Slagging off sleb culture may be hip but Emma Brand is having none of it.
A whole industry has been built around celebrity culture so what is wrong with people enjoying it?
Reading about celebrities’ lives gives people an escape from their own lives when they need it (don’t we all?). When something bad happens in your life you can pick up any gossip magazine and see that there is someone having a worse time than you, which makes you feel better about your own problems.
Also, when you see the life that celebrities live it gives you something to aspire to and encourages you to work hard for fame, fortune and fashion. X Factor is the perfect example of this: contestants see the lives that singers lead and they want that, so they work tremendously hard to try and win the competition (whether or not they have the talent).
Celebrity culture is something that everyone can talk about, and everyone has their own opinions on the latest stories. Caitlyn Jenner winning female of the year when she hasn’t even been female for a year, is a very controversial topic. Some people think she deserves it and others think it was the wrong decision. The endless conversations you can have about celebrities in the public eye are a way of connecting with other people – people you would otherwise remain disconnected from, if it wasn’t for celebrity culture as a talking point.
Magazines such as Hello! and Closer make it so much easier to know what is happening in celebrities’ real lives – you get to see one side of them on television and a different side in the magazines.
Companies such as L’Oréal continue to use celebrity endorsement to sell their products. Please note that if interest in celebrity culture had disappeared they would have dropped this by now in favour of another marketing strategy.
Shows like Big Brother are making new celebrities and Celebrity Big Brother is trying to make you remember everyone you had forgotten. Meanwhile the gossip magazines will keep digging up more to report on, to make sure you don’t loose interest.
The obsession with celebrity culture is not going to slow down, and there is a whole industry out there to make sure of it. So why not just enjoy it?