Celebrity Spotting
Katie Price: An Icon?
Shocking news! No, I’m not talking about the latest addition to the saga of MPs’ extravagant expenses claims. Nor am I concerned with Silvio Berlusconi and his latest bizarre antics. I’m not even referring to the ridiculous fact that Lorraine is still in The Apprentice (shouldn’t she have been fired ages ago? I can’t be the only one who finds her intensely annoying and patronising, surely?). Nope, I’m shocked to discover that Katie Price and Peter Andre have separated.
I have to admit to being a rather harsh critic of Katie Price/Jordan. She does, to be quite frank, rather creep me out. To think that she’s a role model to many young girls in this country when she began her “career” as a glamour model is quite depressing. She is, essentially, famous for getting drunk, wearing hardly any clothes and generally doing nothing to be proud of. I read a feature on her in The Times Magazine over the Easter holidays and came away really quite confused as to what the writer was trying to say. Is she really a feminist icon for our times? Can anyone really say that she has virtues that we should praise? Yes, she has incredible business acumen. Good for her. And I mean that – for someone to have come from almost nowhere to build up a reported £30 million takes guts and skill. But has she really chosen the right areas to channel her ambitions? Maybe financially, but not morally. I struggle with the concept that someone with little education and a questionable sense of self-worth should be heralded as an icon. Her frequent boob jobs and brazen talk of sex and porn hardly promotes the integrity of women and has paved the way for the Nuts generation to objectify girls in a way far-removed from actual reality. Fantastic.
But this doesn’t merit gleeful smirking when hearing of her separation. In fact, I feel quite downcast. They seemed made for each other – from “I’m A Celebrity: Get Me Out Of Here” to the pink themed wedding to the numerous TV shows, it seemed to be a match made in heaven (both for them and for the tabloids too). Four and a half years is quite a stretch in the celebrity age of five minute flings and subsequent scandals. Perhaps this was the thing about her that could really be praised? A seemingly strong marriage is certainly something that many aspire to. If Jordan and Peter can’t have their kitsch and fake-tanned fairytale, who can?
It’s the children I feel sorry for. Anyone with the name Princess Tiaamii has suffered already suffered enough misfortune in life to have to go through her parents divorcing. Even if she has apparently got over 100 pairs of shoes (and she’s two years old! Children’s feet grow! Her shoe retailer must be laughing themselves out of the recession).
But it could all be a massive publicity stunt. It has been mooted (read Heat and weep, broadsheet lovers), and in which case perhaps she deserves praise for getting yet more media attention. And she will have also succeeding in making all the commentators feel extremely stupid, me included. And I’m certain that the aspiration of many people is to make the media look stupid. She might prove to be an unlikely icon yet.
“If I Were A Boy”
Welcome, unsuspecting reader, to the first post of “Celebrity Spotting”, a blog intended for some light relief and sarcastic banter aimed towards those bastions of moral conduct, celebrities. Expect some mocking, maybe some gossip and hopefully some mild amusement. The more observant may have noticed a slight flaw in the title of this blog – “Celebrity Spotting” seems rather misleading considering I’ve yet to spot any celebrities in York myself. Does York even have any “celebrities”? Perhaps a stray Viking, or that guy from the Ghost Tour? I can think of a few people on campus who might consider themselves “celebrities” but perhaps the less said about them the better. But never mind. As the vast majority of people seem to care more about Jordan’s (Katie Price rather than the Middle Eastern country, to avoid any quite amusing confusion) latest escapades than the economic situation or Israel or anything that requires concentration of any kind, being able to “spot” celebrity gossip should be as easy as the proverbial piece of cake. Which Jordan herself would never eat. Obviously. And it also means I can legitimately read Heat for proper journo hack reasons rather than having to scrounge copies off other people for fear of being judged and laughed at. Hurrah.
And so, to business. There’s been some rather hilarious video floating around of Beyonce screeching along her song “If I Were A Boy” (which I actually almost like, ashamed as I am to admit it) I suppose the whole point was to start a debate about audio enhancing and recording studio trickery in pop music, blah blah. And these could have been salient points had Beyonce really been singing worse than a drunken student doing karaoke. But although pretty painful to listen to, it was sort of obvious it was a fake, yes? The adoring expressions on the faces of the crowd whilst swaying along happily sort of put paid to the idea that she sounded like a cat being strangled. Unless they’re into that sort of thing. I’m in no place to judge, believe me (some things in my iTunes could make people recoil in horror, I’m sure – and not because any cat’s been strangled).
The guy who made it has released a message blathering on about why he did it. For TEN MINUTES. That’s ten whole minutes of my life I won’t ever get back spent listening to this dross. But does anyone actually care? A big furore has been made over this – but Matthew Zeghibe seems to just be doing it for the attention. He even gives his email address at the beginning and keeps saying that he’s “always looking for work”, whilst offering such pearls of wisdom like “the American economy is like … shit”. Quite. Perhaps this is a new style of job application in these credit crunch stricken times (see, this blog is relevant intelligent journalism! Really!) – offer your skills as a technical wizard by manipulating sound to make someone else (someone much richer and famous than you) look bad. Really good skills, huh? Almost akin to playground bullying. Except not at school and you might get a lawsuit slapped on your back – same difference, really. Perhaps soon photos of famous people will be changed on a computer to make them look different! And then the media will be equally critical over this, and demand that celebrities are portrayed the way they really are rather than some airbrushed image of perfection! Oh wait, maybe not.
The moral of the story seems to be that mere mortals cannot criticise the great and the good without being slated. Indeed, the criticism in this particular instance was unfounded and the perpetrator seems to be doing it for the wrong reasons – for attention rather than to actually draw attention to the frankly ridiculous nature of celebrity. Beyonce actually has a talent – she’s a pretty damn good singer. She isn’t famous for having a boob job or taking drugs or just being irritating. She was the wrong target here.
Yes, the apparent addiction of the masses (myself included) to celebrity gossip is odd, and a bit disturbing. Yes, it is all a bit pointless and sort of irrelevant. But that’s what I’m here to write about, and hopefully mention a bit of real life now and again too. Welcome to the blog, readers. I hope you enjoy your stay.