent
preferred it to dating older men. Go cougars!
 The Happily Unmarried

The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2001 that of the 72.5

million children under the age of eighteen, 3 percent (2.1
million) lived with their unmarried Tim Robbins and Susan
Sarandon-like parents. By 2006, an estimated 54 percent of
the adult population was unmarried, a figure that was up
dramatically over the past twenty years. It seems that in this
regard, celebrities are mirroring a trend already happening
in society. Our attitudes and lives have changed to the
degree that when we watched the reality show, Gene
Simmons Family Jewels, we weren’t at all shocked that he
and Shannon Tweed have been happily unmarried with
children for years. (The only shocking part was when
Simmons acquiesced to plastic surgery.)
Maintain a great friendship. I often wonder how good
a celebrity married couple’s friendship can be when the
two are working on films or on tour in different countries
for months at a time. The key to a solid foundation in
any healthy marriage is to have a strong bond as
friends above all else. Be glad that your significant other
is your best friend and you don’t have to share him or
her with the hot new young actress or actor as they
shoot a love scene in Paris while you stay home.
Australian scholar and writer dale spender (who doesn’t
use caps in her name . . . long story, Google it) has written
prolifically on the subject of marriage and parenting, and
offers this idea to explain why increasing numbers of
couples are remaining unmarried, even when they have
children: “Many women may not want to be wives, but most
eventually do want to be mothers.”
 Reality TV Marriages

One type of celebrity couple the tabloids have trouble

speculating about is the married celebrity couple with a
reality TV show. These couples want to show us everything.
It’s less a case of “Will you take this man . . .” and more a
case of TV producers rubbing their hands together and
saying, “This’ll make a great reality show.”
Inevitably the relationship ends soon after the ratings tank.
Who can forget Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey as the
Newlyweds ? Or Britney Spears and Kevin Federline in the
aptly named Chaotic, which lasted a whole five episodes?
Then there’s Hulk Hogan and his ex-wife Linda, Whitney
Houston and Bobby Brown, and Carmen Electra and Dave
Navarro. Even Liza Minnelli and David Gest reportedly had a
reality TV show in the works, but I guess the marriage didn’t
last long enough to get a camera crew together. And let’s
take a moment to remember those reality TV relationship
pioneers, the Bachelors and Bachelorettes, whose
relationships have mostly ended up on the scrapheap.
(Trista and Ryan Sutter, who not only managed to wed but
also start a family, are notable exceptions.)
Psychologist James Houran, Ph.D., is a relationship
expert, co-author of Celebrity Worshippers: Inside the
Minds of Stargazers, and a noted authority on celebrity
worship. He says that while the impact of reality TV
programming on celebrity relationships hasn’t really been
studied, celebrity couples live their lives as if they are in “a
daily reality TV show” anyway.
I interviewed Kevin Federline on my radio show on
Halloween 2006, when he came on to talk about the release
of his CD Playing with Fire. It was at a significant time in the
entertainer’s life, not long after Chaotic and just days before
his acrimonious breakup with Britney Spears. It seemed that
his attitude to the intrusion of the media into the couple’s life
had changed since he’d agreed to share his home movies
with the world in a reality TV show. It had certainly made him
aware of how much disruption media exposure can cause to
family life.
By this point, Spears had given birth to their second baby,
Jayden James, and Federline had had time to get used to
living in the media bubble that was his then-wife’s universe.
The stories in the media about the couple were getting so
outlandish that I wondered whether the two might have
started some of them as a joke. “We don’t do any of that,” he
replied. “It’s crazy. That’s how much attention the media
gives us. They make up all this stuff; we don’t have to do
anything.”
He went on to talk of his concerns about having the media
following his children’s lives. “It’s overwhelming and kind of a
curse, and as a father and a parent I really don’t like my
children being out there the way that they are, but at the
same time there’s nothing you can really do about it. [And]
you don’t want to make the fans feel like you are jaded; you
want to give them what they want. But I mean, it’s a fine line
when you are dealing with family and private life.”
It’s unlikely that a TV producer is going to call you
tomorrow and ask you and your family to star in a new reality
show. But this relationship archetype can still apply to your
life. There are couples whose relationships suffer because
there are too many eyes watching their every move, and they
receive too many brutally honest reviews of their
performance. There are new parents who need a bit of
support but instead have in-laws who watch and criticize
their every parenting choice. There are couples who have
friends and family who peer over their shoulders and try to
steer the relationship.
Be thankful you aren’t a celebrity. You and your
significant other do not have the paparazzi following
your every move; you do not live with the threat of your
TV show being canceled; you don’t wake in the morning
worried if today is your day for a tabloid scandal. Living
a normal life is a gift to a marriage. You get to define
your relationship, no one does it for you. Problems arise
for a celebrity couple when they don’t have enough real
couple time. “Without privacy and psychological space,
a couple has little chance to build a strong, loving, and
enduring couple identity,” says psychologist James
Houran. “That is, the couple no longer has that
relationship as a retreat or a sanctuary from business
and other pressures.” Make the most of your
noncelebrity status and find private time as a couple so
you can create the relationship that you both want.
While your small circle may judge you, the entire world
judges celebrities after seeing only the edited-down version
of their lives, which often includes only their darkest and
most embarrassing moments. The tragedy is when, through
celeb-reality television, we get to watch someone completely
deteriorate, such as Anna Nicole Smith, whose reality TV
show was a harbinger of things to come.

The Tragic Bride

Nobody knows the Anna Nicole Smith story better than
Rita Cosby, award-winning TV host and author of the
New York Times-bestselling book Blonde Ambition:
The Untold Story Behind Anna Nicole Smith’s Death.
Cosby says, “Anna Nicole Smith was always looking
for real love, acceptance, and certainly fame. She
desperately craved and thrived in the limelight, far
beyond being a Playboy cover girl.” Smith’s story is
incredibly tragic, from her rise to fame as a Playboy
and Guess model to her descent into substance abuse,
which eventually took her life at the age of thirty-nine.
“Her tireless battle to gain validation and acceptance
in a world surrounded by swirling media headlines also
caused her life to spiral downward, as she sought
comfort with countless prescription drugs to numb the
reality that had enveloped her life,” says Cosby.
“Although to the world she projected an air of star-like
confidence, she also had a needy and childlike spirit,
and was crumbling behind closed doors.”
Perhaps even more than her drug problem, she was
known for her relationships with men—perhaps another
way she sought security. She was married at the age of
seventeen to the father of her first child, Daniel; the
couple separated within two years. Just as her career
was beginning to take off, she met billionaire J. Howard
Marshall II, a customer at a strip club where she was
performing. He was eighty-nine and she merely twenty-
six. After the couple married, Smith would never escape
the claim that she was a gold digger, though she would
deny it to the end. That pairing produced the bizarre
and unforgettable image of Smith at Marshall’s funeral,
all glammed up and wearing her wedding dress.
Her relationships continued to get even stranger, with
her ceremonial but not legally binding wedding to her
lawyer Howard K. Stern shortly after the birth of her
second child (fathered by another man) and the
methadone-related death of her son, Daniel.
How did Anna Nicole seemingly lose control of her
own life? Cosby cautions, “Celebrities must remember
fame is fleeting. The same media that builds you up will
also often be there to report your shortcomings,
especially when you have entered the voracious tabloid
world.”
Only Smith would ever know the real reasons behind
her marriages and liaisons with men, but toward the
end it seemed that her complicated relationships
reflected her internal chaos, which the constant media
attention only provoked and intensified.
 Can Two Egos Share One Relationship?

The future of our society can look quite grim when you view it
through the prism of celebrity relationship disasters. It may
appear that no one respects marriage or committed
relationships anymore. But don’t despair. While the state of
celebrity relationships in some ways mirrors changes in
society as a whole, we must not forget that celebrity couples
have some unique characteristics that add to their risk of
relationship failure.
Recent research into celebrity narcissism reveals
something profound that explains not only their relationship
challenges but some of their diva-like behavior as well.
On ABC’s 20/20, Dr. Robert Millman of Cornell’s Weill
Medical College, explained a psychological syndrome he
was the first to identify, called “acquired situational
narcissism.” Narcissism—a personality disorder
characterized by having little empathy for others and a
grandiose sense of importance—was traditionally thought to
begin only in childhood. That was until Millman began seeing
patients who had acquired it later in life, after they had
become enormously successful.
Acquired situational narcissism affects not only famous
entertainers but also politicians, billionaires, renowned
authors—anyone who has gained a degree of success,
fame, or notoriety. When a person reaches the status of a
celebrity, according to Millman, it can lead to narcissism and
behavior that borders on unspeakable, antisocial, and
sometimes angry. On 20/20, ABC used the example of Alec
Baldwin’s abusive cell phone tirade to his young daughter in
2007. Millman told ABC that a narcissistic celebrity’s
outrageous sense of entitlement can be accompanied by
anger: “It’s this huge rage that you’re not as great as you
could be, or you’re not being perceived as great as you
could be.”
If you think you are better than everyone else (including
your partner), regularly take advantage of others, need to be
admired at all times, and lack empathy, how can you expect
to have good relationships? Clearly if celebrities succumb to
acquired situational narcissism, they will struggle to have
successful and healthy relationships.
And it’s not only acquired narcissism that afflicts
celebrities and dooms many of their relationships. Dr. Drew
Pinsky and his colleague Mark Young have also noted that a
career in the public eye attracts those who were already
higher in the trait of narcissism.
 A career in the spotlight is also often chosen by those with
personalities high in impulsivity, which accounts for their
ability to drop everything and fly to a location half way around
the world at a moment’s notice. Impulsivity can be beneficial
for stars’ careers—for their relationships, not so much.

“Many celebrities have the resources to indulge their

impulses with little to no regard for negative
consequences.”
—PSYCHOLOGIST JAMES HOURAN, PH.D.

Psychologist James Houran, Ph.D., has studied star

couples and their likelihood of relationship success and
says, “It’s important to note that celebrities can impulsively
enter or impulsively leave relationships.
“Many celebrities have the resources to indulge their
impulses with little to no regard for negative consequences.
Money and insulation by an entourage can minimize
negative effects that often follow from impulsive decisions
made by everyday people. In fact, good PR agents can turn
impulsive acts into positive buzz for a celebrity.”

“Sex and money are the two leading causes of

relationship breakups.”
—PSYCHOLOGIST JAMES HOURAN, PH.D.
 For actors, another key issue that endangers their
relationships is performing in romantic scenes. “Constantly
filming love scenes does not really help relieve feelings of
jealously that partners may have. All of these factors strongly
work to create or destroy celebrity relationships,” says
Houran. The filming of sex scenes causes “worries about
fidelity”—and in the case of Aniston and Pitt, for instance,
there was indeed cause for worry while Pitt was filming Mr.
and Mrs. Smith.
If two stars are of equal popularity, “unconscious feelings
of competition and resentment” can arise in their
relationship, according to Houran. He goes on to say that
“sex and money are the two leading causes of relationship
breakups for the general public as they are tied to control
and power. But for celebrities, they offer freedom to pursue
impulsive fantasies or other indulgences that can undermine
a relationship.”

Addicted to Love
There is something else that can contribute to
celebrities making relationship mistakes. And it’s
something we can all relate to: a passion for what they
do, a love of their craft.
The passion of falling in love and the passion of
taking on a new film role trigger the brain in the same
way. (And so too, interestingly enough, does substance
abuse and other addictive behaviors.) So, Robert
Palmer wasn’t too far off when he sang “Addicted to
Love.”
It works like this: When the human brain experiences
this kind of pleasure, the levels of the hormones
dopamine, adrenaline, and serotonin increase. When
those hormones kick in, you can’t think logically. That’s
why you are better off waiting until that first flush has
waned to assess your partner in a realistic way rather
than in an impulsive way.
When those chemicals are raging and you get
dumped, you feel incredibly devastated. It’s like being
addicted to drugs and then suddenly being forced to go
cold turkey. But a celebrity doesn’t have to stay off her
drug for too long: She just needs to show up at the
Beverly Wilshire Hotel and I’m sure some young
Hollywood hunk licking his wounds will be there.
If not, she can call her publicist and arrange an
introduction . . . done! Stars also have the opportunity to
be cast in a new film or involved in a new project—
something new to get those passion triggers in their
brains flowing again. While the rest of us have only Ben
and Jerry to comfort us.
 CHAPTER ELEVEN

Pumps, Humps, and Baby Bumps

All women do have a different sense of sexuality, or sense of fun,

or sense of like what’s sexy or cool or tough . . .
ANGELINA JOLIE, IN ESQUIRE MAGAZINE, FEBRUARY 2000

I was on the Tyra Banks Show. Maybe you saw it. I was
there to tell Tyra and her audience how to “Decode Their
Man.” Decoding men is a pastime of mine; I started young.
When I was in the fifth grade, I knew Mark Dexter liked me
when he poured juice on the floor and told everyone that I
peed. It wasn’t until that summer when I hit him across the
face with a hockey stick that I abruptly ended our budding
romance. He asked me out again in high school, so I knew I
was right on target.
But decoding men isn’t all that hard if you think about it—
what’s there to decode? Men are simple creatures, and I
didn’t need all of the research that I brought with me to the
Tyra show to prove my point. I just wanted to share what the
science had to say with an audience who, as it turned out,
was looking for uncomplicated answers. Men are indeed
uncomplicated, so they weren’t far off. I reminded them of
things they already knew and then shed some light on a few
mysteries. Tyra never did a follow-up, a part two—“How to
Decode Your Woman”—because nobody has ever been
able to. Women are hard to decode, and celebrity women
are virtually impossible.
Famous men, however, are just as straightforward as
regular men, so their image makers don’t face the same
challenges as those of female stars. Male celebrities don’t
make sex tapes, or if they do, we just don’t care. That’s
because men having sex isn’t scandalous. Scantily clad men
are not provocative—not to straight women, anyway. Even
David Beckham’s oversize (some say doctored) package in
that Armani underwear ad only enhanced his image. He
didn’t seem slutty, sad, pathetic, or objectified. In fact
perhaps the main reason the Beckham ads were so
noticeable was simply the rarity of seeing a male celebrity in
such an overtly sexual pose. If it had been a sexy female
celebrity reclining in her underwear—maybe with, gasp,
padding to highlight her cleavage—the ads would have
created barely a ripple.
This may be why people went nuts when the
unconventional Maggie Gyllenhaal posed in teddies and
garters for Agent Provocateur. It wasn’t because she was so
provocative, but because she wasn’t. She was criticized for
being unsexy, too old, and an acquired taste, as opposed to
previous models for the lingerie line such as Kate Moss and
burlesque star Dita von Teese, who were universally
accepted as sexy, young, or voluptuous. Gyllenhaal is
nonthreatening like a regular woman and doesn’t look like a
supermodel or a Hollywood starlet; she looked the way a
plain Jane would look in handcuffs and a garter.
The ads were designed to appeal to the thirtysomething
married woman, not sixteen-year-olds who are searching for
a sexual identity. Most teen girls have no idea who
Gyllenhaal is, unlike, say, Jessica Simpson or Fergie, two
celebrities who also appear in highly sexualized ads. I for
one was glad to see Gyllenhaal breaking the stereotype of
the lingerie model and representing ordinary women’s
sexuality, because sexy ads featuring young girls’ celebrity
idols drive me bonkers. My good friend’s thirteen-year-old
daughter Caitlin has them plastered all over her bedroom
wall. I don’t get it, and it does concern me that she could be
so heavily influenced by ads for products suitable not for
young teens but for adults.
 Hypersex Is the New Cybersex

Female athletes who, at their core, are better images of

female achievement and beauty for younger teens to admire
than, say, Nicole Richie, are overwhelmingly shown in the
same highly sexualized poses reserved for a Mark Jacobs
ad. Magazines don’t make the distinction; it’s not their job.
We as parents or simply as consumers have to do it.
 Not That Innocent

I have never told anybody this before, but I have an odd

habit. Before I sit down to read a fashion magazine, I have to
rip out all of the ads so that I can focus on the content. It’s an
annoying sound on airplanes and subways and even more
annoying when I do it on the bike at the gym . . . rip, rip, rip.
But the ads take away my enjoyment of salivating over the
latest Chloé bag and then seething over its price tag. I want
to lose myself in an article about how to get eye makeup and
a blowout to last longer without being disturbed by those
obnoxious perfume ads that stink up my day. Yet young
Caitlin can’t get enough, despite the fact that the ads are
way too sexy and highly inappropriate for her age group.
This is indeed a problem, and here’s why . . .

Cognitive and emotional consequences. Highly

sexualized images of “perfect” women undermine a girl’s
comfort with her own body. Since we live in a world where
body image and self-image are intertwined, this leads to
emotional and self-image problems. (As a side note,
images of sexed-up, young female celebrities might not be
the worst offender in undermining girls’ body image. That
dubious distinction goes to ads that focus exclusively on one
body part, as though women are chicken: Here’s a perfect
wing, thigh, or breast . . .)

Mental and physical health. Kimberly Lawrence Kol,

Psy.D., clinical psychologist and eating disorder specialist,
links exposure to over-sexualized images with three of the
most common mental health problems diagnosed in girls:
eating disorders and depression, which leads to the third,
low self-esteem.

Sexual development. In many teenage circles the boys

have all the power. They decide who is popular and who is
not based on who they are attracted to and who they aren’t.
These are important years for sexual-identity development,
and if being sexy and looking sexy is what they value, there’s
trouble brewing. Images of sexy and provocative young
female celebrities have the potential to reinforce that value
system.

Parents are even more concerned about preteen, or

“tween,” girls. They worry that the sexy images they see of
celebrities affect their development, and psychologists
agree that the sexualization of young girls is a key area in
which parents need to be diligent. In response to public
concern, the American Psychological Association (APA) put
together a task force of renowned psychologists to address
the issue. They defined sexualization as the state where a
person is portrayed as merely a sexual object, where the
person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or
behavior.

“Such ads often take a star popular with teens and

preteens and present her in highly sexualized poses.”
—AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

In their report they identified plenty of evidence of the

sexualization of young girls, including such things as thong
underwear with the words EYE CANDY printed on them
being marketed to girls as young as seven. They cite
advertising campaigns that parents have a right to be
offended by because of the negative impact they may have
on young girls: the ads that Christina Aguilera did for
Skechers where she played two roles, one naughty and one
nice; the Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue; and the Paris
Hilton Carl’s Jr. hamburger ads. “Such ads often take a star
popular with teens and preteens and present her in highly
sexualized poses,” reads the APA’s report. “Some explicitly
play up innocence as sexy, as in one of the Skechers
‘naughty and nice’ ads that featured Aguilera dressed as a
schoolgirl in pigtails, with her shirt unbuttoned, licking a
lollipop.”
The APA’s conclusion? They say that “the proliferation of
sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising,
merchandising, and media is harming girls’ self-image and
healthy development.”
Some moms may feel that their daughter’s choice of sexy
adult fashions is merely “self-expression.” One mom told me
that “clothing is the healthiest way for my daughter to
express herself.” The APA disagrees: “It is of concern when
girls at increasingly younger ages are invited to try on and
wear teen clothes designed to highlight female sexuality.”
What those clothes do is validate young girls as sexual
beings. A word for you parents out there: Your daughter is so
much more. Her self-worth should be based on more than
her looks, and you need to show her that her value lies in
who she is, her integrity, her compassion, her character, and
her optimism for her own future. It should not be based on
the size of her breasts. The tween ages are incredibly
important years; this is when identity development happens,
according to many theories, so you as a parent need to be
vigilant. You may not have control over what is presented in
the media, but you certainly do have control over what your
child wears and reads.
Dr. Lawrence Kol says, “Parents need to actively help
their kid understand what they’re consuming.” She suggests
parents have a conversation with their children regarding
images such as those the APA refers to,—ads in
magazines that are excessively provocative—and say, “I
won’t buy that fashion magazine for you, but if you do read
one, pay attention to how badly you feel about yourself after
you read it.”
 TMI

In addition to the messages sexy celebrity advertisements

send to young girls, parents also worry about the overall
hypersexual images of their daughters’ favorite celebrities.
This is a new phenomenon. I don’t think my parents were
concerned because Marcia Brady wore a skirt above her
knee. After all, the rest of the dress fit her like a nun’s habit,
covering her arms down to the knuckles and her neck and
chest up to the chin.
Consume media with care. Kimberly Lawrence Kol,
Psy.D., reminds parents to help their children learn how
to consume the media. “If I am a kid and I don’t know
that I’m being sold things 100 percent of the time, then
I’m gonna buy into it unless I have a parent who says,
‘Hey you’re being sold something.’” Advertising and
marketing are sophisticated, powerful, and abundant.
Since kids are most vulnerable, you need to help them
navigate the media.
Since time immemorial little girls have imitated grown-ups
—maybe not so bad when it meant putting on Mom’s shoes,
accessorizing with a feather boa and some smudged
lipstick, and clomping all around the house. But what if it
means emulating a barely clad, gyrating and grinding,
moaning and ahhing, possibly pantiless starlet? Kids love
their favorite stars with a kind of utter and total devotion that
it’s easy to forget when you’re an adult. In 2007 I was on a
show called the Morning Show with Mike and Juliet for my
local Fox Channel with a woman named Kathleen Deveny, a
Newsweek writer whose six-year-old daughter “loves, loves,
loves” Lindsay Lohan. In a piece she wrote for the
magazine, she asked a question on many parents’ minds:
“Are we raising a generation of ‘prosti-tots’?” When a
picture of Lohan taking pole-dancing classes appeared in
the newspaper, she was at a loss for words when her
daughter said, “That’s Lindsay Lohan. . . . What’s she
doing?” A poll conducted by Newsweek around the same
time found that 77 percent of Americans believed that
Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan had too
much influence on young girls.
In the past we didn’t have such scantily clad lead
characters on TV shows, getting younger and younger all the
time. We didn’t have pubescent ex-Mousketeers singing
about what they’d like to have done to them by their man,
starlets with a personal style combining schoolgirl and pro,
and music video choreography straight out of a lap-dancing
club. We didn’t have Bratz.
Seventy-seven percent of Americans believed that
Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan
had too much influence on young girls.

Just one generation ago children grew up watching Little

House on the Prairie and the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Mary
was certainly attractive, but not gorgeous and sexy in the
way that she would be expected to be now. With the advent
of hits such as Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Friends, and
Dawson’s Creek, and all of that Jennifer beauty (Aniston,
Lopez, Garner, Love Hewitt, and Connelly), TV started to
look like much more of a fashion show. Teen and tween hits
such as The O.C., Gossip Girl, and The Hills all look pretty
much like the producers swung by a top modeling agency
and scooped up whichever super-sexy young things
happened to be hanging around the reception desk waiting
to be sent on a go-see.
If you are concerned that your daughter may be finding out
too much about sex at too young an age and you want to try
and stop that train from barreling down on her, well then,
good luck. That would mean cutting her off from the deluge
of celebrity personal sexual information in magazines and on
the Internet and from TV completely. We are in the age of
TMI as SOP (Too Much Information as Standard Operating
Procedure).
Kids are watching a record number of hours of television;
study after study reveals that they spend more time with the
TV than any other medium and TV has been referred to as
the “super-peer.” In 2004, researchers at Michigan State
University had a group of fifth to eighth graders log how
much TV they watched regularly (specifically shows aimed at
them) and how much sexual content they saw. They found
that 60 percent of the programs watched by this group of
eleven- to fifteen-year-olds had high sexual content, ranging
from passionate kissing to intercourse.
Another study found that sometimes TV shows with sexual
content open the lines of communication, but to be helpful,
they have to be age appropriate. That study, published in the
journal Pediatrics, showed that after an episode of Friends
that addressed the issue of condom failure, the twelve- to
seventeen-year-old children in the study had almost a 20
percent increase in condom awareness and were more
likely to ask their parents about the efficacy of condoms.
Some parents embraced it as a chance to open a
discussion; for others it elicited fear that now their kids
would want to go have sex. I have great news for those
parents: Studies show that the opposite is true. If a child is
able to talk to their parents about sex—at any age—and if
they are armed with knowledge, they are less likely to have
intercourse as a young teenager.
Put your preconceptions aside. This is a whole
different generation, so if you want to talk to a young
person about sex in any real way, you have to put aside
all that you knew before. These kids are growing up
being told by the media that oral sex is not sex, and they
have had sexual images thrown at them since they
could walk. So drop any old-fashioned ideas about sex
education you might have and follow these steps: (1)
Start early. (2) Use the real names for body parts. (3)
Bring up the topic—don’t wait for them to. (4) Talk
beyond “birds and bees,” meaning let them know that
real sexual relationships are about love, caring, and
emotion. The same applies for opening up a discussion
about gay men and lesbians, if your child has questions.
Perhaps Jamie Lynn Spears missed that conversation
with her mother. When the sixteen-year-old star of
Nickelodeon’s Zoey 101 announced that she was pregnant
in 2007, her face was plastered across the cover of every
celebrity weekly. Then when she announced that she would
accept $1 million from a tabloid for the exclusive photos of
her baby, she was talked about incessantly everywhere. This
was not an issue exclusively affecting twelve- to seventeen-
year-olds, because Jamie Lynn’s fans were not just teens.
They were seven, they were ten—they were young, young
children.
So now you have to be prepared to have a conversation
with your eight-year-old about sex? Then, do you have to
explain that becoming pregnant at sixteen doesn’t win
everyone a million dollar consolation prize? Some said it
was an opportunity to have the conversation with your kids;
others said it wasn’t age appropriate and blamed
Nickelodeon for not having a clause in her contract to
preserve her churchgoing schoolgirl image.
I, and many of my talking head cohorts of course, were
called to discuss this on Showbiz Tonight and other
entertainment news shows. That wasn’t surprising, because
it was indeed entertainment news. What was surprising was
that I was also called in to discuss the young Spears girl on
Fox News’s Your World with Neil Cavuto . Cavuto did ask
me sarcastically why the Western world had been brought to
its knees by this non-news story. (Oh, if only he had a
national television show to air his viewpoint.) But it was
news, and here’s what the news bulletin should have been:
“This just in, Social Learning Theory at work, you may need
to actually lock up your daughters.”
When in doubt, Dr. Judy it! One of the women I
admire most is clinical psychologist Judy Kuriansky,
Ph.D., who gives great advice for having the
sex/pregnancy talk with your kids, especially after a
beloved young starlet comes out and says, “Hey, I’m
pregnant.” Kuriansky says that parents are afraid of this
conversation, because either they don’t know what to
say or their own background makes them feel like a
hypocrite. Once on CNN she said, “Don’t take the
ostrich approach. Kids will be talking about this in
school and with other kids, so ask them what they have
heard and what they already know.” Let’s face it, you
don’t want your twelve-year-old getting sex advice from
other twelve-year-olds, right?
Social Learning Theory is one of the most significant
ideas to come along in the last forty years. Its leading
proponent, psychologist Albert Bandura, proved that we
learn by observing the actions of others. In one of his most
well-known experiments, different groups of children were
given a “Bobo Doll,” an inflatable toy a few feet tall that
bounces right back up if you hit it. They’d never seen the toy
before and didn’t know how to use it. Some groups of
children were shown an adult hitting the doll violently. And
just as predicted, when those children took their turn with
poor Bobo, they were far more likely than the other kids to hit
him violently. The children who treated Bobo violently were
behaving in a way they felt was expected of them; they were
behaving the way an adult had showed them they should
behave.
Social Learning Theory applies not only to violent
behavior. The next time you find your ten-year-old admiring
pictures of a celebrity that you deem a deplorable and
harmful role model, think of that Bobo Doll and what he
signifies: Kids model their behavior on adults. This is
another good reason why us adults have to remember that
we need to keep a watchful eye on the media and
entertainment young children are consuming—and be
mindful of our own behavior, too.
Fight early hypersexualization. It’s not all in your
head: There is a difference between celebrity and
media images girls see now and what you were
exposed to as a child. Highly sexualized images of
younger and younger women are becoming the norm.
It’s hard to resist the desperate pleas of a fashion-
conscious tween begging for the latest outfits or for
makeup, jewelry, shoes, handbags—oh, the list goes on
and on of what they “need, like, really, really need,
Mom”—but don’t forget that you’re the one with the
pocketbook. You’re the one who has the final say on
whether an outfit is age appropriate. You’re also the
one who has the final say on what your children watch
and read. You can express your feelings with your wallet
— b y closing it and not buying products that are
marketed inappropriately. Also, don’t forget,
communication—talking honestly to your kids about
what they see and hear—is also very important.
 Entertaining Gays

The celebrity influence on attitudes to sex extends beyond

the link with the hypersexualizing of girls today. The TV
shows, movies, music, and celebrity news we absorb help
inform all our views—adults included—on the whole range of
human sexuality.
Actors, musicians, entertainers, artists, and writers have
long pushed the boundaries of what we consider tasteful,
moral, and acceptable. They both ride and help swell the
tides of social change—and that includes our changing
attitudes toward sex.
One of the clearest examples I can think of is in relation to
views on homosexuality.
There’s a famous scene in Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach
Memoirs where Aunt Blanche whispers the word cancer, as
though if you say it out loud it may hear you; as though the
word is verboten, not something you say aloud in polite
company. People used to feel that way with the word gay.
Some still do, but their numbers are shrinking. Words such
as gay, homosexual, and lesbian are now heard all the time
in films, on TV, and in the world of celebrity culture. This is a
good thing. Words that used to shock many and anger some
have become no big deal.
Someone who doesn’t know any lesbians has
Rosie O’Donnell, Melissa Etheridge, and Ellen
DeGeneres as great examples.

The best way to overcome any prejudice, be it religious,

ethnic, or sexual, is to have personal experience with
someone who is of a different religion, culture, or sexuality. In
the absence of someone in your day-to-day life, you have
celebrities. Psychologists call this kind of connection “media
contact,” and when it comes to breaking down prejudice it
can be as effective as real, personal contact. Someone who
doesn’t know any lesbians has Rosie O’Donnell, Melissa
Etheridge, and Ellen DeGeneres as great examples.
Research shows that media contact does help bridge the
gap between gay and straight people, reducing the
likelihood of homophobia.
Will and Grace used humor to break the ice with viewers
who might have never directly experienced someone who
was gay. If it weren’t for shows such as Will and Grace that
included gay characters who were more than just flamboyant
queens sashaying their way through the sale racks at
Barney’s, perhaps we wouldn’t have had the success of
shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Six Feet
Under, Brothers and Sisters, and myriad other TV shows
featuring “out” characters.
It’s a two-way street. The fact that stars as big as
DeGeneres and O’Donnell have publicly donned the
moniker lesbian not only softens public attitudes, it also
reflects how public attitudes are softening. Jean Twenge of
the University of San Diego and her colleagues say that this
generation is much more tolerant of what used to be called
an “alternative lifestyle.” A study out of the Chicago School of
Professional Psychology confirms this idea, saying, “Culture
and society at large have become more accepting of the
gay community, . . . The number of openly gay youths is
unprecedented, and they are coming out at younger ages
than ever before.”
When Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary came out to her high-
profile neo-con dad, it marked a turning point. In the past,
lesbianism was barely recognized by society, but when it
was, “it was considered a perversion and generally
regarded as synonymous with depravity,” says Martha Gever
in her book Entertaining Lesbians: Celebrity, Sexuality and
Self Invention. That meant that lesbian women in the public
eye were hardly about to admit to their sexual preference.
The situation changed during the late twentieth century when
a phenomenon was born that Gever has termed “lesbian
celebrity.”
We have become accustomed in recent years to female
celebrities coming out, but for male stars it’s one thing to
portray a gay character and quite another to reveal they are
homosexual in real life. Rumors have circulated for years
about certain film actors and their sexual proclivities, and to
a degree it is still taboo for males to be out in Hollywood. But
this has more to do with sexism than it does with celebrity.
For most of human history, female sexuality was a non-
issue, according to Colin Spencer, who wrote
Homosexuality: A History . The reason? In a male-
dominated society, nobody cared what women did.
Lesbianism mostly went under the radar, partly from a belief
that no penetration equaled no sex, but mostly due to the
“Who cares what women do?” thing. This may be why it’s
okay for women to come out in Hollywood but not okay for
men: Because Hollywood is still extremely male dominated.
Rumors have circulated for years about certain
film actors and their sexual proclivities, and to a
degree it is still taboo for males to be out in
Hollywood.

Just look at any epic film made over the last ten years.
Chances are, anywhere from five to eight of the lead
characters are male, whereas only one or two are female.
The Oceans Eleven series is a great example. (Not that I’m
implying George Clooney, Brad Pitt, or Matt Damon are gay,
although even if they were, I would drool over any one of
them still.) Need more proof of the gender inequality in
Hollywood? In 2007, Reese Witherspoon was crowned the
highest-paid actress in Hollywood, garnering $15 million to
$20 million per film. Which sounds great, until you learn that
Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise were usually making about $30
million a film . . . oh, plus a share of the movie’s box office
profits, according to Michelle Grabicki of the Hollywood
Reporter. Johnny Depp earned $92 million in one year,
mostly thanks to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
You’re probably saying, “What about Oprah? Her salary has
been reported at $260 million a year.” But remember, we
are talking about actors who rely solely on their acting for
their income. Not folks who have their own network and
magazines.
 Bump Watch America

The late twentieth century was a time of sexual revolutions

for women. You might immediately think of the pill, Roe v.
Wade, the freedom to shack up without getting married—but
on newsstands and TV screens all across the country
another, perhaps quieter but no less significant, revolution in
female sexuality has been unfolding. Let me introduce you to
a little phenomenon that has been referred to as “bump
watch.”
Nowhere in our culture has nudity become more passé
than in the world of celebrity, especially in the past ten years
or so. If you haven’t posed nude for Playboy, a tabloid hasn’t
caught you without undergarments, or you have not been
photographed at a red carpet event without at least one
exposed nipple, then you aren’t anyone—or anyone who
matters. Even celebrity unborn children get their moment of
fame. It has become a celebrity mom-to-be prerequisite to
be photographed full-frontal pregnancy and to sell to the
highest bidder the exclusive photos of the as-yet-unborn
fetus the minute air hits its lungs.
But let me rewind for a moment. The idea of women
baring their flesh on the screen was once so scandalous that
Barbara Eden’s exposed navel in the mid-1960s in I Dream
of Jeannie shocked many viewers. TV and film producers
were coy not only about female sexuality but also its frequent
consequence: pregnancy. So imagine the ruckus in 1953
when Lucille Ball forced CBS executives to write her real-life
pregnancy into the second season of her show. So sensitive
was the topic that “this television first was monitored
carefully by a trio of clergy who oversaw each script,”
according to an article by the Museum of Broadcast
Communication. The writers had to substitute the word
expectant for the earthier pregnant. But as it turns out, the
public was ready for it. The seven-episode arc was as
riveting as it was controversial, earning the show record-
setting ratings, with “more viewers tuning in to witness the
fictional Lucy Ricardo give birth than had seen Eisenhower’s
inauguration.”
It has become a celebrity mom-to-be prerequisite
to be photographed full-frontal pregnancy.
 Cut to November 2007 when Marie Claire published
some unremarkable and non-newsworthy photographs of a
very naked and very pregnant Christina Aguilera . . . ho hum,
it was so 1991. That’s when the now infamous Annie
Leibovitz photograph of a pregnant Demi Moore graced the
cover of Vanity Fair, stirring up a great deal of trouble. Many
stores refused to sell the magazine, and many of the ones
that did kept it in a brown paper bag as if it were a copy of
Jugs. Leibovitz’s intention was to portray the star with an
antiglitz, antiglamour, anti-Hollywood image—as a real
woman, strong and powerful. Ironic when you consider how
Hollywood it has become to be photographed pregnant.
Fortunately nudity in the everyday world still has shock
value and is considered objectionable. Humor columnist
Mike Nichols (not the director) describes it this way: “Take
off all your clothes and walk down the street waving a
machete and firing an Uzi, and terrified citizens will phone
the police and report, ‘There’s a naked person outside!’” Yet
for a celebrity, being photographed naked and/or pregnant
is de rigueur, as if their datebook reads: breakfast with
director, script read-through, be photographed with
exposed belly, arrive at red carpet by 6.
Our growing acceptance of celebrity pregnancy is
mirrored by pregnant stars gradually exposing more and
more of themselves, both emotionally and physically. Since
the notorious Moore picture, Denise Richards, Gwen
Stefani, Gwyneth Paltrow, Courtney Cox, and Reese
Witherspoon have all been photographed proudly with their
bellies exposed to the camera instead of hiding them behind
a tote or newspaper. Some were wearing cute belly shirts,
others high-end maternity wear, but none of them were
hiding the fact that she was with child.
While the naked, styled, professionally coiffed, and made-
up pregnant star sprawled across the pages of a magazine
has clearly made a conscious choice to appear that way,
you may be surprised to learn that even the casual paparazzi
shots of celebrities blooming with the glow of pregnancy are
sometimes no accident either. Allison Corneau of
Usmagazine.com explains that some of it is very calculated.
“When a celeb like Sarah Jessica Parker is photographed
everywhere—pregnant or otherwise—one has to remember
that SJP is pushing her clothing line, Bitten, and any other
projects she is working on. Just as ubiquitous is Jennifer
Lopez, who wants you to buy her fragrances, her music, and
her Sweetface clothing. There are indeed lots of avenues for
stars to be exposed and they realize that each time they are
spotted, it could signify financial gain.”
You may be offended by the incessant “bump watch” of
celebrity weeklies as they tail Angelina Jolie or Jennifer
Lopez to the grocery store. On the other hand, you may feel
that women are empowered by their effervescent glow when
they are with child and should be celebrated. Either way,
somewhere in the early part of the decade it became a
national pastime to look for the baby bump of your favorite
star; it’s a sort of the Where’s Waldo? approach to
motherhood.
The iconic status of celebrity pregnancy and the
eagerness of some stars to publicize the result of a night of
passion feed into a larger cultural debate over what it means
to be a mother in America. Perceptions of motherhood are
in a state of flux. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the
number of stay-at-home moms in 2005 was 5.6 million, up
from 4.4 million a decade earlier. The Census also reported
that 55 percent of mothers with infant children continued to
stay in the labor force, down from a record high of 59
percent in 1998. The number of single mothers living with
children younger than eighteen was 10.4 million, up from 3.4
million in 1970. With a little over 80.5 million mothers
nationwide, what is motherhood in America? That definition
is really up to you.
In her article “The Mixed Messages of Motherhood,” Joy
Rice of the University of Wisconsin says, “Although
motherhood is shared by many women, it is difficult to make
accurate generalizations about their experiences. In
addition, no woman resembles the romanticized notion of
the ideal mother.” We have the benefit of endless
information about prenatal care, abstinence, birth control,
and pregnancy, and we have a level of control over our
educations, careers, and finances that women of earlier
generations could only fantasize about. That all gives us the
power to define motherhood any way we want to, as
individuals. It is unfathomable to us today that in 1905
Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech in which he said “. . . the
primary duty of the husband is to be the home-maker, the
breadwinner for his wife and children, and . . . the primary
duty of the woman is to be the helpmate, the housewife, and
mother.” Yet we have also outgrown pioneering feminist
Betty Friedan’s idea that a housewife is a “parasite.”
Celebrities break barriers publicly that we have
already broken privately.
 At the Vanguard

Celebrity culture not only influences our culture, it reflects our

culture. That means that while we need to be mindful of the
sexualized images young girls see and need to monitor who
their celebrity idols are, we need to be just as focused on all
the other aspects of girls’ lives. Celebrities are riding the
crest of the wave of change, so when we are troubled by
what we see in the media, it means we need to look deeper
for the causes.
Fortunately, there are some signs coming from the world
of entertainment and celebrity that we should celebrate—
signs of changing attitudes that indicate more freedom to
express our individual sexuality. Gay men and women are
increasingly visible and accepted on our TV and movie
screens, just as they are in daily life. And perceptions are
changing of mothers, too.
What we see in the images of pregnant celebrities are
women expressing an emerging identity in which
motherhood no longer means giving up your sexuality, in
which women can combine family and career, and in which
choosing to have children doesn’t mean losing your place in
the world. Pregnancy and the right to feel and look sexy are
no longer mutually exclusive. Celebrities break barriers
publicly that we have already broken privately. They take to
the public stage that which is already in motion in the
American vanguard; they are the town criers of the authentic
experience of our own lives. We do it, they shout about it.
 In Conclusion

I used to work as an entertainment reporter for a radio prep

service that provided content for radio shows around the
country that did not have access to big-name celebrities. I
would go to press junkets for films or round-table interviews
in hotel rooms, where I and five or six other journalists would
literally sit at a round table taking turns asking the celebrity
questions. Then I’d file entertainment news reports and
sound bites from the interview that radio stations could use
on air. At the same time, I was also writing for a magazine,
again covering entertainment news but for a much hipper,
younger audience. So in one week I would interview an actor
who had been around for a long time and a new young
upstart who was said to be the next big thing.
It gave me firsthand experience with the Machine. One
week I was interviewing David Ogden Stiers, who played
Charles Emerson Winchester III on the hit TV show
M*A*S*H, and comedienne Janeane Garofalo, whose
career was on the rise at the time. I called to set up a time to
speak with Stiers and was surprised when he answered the
phone, rather than an assistant. After all, he was an
established performer, a Julliard-trained actor mentored by
the great John Houseman. He had starred in many highly
acclaimed theater, TV, and film productions, including
several Woody Allen films and my favorite guilty pleasure,
Better Off Dead. “How’s next Thursday at 4:00 p.m.?” he
said and then gave me the address.
Flush with success, I felt undaunted as I dialed the number
for Garofalo, but I was to have quite a different experience.
She did not answer the phone, and the assistant who did
asked me to fax my request, on letterhead, to their office and
they would get back to me. After three days and my deadline
drawing near, I phoned and was again asked to fax a
request. When I explained that I had done so already, the
assistant asked what the interview was for, what questions I
would be asking, and how much time I would need with
Garofalo. “Good news,” I thought. “She sounds interested.”
I waited three more days for a phone call to set up a time.
When that call did not come, I phoned one last time. I just
needed to know either way. If it was a “no,” that would be fine
with me—just tell me, I’m a big girl. On this occasion I was
asked to send over articles I had written on other celebrities,
for Garofalo to review. I did that and never heard back. My
guess is that none of the information I sent made it to the
comedienne’s desk. I’m not sure anything I sent even made
it past the assistant’s desk, but so goes the Machine.
The next day when I arrived for my interview with Stiers, I
told him of the contrast between setting up an interview with
him, a well-respected actor from the old school, and
someone from the new school of celebrity. He shared his
reflections on acting great Henry Fonda, who had a humbler
attitude than the majority of stars do today.
Stiers was doing a play with “Fonda” (which is what the
cast all called him), who would drive himself to work every
day in a beat-up old Volvo. You could tell Fonda wasn’t the
best driver: His car had doors that didn’t match, hubcaps
missing, and a few dings here and there that he’d decided
weren’t worth fixing, as the car would just get dinged-up
again. Yet he didn’t ask for a limousine, there were no
assistants running around getting him water—he was just
another actor at the theater doing his job. The business has
certainly changed when someone like Henry Fonda, who
had earned the right to be a real diva (or I guess divo in this
case), was just another poor schlub going to work every day.
Yet when J Lo goes on tour, she stipulates that in every town
she plays her dressing room must be white and stocked with
white flowers, white tables, white drapes, white couches,
white sheets, and tuberose, fig, and heliotrope-scented
Diptyque candles (which are, I’m guessing, white).
This makes me think of the studies cited in this book that
show a rise in narcissism in young people, the notion that
narcissism is inherent in many people who seek the
spotlight, and the acquired situational narcissism celebrities
are at risk of developing when they hit the big time. Perhaps
it is this personality trait that makes celebrities feel they
should be treated differently from everyone else and that this
sets them apart from the rest of us, even early on in their
careers.
Or perhaps it is the amount of money stars are worth now.
I’m not just talking about the celebrities’ fortunes but also the
many livelihoods that depend upon them. Take Britney
Spears: According to Conde Nast’s Portfolio.com, BritBrit
has made Elizabeth Arden over $100 million with her
perfume sales, her albums have made Jive records over
$400 million, and her concert tours have grossed nearly
$150 million. Even now she commands $250,000 to
$400,000 for an appearance fee, meaning “Britney, can you
stop by my club?” will cost you a bundle. The magazine
industry has benefited as well with celeb gossip magazines
posting staggering sales numbers when Britney graces the
cover. Not to mention all the paparazzi who sell the exclusive
shots to the magazines for thousands of dollars. And there
are other, less obvious, profits—or expenses, depending on
which side of the ledger you’re on. On one of the many
occasions when Spears and Kevin Federline were in court
to fight for custody of their kids, the LA County Sheriff’s
Department “billed the court $2286.10 to cover the cost of
extra security.” The Spears-generated economy benefited
not only the security firm but a host of legal staff, too.
The incredible earning power of stars and the
microeconomies they support have contributed to their
unique place in society. Perhaps celebrities are afforded a
status above mortal human beings because they are such
valuable commodities.
But why do we care so much about these often-
narcissistic commodities? They have acting and singing
talents, charm and charisma, and good looks. We have all
been swept up in a beautiful song or found meaning and
comfort in an actor’s performance and suddenly felt a strong
connection with them. Yet none of these forces, as powerful
as they are, fully explain the spell that celebrity has on our
culture at this time.
Some of us like the one-sidedness of our relationship with
a celebrity—it’s much easier than complex and difficult
relationships in the real world. Some of us get vicarious
enjoyment out of following the lives of stars, including a little
bit of schadenfreude when things go wrong in their lives. As
much as we hate to admit it, seeing the misfortunes of stars
can make us feel better about ourselves. A small number of
people, for whom celebrity worship is a problem that has
taken over their lives, have issues with neuroticism or
narcissism.
I think our widespread fascination with celebrity has little
to do with the talents and charisma of the celebrities
themselves but is more about our need to form bonds and
social connections with others. You can go to Japan, meet a
complete stranger, and say “Angelina Jolie” and there, you
have bonded. Same goes for more familiar scenarios such
as going to a party with people you barely know, or chatting
with your coworkers in the break room.
When we tell others a story we have read in a celebrity
magazine—or better yet, recount our own celebrity sighting
—it enhances our social relationships with them. With busy
and often socially disconnected lives, celebrity worship may
be one way to strengthen the social bonds that make us
human. And perhaps that is what we are all really craving.
Index
 A

Aaliyah
Abercrombie and Fitch
Abrams Artists Agency
activism
disease awareness
early examples of
global efforts
HIV-AIDS
overseas adoption
political
actors. See also celebrities; specific names love scenes
and relationships
number of roles and salaries of
politics of
Adams, John Quincy
Adidas, and Run-DMC
adolescents
attitude of parents
celebrities as role models
celebrity advertising and money spent
and celebrity politics
and Kurt Cobain’s suicide
and eating disorders
impact of television on
narcissism and desire for fame
and sexualized images
strategies for
transition to adulthood
adoptions
adults
baby boomers
and children’s self-esteem
communication with children
defining success
handling failure
handling pressure
overachieving
percentage unmarried
relationship standards
as role models
 self-esteem of
advertising
ads seen per day
celebrities as brands and entrepreneurs
and celebrities’ behavior
and designers
early celebrity endorsements
sexualized images in
advocacy. See activism
Affleck, Ben
Agent Provocateur
agents
Aguilera, Christina
Alba, Jessica
Alexander, Jason
Ali, Muhammad
All My Children
American Idol
American Marketing Association
American Psychological Associations (APA)
American Psychologist
American Quarterly
America’s Sweethearts
Anderson, Pamela
Aniston, Jennifer
anorexia. See eating disorders
The Apprentice
Archives of General Psychiatry
Armstrong, Lance
Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen
Ashe, Diane
athletes, images of
The Atlantic
Attermann, Robert
 B

baby boomers. See also adults

Bach, Barbara
Baio, Scott
Baldwin, Alec
Ball, Lucille
Balsamic Dreams: A Short but Self-Important History of
the Baby Boomer Generation (Queenan)
Bandura, Albert
Banks, Tyra
Barcelona, Frank
Bardem, Javier
Barker, Bob
Barrymore, Drew
Barton, Mischa
Basinger, Kim
Batali, Mario
Battle, Kathleen
Beatty, Warren
Beck, Christina
Beckham, David
Belafonte, Harry
Benigni, Roberto
Benning, Annette
Benson, Peter
Berry, Chuck
Berry, Halle
Biel, Jessica
Bing, Steve
Blahnik, Manolo
Blond, Susan on branding trend
Blonde Ambition: The Untold Story Behind Anna Nicole
Smith’s Death (Cosby)
Bloom, Orlando
Blunt, James
Bon Jovi
Bono
activism of
Bono, Sonny
Boorstin, Daniel
Borgnine, Ernest
Bosworth, Kate
Bowie, David
Boys II Men
Brady, Tom
Braff, Zach
Brandy
Bratt, Benjamin
Braudy, Leo
breast cancer, awareness of. See also diseases
Brighton Beach Memoirs (Simon)
British Journal of Psychology
Brody, Adrien
Brooks, Darryll on celebrity branding
Brothers and Sisters
Brown, Bobby
Brown, Jane
Brown, William J.
Bryant, Kobe
Buffy, the Vampire Slayer
Bulgari
bulimia. See eating disorders
Burberry
Burton, Richard
Bush, Billy
Bush, George H. W.
Bush, George W.
Bushnell, Candace
Bynes, Amanda
 C

Cacioppo, John
Cannon, Nick
Carey, Mariah
Carter, Clifton
Cases Studies in Health Communication (Beck)
Casey, Mary
casting directors
Catwoman
Caughey, J. L.
causes. See activism
Cavuto, Neil
celebrities. See also entertainment industry; specific
celebrity names
activism of
advertising and endorsements
behavior of
charisma of
illusion of intimacy with
perks for
and politics
relationships between
“religious” feelings about
sexualized images of
Celebrity Worshippers: Inside the Minds of Stargazers
(Houran)
Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and
Engagement (CIRCLE)
Chanel
Chaotic
Chaplin
charisma
Cheadle, Don
chefs
Cheney, Mary
children. See also adolescents
advertising and money spent
impact of sexualized images
influence of celebrities on
and technology
true role models for
 with unmarried parents
Chrysler Corp.
Churchill, Winston
Clapton, Eric
Clash
Clinton, Bill
Clinton, George
Clooney, George
activism of
and relationships
clothes and clothing labels sexuality and advertising
Cobain, Kurt
The Colbert Report
Collins, Amy Fine
Collins, Stephen
Combs, Sean clothing line
Commander in Chief
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Confessions of a Teen Idol
Connelly, Jennifer
Connery, Sean
Connolly, Billy
Corneau, Allison
Cosby, Bill
Cosby, Rita
couples. See relationships
Couric, Katie
Cox, Courtney
Crane, Stephen
Criss, Peter
Crow, Sheryl
Crowe, Russell
Cruise, Tom
Cruz, Penelope
CSI
C-SPAN
Culkin, Macaulay
Cult of Perfection (Lawrence)
Cyrus, Miley
 D

Daily Show
Damon, Matt
Danes, Claire
Danza, Tony
Darfur, crises in
Davis, Geena
Dawson, Rosario
Dawson’s Creek
Day-Lewis, Daniel
DeGeneres, Ellen
de Givenchy, Hubert
Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster (Thomas)
De Niro, Robert
Depp, Johnny
designers, clothes’
Destiny’s Child
Developmental Psychology
Deveny, Kathleen
Dexter, Mark
Diana, Princess of Wales
DiCaprio, Leonardo
Die Another Day
DiFranco, Ani
Dion, Celine
directors
diseases, awareness of
breast cancer
eating disorders
HIV-AIDS
public’s reaction to
Dixie Chicks
Downey, Robert, Jr.
Dre, Dr.
Drescher, Fran
Duff, Hilary
Duran Duran
Duvall, Robert
Dweck, Carol
Dylan, Bob
 E

Earth, Wind and Fire

Eastwood, Clint
eating disorders
Eden Barbara
Einstein, Albert
Electra, Carmen
Elliot, Missy “Misdemeanor”
Eminem
endorsements. See advertising
Entertaining Lesbians: Celebrity, Sexuality and Self
Invention (Gever)
entertainment industry. See also television
agents
attitude of today’s celebrities
attitude toward homosexuality
attitude toward pregnancy
cultivating star image
focus on youth and looks
making celebrity a brand
male dominance of
music industry
number of acting roles
overachievers in
publicity
sexualized images and advertising
success in
Entourage
environmentalism. See also activism
En Vogue
ER
Erin Brockovich
Estée Lauder
Etheridge, Melissa
Evans, Robert
 F

Falco, Edie
fame. See also success human desire for
and money
and narcissism
Family Jewels, Gene Simmons. See Gene Simmons
Family Jewels
fans. See public
Farrell, Colin
Farrell, Mike
Farrow, Mia
Federline, Kevin
interview with
Fergie
Ferrera, America
Flay, Bobby
Fleetwood Mac
Fletcher, Jeannine Hill
Fonda, Henry
Fonda, Jane
Forbes
Ford, Harrison
Forster, E. M.
Fortensky, Larry
Fox, Michael J.
Franklin, Aretha
Frehley, Ace
Frei, David
The Frenzy of Renown (Braudy)
Friedan, Betty
Friends
 G

Gabor, Zsa Zsa

Gabriel, Peter
Garbo, Greta
Garner, Jennifer
Garofalo, Janeane
gays. See homosexuality
Geldof, Bob
Gender & Society
General Hospital
General Motors
Generation Me: Why Today’s Young
Americans Are More Confident,
Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable
than Ever Before (Twenge)
Gene Simmons Family Jewels
Gest, David
Gever, Martha
Gibson, Mel
gift bags
girls. See also adolescents; children and eating disorders
influence of celebrities
and sexualized images true role models for
Givens, Robin
Giving Back Fund
Goldberg, Whoopi
Golden Globes
Gossip Girl
Grabicki, Michelle
Grandy, Fred “Gopher”
Grant, Amy
Grant, Cary
Grant, Hugh
Grey’s Anatomy
Gyllenhaal, Maggie
 H

Hackman, Gene
Hanes
Hanks, Tom
Hannah, Daryl
Harden, Marcia Gay
Harrelson, Woody
Harris, Olivia
Haskell, Colleen
Hasselbeck, Elizabeth
Hatcher, Teri
Havrilesky, Heather
Hawn, Goldie
Hearst, Rick
He Had It Coming: How to Outsmart Your Husband and
Win Your Divorce (Schneider)
Heigl, Katherine
Hepburn, Audrey
heroes, definition of. See also activism
Hervey, Jason
Heston, Charlton
Hewitt, Jennifer Love
Hewlett-Packard Corp.
The Hills
Hilton, Paris
ads by
conviction of
influence on girls
HIV-AIDS. See also diseases
H&M
Homosexuality: A History (Spencer)
homosexuality, attitudes toward
Hope, Bob
Horton, Donald
Hotel Rwanda
Houran, James
House
Houseman, John
Houston, Whitney
Huckabee, Mike
Hudson, Kate
Hudson, Rock
humanitarianism. See activism
Hurley, Elizabeth
Huston, Ted
 I

I Dream of Jeannie
Iovine, Jimmy
 J

Jackson, Janet
Jackson, Michael
Jagger, Mick
Jay-Z
Jefferson Airplane
Jenkins, Henry
Johansson, Scarlett
John, Elton
Johnson, Ervin “Magic”
Jolie, Angelina
activism of
overseas adoption
and Brad Pitt
on women
Jones, Quincy
Jones, Star
Jordan, Michael
Journal of Black Psychology
Journal of Communication
Journal of Divorce and Remarriage
Journal of Health Communication
Journal of Marketing
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science
Journal of the National Cancer Institute
Journal of Vocational Behavior
Journey
Juicy Couture
Just World Theory
 K

Kamins, Michael
Katzenberg, Jeffrey
Kaye, Danny
Kelly, Gene
Kennedy, Jackie
Kennedy, John F.
Kerry, John
Keys, Alicia
Kidman, Nicole
Kid ’n Play
Kid Rock
King, Martin Luther, Jr.
KISS
Klein, Calvin
Knightley, Keira
Knowles, Beyoncé
Kohls
Kol, Kimberly Lawrence
Koo, Lisa
Kozinets, Robert
Kucinich, Dennis
Kuriansky, Judy
Kutcher, Ashton
 L

L. L. Cool J.
Lachey, Nick
Lagasse, Emeril
Lagerfeld, Karl
Law & Order
Leadership Academy
Lee, Tommy
Leibovitz, Annie
lesbians. See homosexuality
Letterman, David
Levine, David
Little House on the Prairie
Little Richard
Live Aid
Living with Fran
Lohan, Lindsay
influence on girls
Longoria, Eva
Lopez, Frederick
Lopez, Jennifer
as brand
L’Oreal
Love, Courtney
Love Hewitt, Jennifer
Lovett, Lyle
Lowes Home Improvement
Loyola, St. Ignatius
 M

“The Machine Stops” (Forster)

Madfes, Diane
Madonna
charisma of
dressing room demands
Pepsi ad
magazines, entertainment. See also media
Maher, Bill
Maltby, John
managers, musicians’
Mandela, Nelson
Marie Claire
marketing. See advertising
Maroulis, Constantine
marriage. See relationships
Marshall, J. Howard II
Martin, Graham
Mary Tyler Moore Show
Mass Persuasion (Merton)
McAdams, Rachel
McCain, Edwin
McCain, John
McCartney, Stella
McConaughey, Matthew
McCutcheon, Lynn E.
McDermott, Dylan
McDonalds
McEntire, Reba
McGraw, Ali
McGwire, Mark
McKenzie, Benjamin
media. See also entertainment industry; specific media
increase in entertainment news
sex and scandal in
Media Awareness Network
Medical Journal of Australia
Medina, Benny
Merman, Ethel
Merton, Robert K.
Mexican
A Mighty Heart
Millman, Robert
Minnelli, Liza
Minogue, Kylie “The Mixed Messages of Motherhood” (Rice)
Mizrahi, Isaac
Moder, Danny
Monroe, Marilyn
Monster’s Ball
Moore, Demi
Moore, Mandy
Morin, Edgar
Moss, Kate
motherhood, perceptions of
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
MTV
music industry. See also entertainment industry; specific
individuals
attractiveness in
cultivating star image
death rates in
musicians as brands
publicity in
songwriters
Mya
My Cousin Vinny
 N

narcissism
acquired situational narcissism
and desire for fame
Narcissism Epidemic (Twenge)
Navarro, Dave
Neeson, Liam
Nelly
neuroticism
Newlyweds
Newman, Paul
Newsweek
Newton-John, Olivia
Nichols, Mike
Nicholson, Jack
Nike
Nikon
Nixon, Richard
North American Journal of Psychology
Norton, Charles Eliot
Notting Hill
Novak, Alan R.
Nuccio, Jenn
 O

Obama, Barack
O.C.
Oceans Eleven
O’Donnell, Rosie
Off the Wall
Olsen, Ashley
Olsen, Mary-Kate
Only You
Orman, Suze
Oscars
gift bags
“Oscar curse”
overachievers. See also success
 P

Packaged Facts
Palmer, Robert
Paltrow, Gwyneth
parents. See adolescents; adults
Parker, Ray
Parker, Sarah Jessica
Parks, Rosa
Patric, Jason
People
Pepsi, ad campaigns
Perdis, Napoleon
Perez Family
Perry, Linda
Perry, Matthew
Peterson, Scott
Petty, Richard
Phan, Dat
Phillips, David
Pink
Pinsky, Drew
Pitt, Brad and Jennifer Aniston
Plaks, Jason
poli ti cs. See also activism early celebrity influence
politicians as celebrities
public’s civic responsibility
young voters
Pompeo, Ellen
Portman, Natalie
pregnancy, attitudes towards
Premier Talent
Pretenders
Prince
Proactiv
producers politics of
Psychological Record
public. See also adults attitude toward homosexuality
awareness of health issues
and celebrity failures
civic responsibility of
encountering celebrities
 fascination with celebrities
illusion of intimacy with stars
perception of motherhood
publicists
publicity. See publicists; entertainment industry
 Q

Queenan Joe
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
Quinto, Zachary
 R

race, and self-esteem

Rambin, Leven
Ramsay, Gordon
Reagan, Nancy
Reagan, Ronald
reality shows. See also television
relationships on
stars of
Real World
Redford, Robert
Reeve, Christopher
Reeve, Dana
relationships
age differences in
brief or multiple marriages
confirmed bachelors
and narcissism
on reality TV
on set
religion, and celebrity culture
stars as “god-like”
Star Trek
Reynolds, Burt
Rice, Joy
Richards, Denise
Richardson, Kevin
Richie, Nicole
Rimmel
Ringwald, Molly
Robbins, Tim
Roberts, Julia
and AOL
relationships of
Roddenberry, Gene
Rodman, Dennis
Rogers, Kenny
Rolling Stone
Roosevelt, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Theodore
Ross, Diana
Run-DMC
Rwanda, genocide in
 S

Salomon, Rick
Salt-N-Pepa
Sarandon, Susan
Saturday Night Live
Scales, Peter
Schilling, Curt
Schneider, Stacy
Schwarzenegger, Arnold
Schwarzkopf, Norman
Screen Actors Guild (SAG)
Seinfeld
self-esteem
and body image
and narcissism
and race
7th Heaven
sexuality, and entertainment industry
homosexuality
influence on girls
pregnancy
Shakira
Shepherd, Cybill
Sigel, Beanie
Simmons, Gene
Simmons, Kimora Lee
Simmons, Russell
Simon, Neil
Simpson, Jessica
Simpson, O. J.
Sinatra, Frank
Six Feet Under
Skaist-Levy, Pam
skin care
acne medication
makeup
Skull and Bones Society
Skydel, Barbara
Smith, Anna Nicole
Smith, Harry
Smith, Kate
Smith, Richard
Smith, Will
Snoop Dogg
Social Identity Theory
Social Learning Theory
Socrates
Somers, Suzanne
songwriters
Sorvino, Marisa
Spears, Britney
economic impact of
influence on girls
marriages of
Pepsi ads
Spears, Jamie Lynn
Spelling, Tori
Spencer, Colin
spender, dale
Spielberg, Steven
Springsteen, Bruce
Starbucks
stars. See celebrities; specific individuals
Star Trek
State Property Wear
Stefani, Gwen
Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act
Stern, Howard K.
Stewart, Jon
Stewart, Martha
Steyer, James
Stiers, David Ogden
Sting
Stone, Sharon
Streisand, Barbra
success
and career choice
comebacks
and money
and overachievers
and personal world view
and self-esteem
Supremes
Sutherland, Kiefer
Sutter, Ryan
Sutter, Trista
Swanson, Gloria
Swedlick, Michael
 T

Tajfel, Henri
talent, importance of
talent agents. See agents
Tales of the Gold Monkey
Target Corporation
Taylor, Elizabeth
Taylor, Gela
Teenage Research Unlimited
television. See also entertainment industry
celebrity “news” shows
feelings for long-running characters
impact on adolescents and children
number of channels
reality shows
sexual images on
Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory
Culture (Jenkins)
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Theron, Charlize
Thomas, Dana
Thompson, Fred
Thornton, Billy Bob
Timberlake, Justin
Today Show
Tomei, Marisa
Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
Tony Danza Show
Trump, Donald
Turner, John C.
Turner, Lana
Turner, Mark
Tweed, Shannon
Twenge, Jean 24
Tyra Banks Show
 U

U2. See also Bono

UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors USA Today
Usher
Us Weekly
 V

Van Halen
Vanity Fair
Versace
Vetrini, Ereka
Virgin Mobile
von Teese, Dita
 W

Ward. Monique
Warhol, Andy
Waters, Roger
Waterston, Sam
Weber, Max
Weiselman, Jarett
on celebrity couples
on comebacks
meaning of celebrity
Welch, Raquel
West, Kanye
West Wing
Who
Wilbanks, Jennifer
Will and Grace
Williams, Robbie
Williams, Serena
Williams, Vanessa
Winehouse, Amy
Winfrey, Oprah
earnings of
on fame
health issues of
and Obama
philanthropy of
Witherspoon, Reese
Wohl, R. Richard
women, overachieving. See also adults
Wonder, Stevie
Woods, Tiger
 Y

Yale University
Young, Mark
 Z

Zagorsky, Jay
Zellweger, Renée
 Acknowledgments

A special thank you to Maura Teitelbaum whose unwavering

support and friendship I would be lost without. I am indebted
to everyone who shared their stories with me on my radio
show, or generously gave of their time to offer their expert
opinions, specifically:

The Celebrities… Marcia Gay Harden, Kevin Federline,

Edwin McCain, Mike Farrell, Peter Criss, Stephen Collins,
Rita Cosby, Fran Drescher, Leven Rambin, Constantine
Maroulis, and Ereka Vetrini.

The Experts… Jarett Weiselman, Dr. Kimberly Kol, Mark

Turner, Robert Attermann, Barbara Skydel, Susan Blond,
Jennifer Nuccio, Dr. Jason Plaks, Dr. Peter Scales,
Jeannine Hill Fletcher, Th.D, Darryll Brooks, David Levine,
Leo Braudy, Christina Beck, James Houran, Ph.D., Stacy
Schneider Esq., Olivia Harris, Dr. Diane Madfes, and Allison
Corneau.

My Globe Pequot/skirt! Books Family… Scott Watrous,

Gary Krebs, Michelle Lewy, Inger Forland, editors Vanessa
Mickan-Gramazio, Mary Norris, and Imee Curiel, and
publicist Justin “Raul” Loeber.

My Radio Family… Kirk Stirland, Anthony Michaels, and

Chad Bowar.

My Actual Family… my parents Sandi and Bob Durell and

my wonderful saintly husband, Sean Lee.
 About the Author

COOPER LAWRENCE is one of the foremost authorities

on celebrity culture and fame. She can be seen as the fame
expert on VH1’s Confessions of a Teen Idol. She holds a
master’s degree in psychology from Fordham University and
is currently finishing her doctorate.
Cooper hosts the nationally syndicated talk radio show,
The Cooper Lawrence Show from Dial Global. Her show
combines entertainment, pop culture, comedy, and celebrity
all flavored with Cooper’s unique brand of storytelling. To
find a station that carries the show near you or to listen live
online, go to www.cooperlawrenceshow.com.
Cooper can be seen regularly on CNN Headline News’s
Showbiz Tonight and The Tyra Banks Show as well as
other shows including, The Today Show, The Early Show,
The O’Reilly Factor, Your World with Neil Cavuto, Hannity
& Colmes, Fox & Friends, The Insider, and on E!
Entertainment Television. She has been featured in print for
t h e New York Post, New York Daily News, Chicago
Tribune, IN STYLE, SELF, Parenting, Cosmopolitan,
Family Circle, OK! Magazine, US Weekly, Life & Style,
Star Magazine, In Touch Weekly, The Huffington Post, and
CosmoGIRL!
Previous books include The Cult of Perfection: Making
Peace with Your Inner Overachiever; The Fixer Upper
Man: Turn Mr. Maybe Into Mr. Right; Been There, Done
That, Kept the Jewelry; and CosmoGIRL’s All About Guys.
A portion of the sales of The Cult Of Celebrity will go to
Angel On A Leash, a charity of the Westminster Kennel Club
that champions working with therapy dogs in health care
facilities, schools, rehabilitation, hospice, extended care,
correctional facilities, and crisis intervention. For more
information or to support Angel On A Leash, please go to
www.angelonaleash.org.
Cooper lives with her husband, Sean, in New York City.