Celebrity Obsession:

Suddenly I Just No Longer Care

So celebrities sometimes don't have their look all together, and they sometimes have a bad hair day? Thanks for this gripping insight, but I'll skip the pictorial evidence today. And this is supposed to comfort me, because I don't look like them after they've gotten professional hair and make-up done, and sometimes plastic surgery or they have been strategically air-brushed? And this is news, when there are people who don't even have hair because they are going through chemo, and when there are people who wish their hair was their biggest concern, but they are worried about survival and safety, clean water, food and shelter and more basic things? And I helped feed this media frenzy for years, by always caring what Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were doing and what was happening with Katie Holmes?

I feel ashamed that I contribute every day to the celebrity obsession by continually paying attention to all this celebrity gossip. I even feel ashamed that I personally care so much about my own hair and appearance.

Somehow I think our society has a sickness that is obvious to an outside observer, but we've been inside the pot so long we don't realize the water is approaching scalding and the best we have to offer, at least in our popular culture, is some false ideal of beauty and a belief that somehow science can fix what we've done to this earth. We search for something real in the midst of all the glitter and sparkle; we turn to spirituality and Mother Earth, but we still haven't found what we are looking for. We numb ourselves with entertainment or maybe with some other less benign addictions. We are told we deserve the best, and we should buy the best, but in reality we all must continue to buy or our society of consumption will implode. Then we will be left with our purchases and maybe without a few other basic necessities for our North American lifestyle, and possibly at this point we may wonder what has happened to our soul... Did we sell it or just ignore it for too long?