Lauren RabainoThey used to be seen on the red carpet or the silver screen, but now they got baby bumps in your magazine.
Did you see which hot celebrity couple is breaking up? Did you see who cheated on whom with a sexy lingerie model? Did you see who got fat and who miraculously lost 170 pounds and is now sharing her secret?
America is far too obsessed with celebrities. They used to live this glamorous lifestyle that everyone wished to have – and to an extent they still do – but who would want to be famous if that means having all of your personal business on the front pages of magazines?
Right now, the trend in these tabloids is the hunt for baby bumps. America wants to know which hot celebrities are pregnant, how big they’re getting and how they’re messing up their kid for life. Well, America, your fascination with celebrities’ unborn children has already doomed him or her because, as soon as the child is born, he or she will go on the auction block to see which magazine will pay the most for the first exclusive pictures. Your curiosity will lead the kid into a life full of drug addiction, unprotected sex, drinking milk straight out of the carton and, even worse, random hook-ups with other hot celebs that end in heartbreak – all of which is good business for celebrity news magazines. You see the vicious cycle you’ve thrown the child into? It’s like the spin cycle on your washing machine, only instead of soap, you put in a scoop of pure Colombian cocaine.
TV used to be a think by which celebrities were made; now it’s a place for the endless parade of reality shows and contests featuring people who did something years ago that made them well known but aren’t doing a damn thing today. I’m talking about shows like “Dancing With The Stars,” “Celebrity Circus” and “Celebrity Fit Club.” It’s like no one knows the concept of legacy anymore. I would have so much respect for Flavor Flav if he had vanished from the public spotlight after Public Enemy. For real, you go from hype man for one of the most politically charged and dopest rap groups (their greatest album was titled “Fear of a Black Planet”) to a complete joke of a character running around with a bunch of gold-diggers on TV, acting a fool. Before “Flavor of Love,” if someone yelled out “Flava Flav!” they were really conscious of a progressive rap movement. Now it just means you’ve seen that ugly dude in a Viking hat who gives clocks to women and says, “Peachez, girl, you are so juicy. You know what time it is.”
Then there’s the trend of the wannabe celebrities. I’m not talking about D-list celebrities or any of that crap, but more specifically, wannabe MySpace celebrities. They add a bunch of people as friends and then declare with a status update that they “will pc4pc.” This, according to urbandictionary.com, means that, “You will comment on a user’s picture in exchange for a comment on your picture.” Wow, right? Buzzing off of all of the awesome comments they receive, these wannabe MySpace celebs will go ahead and say something like “will w4w,” which means “whore for whore,” or basically, “If you get me a new friend, I’ll get you a new friend.” And thus a butt-load of superficial connections are made, and this person’s perceived popularity grows.
I blame Paris Hilton for the notion that you don’t need any real skill, talent or brains to be famous.
So let’s all start caring a little less about who’s rockin’ the baby bump in a bikini, whether or not “stars” will find true love on a television dating show (honestly, when has that ever worked out for anyone?), and let’s not be MySpace attention whores like the TRENDASAURUS (he eats fools who don’t comment back).
Brian McMullen is a journalism senior and Mustang Daily columnist.