It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I’m a Taylor Swift fan. She was a huge role model to me growing up, and I got into music because of her. While I still love her music, I’m realizing that it’s not healthy to idolize celebrities.
I want to be clear; there is a difference between being a fan and idolizing a celebrity. It’s easy to believe that your favorite celebrity is capable of no harm, but that’s just not the truth. Celebrities are sort of a persona; we’re never going to know who exactly they are.
We have to understand that this is their career, and given how critical the media and cancel culture can be. For most, celebrities are going to do what they need to do to stay in the spotlight.
I don’t mean to be a downer, but there’s a lot of bad stuff happening in the world right now. There’s an ongoing argument about how celebrities should be using their platforms and reach. No matter what your take on this is, there’s always going to be that outside influence that what they choose to speak up about can and will affect their career.
During the 2020 election, Swift posted on her Instagram story endorsing Biden and a link to register to vote. From that post alone, 35,000 people registered to vote using the link, according to the National Public Radio. So, to say that celebrities have no influence is far from true. Celebrities are influencers; this is exactly why brand deals exist. Because we idolize these celebrities, when we see what they have, we tend to want it too. If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.
However, since this Swift has been fairly silent on the current hateful climate that is growing larger, with ICE raids left and right, ripping apart children and families, with the false ideology of making a better America. Let alone the threat of losing LGBTQ+ rights, as well as abortion rights, state to state, you start to wonder where is the Swift that stood up for us? If she cared about bad press, then why would she ever speak out back then?
I’m starting to wake up, though, and I think all of us need to as well. Celebrities are nothing like us; they live in a completely different world from us. How do we expect them to speak up when these issues will never affect them personally because they have money? I want to be clear; this article isn’t about hate. This article is about the fact that we need to stop idolizing celebrities; it’s unhealthy and unrealistic.
Swift is a billionaire; the politicians we are expecting to run our country and speak for us have been handed everything on a silver platter, likely their whole lives. Politicians these days are treated more like celebrities, which is a completely different job title. We idolize and buy merch of politicians and celebrities with money we’ve had to fight to earn our whole lives.
I’m begging you to wake up. These billionaires, celebrities and politicians will never understand us, and at the end of the day, they are a part of a corrupt system that feeds off those in poverty. The money they make in a single day could solve half of the world’s problems and still have more than enough left over to live comfortably, yet they don’t; instead, they ask for more money.
We need to learn to be the good in the world we want to see. Why are we relying on celebrities to do the heavy lifting on a situation they may never fully understand?
Change happens when we all come together, not when we’re all against each other.