Dear West Coast, please keep your fame.
Sincerely, the dreamer.
It's a cold Sunday night in February, your eating your tub of your favorite Ben and Jerry's ice cream, and your watching The Oscars. You might be thinking to yourself how you wish that was you up on that stage presenting the awards or giving the acceptance speech I know I sometimes do. Sometimes, people take it to the extreme and become obsessed with fame, and it eventually leads them to go off the deep end of their life. It has once been said that fame is a bee that has a song and stink. Today I will talk about the problem of being obsessed with fame, the causes and effects it has on our lives, and I will give some solutions in order to get past the obsession. Lights, camera, action! People on a daily basis become obsessed with certain celebrities and their level of fame, and sometimes causes a person to become someone they never thought they would be, and not in a positive way. James Houran, a physcologist from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine and his team surveyed over 600 people in the United States and Great Britain and recently dubbed a physcotic condition called, "celebrity worship condition." Dr. Houran states that it's an unhealthy interest in the lives of those rich and famous, and about a third of those surveyed had a mild touch of it. Saying that more than half of the people surveyed had a touch of the mental disorder scares me a bit, it tells me that our nation is slowly becoming more and more obsessed with fame, and we don't know when to quit. It also tells me that it's consuming our days and it's wasting what we have left of our short time here on Earth. Cut!! The cause of us being obsessed with fame stems from the media, paparazzi, and the measure of success we have seen that person have. Some effects of being obsessed with fame could be lower self esteem, and it (fame) giving us a a false idea of reality. According to Bustle.com, 47% of girls are held back from participating in daily activities due to low self esteem. If so many us young girls weren't idolizing these "glamorous" celebrities and their flawless looks, then we wouldn't have such low self esteem in our lives. I know I'm guilty of constantly comparing myself to Angelina Jolie, and I'm always saying, "I wish I was as small as Angie." Another major effect being obsessed with fame is having a false sense of reality. According to Yale University's physcology professor Jerome L. Singer, most people spend 30 to 47% percent of their daily lives spacing out, and lost in imaginary thoughts and desires. That percent of time that we spend obsessing and imagining what our lives would be like being famous, could be spent on something far more productive like having an actual conversation or trying in some intellectual to better ourselves. Let's take a look at Lindsey Lohan, the little girl from Disney's The Parent Trap, and the hit movie Mean Girls. The fame got to her head and suddenly she thought she was invincible, committing all kinds of crimes and felonies. She gave us the false sense of reality because unlike other people who commit those same crimes, she didn't have to pay the price simply because of her name and who she was. We're halfway there folks! A few solutions to our problem of being fame obsessed are as follows; grooming ourselves, this doesn't mean we have to wear a ton of makeup on her faces or dye our hair. It simply means brushing our hair and looking presentable when going out into a public setting. Secondly, we can start thinking positively about our lives and ourselves. Instead of always looking around our lives and saying how bad we have it, and how we need so much more to complete our lives, we need to simply look around and see the beauty in all that we have and those who surround us. We can also stop standing in front of the mirror for ten minutes every morning and thinking about our celebrity idol and how much "skinnier or prettier" they are than us, because if really look closely at ourselves we will see something truly beautiful, and someone who will never have a copy of them to ever exist again. I don't know about you but to me, that seems pretty special to think about. Lastly, we can get to know our "true" selves, by that I mean, start listening to our own thoughts and don't let anyone influence us in a way that we don't want, by standing firm on our thoughts and beliefs we learn who we truly are in life, and that's something that is worth far more than an Oscar ever will be. That's a wrap!! Today, I have talked the problem of being obsessed with fame, the causes and effects it can have on our society and some solutions to help subtract the problem from our lives. I used to dream of fame on a daily basis, and there's still some times when it's quiet and alone that the thought suddenly creeps back into my head, but then I remind myself that my life is pretty great and I've got some the best days ahead of me and the best people to live them out with, to be honest with you I think my life just may be better than Angelina Jolie's.
