The Personalities Are Political
Maggie writes about plastic surgery and K-pop stars—something she debates with her friends regularly. I love a passionately held pop-culture opinion, and wrote my column about why it’s important we keep treating them as serious.
Before the 2016 election, I used to Keep Up with one specific family I have never even met, the Kardashians, like it was my job. I would keep a live text chain with my friend as every episode would air on Sunday and follow each family member gleefully on social media. No development was too small to catch my notice. After November 2016, it’s all seemed a little less fun. Our weekly watch dates petered out. It was hard to bring ourselves to care when there were so many other things to care about. And reality TV had lost some of its escapist sheen, coming a little bit too close to reality.
And then: US Weekly was sold to American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer. They started putting Trump children on their covers, writing about them like fun celebs you should know. Women wore black on the Golden Globes red carpet and started a legal fund for victims of sexual harassment and assault. Oprah has been floated as a presidential candidate. Celebrity culture is as political as it ever has been—and I would argue it always has been.
Anyone who wants to say that caring about celebrities is dumb is buying into a sexist narrative. Celebrity, like any cultural interest that primarily belongs to women—cooking, interior design, romance novels—is often sidelined and belittled. Sports? Important and valuable to our discourse. But, of course, sports are widely thought of as by and for men.
And there’s something to be said for caring about something political but with littler nuclear-war-level consequence on our immediate lives. It’s cathartic to get into an argument about Kylie Jenner’s pregnancy at a party. Or about plastic surgery in K-pop with our close friends.
To talk and write and read about celebrity is to think critically about our culture: about the press and social media, about what privacy means and who we grant it to, about who holds power and why; about global standards of beauty, about popularity and mass appeal—and about politics. Who we like, what we care about, who we choose to represent that.