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Lessons From the Brit Pack: What Celebrity Culture Tells Us and Why We Shouldn't Listen

Celebrity Chic

I'm as bad as anyone.

I fancy myself a snarky, anti-Hilton brunette in Tina Fey glasses. Nevertheless, when I visit CNN.com as part of my daily Internet goofing-off ritual, if there's a story about Britney Spears, I'm probably going to click on it.

Who knows why, but for some reason we can't seem to get enough of Britney and her ilk. I think it's because they remind us of someone we used to know, and now they're everywhere, pixilated on Times Square jumbotrons, as a symbol of having made it. Or maybe our obsession has to do with escapism, or with a lack of shared culture.

Whatever the reason, it's stunningly obvious that we live in a culture of celebrity worship. In the wake of Anna Nicole Smith's death, I heard the phrase "famous for being famous" blaring from TV news stations everywhere; fame has apparently become a legitimate occupation. Events and zeitgeist, advances in technology for disseminating media, the fact that everyone and their Chihuahua now owns a camera phone — it's like the perfect storm for celebrityism.

At the front of the pack, of course, are the starlets: Paris Hilton (who shall henceforth be unmentioned — she's been analyzed to death, and I just can't read about her anymore), the aforementioned Britney, Nicole Richie, the Simpsons (Jessica and Ashlee, not Lisa and Maggie) and Lindsay Lohan, along with a second tier which includes people like Rod Stewart's daughter.

Behold our young female Hollywood. They are pretty, tan like Cheetos, and often only partially clothed — and just about everyone thinks they represent everything bad about America.

Frivolity and Femininity

The way we worship the so-called "Brit Pack" (get it? It's like the Brat Pack, only with Swarovski-studded cell phones) teaches us a lot of things about our culture and our lives.

Bad Lesson #1: The enviable life is all about partying.

I guess I don't have anything against these girls as people; there's no way to be sure where their true selves end and their media portrayals begin.¹ But I would be lying if I said I didn't find the lifestyle imputed to them by gossip mags and TMZ.com criminally wasteful. A Prada-guzzling, club-hopping lifestyle "makes a mockery," to use Bono's phrasing, of the desperate poverty found throughout the rest of the world.

Unbridled materialism and hedonism clash with the values and agenda of Jesus. (Duh.) But as if that weren't problem enough, I think a glitzy party lifestyle carries a harmful message about femininity. Watching endless video of hard-partying female celebrities, someone might perceive the feminine ideal as something pink and flimsy, something that treats guys like toys and is neither useful nor especially smart — forget things like "improving society" or "working" or "books." She Who Shall Not Be Named lent her likeness to the Vote or Die campaign, then forgot to register to vote.

Just about every female columnist who writes about this sort of thing has expressed a fear that the celebutante phenomenon will null any advances women have made, that little girls will aim their hearts and minds at money and fame rather than weightier, worthier things. Women older than 40 are watching us anxiously — will we lose the respect of a generation by becoming symbols of vapidity?

Maybe we're not really veering toward a disaster of that magnitude. I don't know anyone who watched The Simple Life and took notes on how to conduct one's daily affairs. But maybe we're closer to disaster than I'd like to think. No matter how many godly, intelligent, generous, compassionate girls I know, the most visible women in America are famous for nothing other than being pretty, inebriated and arguably promiscuous. That couldn't possibly be a good thing.

Beauty and Body Image

Celebrity worship gives us other, equally annoying messages about femininity — beauty specifically. Because we don't just watch young female celebrities shop for Manolos and record mediocre albums. We also watch them fall apart.

One obvious example is Nicole Richie and her apparent struggle with an eating disorder, a struggle reminiscent of the tragic and teeny-tiny Mary-Kate Olsen. In a related category, Lindsay Lohan reportedly checked into a rehab facility not too long ago, as did Britney, and then there was the matter of Anna Nicole's overdose. I say "related" because to me there seems to be a parallel between the eating disorder thing and the rehab thing.

And here we arrive at Bad Lesson #2: What's bad for your body is also vaguely hot.

It's an idea at least as old as Marilyn Monroe, I suppose — there's always been a certain perceived sexiness that goes along with self-destruction. I don't know what to make of that. I don't see any value in denying our problems or pretending we never hurt ourselves; I don't think struggling with food and weight should make any girl feel ashamed. But when we watch as the coolest girls in America harm themselves, I wonder if we're becoming more vulnerable to self-harm. If beauty = desirability and self-destruction = desirability, does beauty = self-destruction?

I think the beauty question is one of the most obvious occasions to carefully weigh media messages. We're going to have to choose between rail-thin, drug-addicted beauty and beauty that is honest, humble and self-accepting.

I'm not alone in eschewing eating-disordered beauty, obviously. It's funny the way Brit Pack Culture clashes with Self-Esteem Culture here — no self-respecting Dove* girl would be caught dead on an all-grapefruit diet.

And Self-Esteem Culture is a formidable force, albeit a sometimes misguided one. In doing research for this article (I swear), I visited CosmoGIRL.com* and idly clicked on "Kiss or Dis," where teen visitors could vote and comment on celebrities' clothes or hair. Among the comments (the illiteracy of which might be related to Bad Lesson #1) directed toward the recently-slimmer Hilary Duff, someone wrote, "You don't have to starve yourself to look good, you idiot!"

Awesome. Self-Esteem Culture and verbal abuse, hand in hand.

Fallen Icons

The dollars we collectively spend on US Weekly either indicate that we love celebrities or that we love to hate them, maybe mostly the latter. Other CosmoGIRL! comments on Hilary Duff included unfair critiques of her cheekbones and "horse teeth." Similarly, Tyra Banks recently endured a non-scandal scandal over her post-runway (and relatively modest) weight gain. Headlines pounced brutally, including the very clever "Tyra Pork Chop."

Classic high school politics: A little jealousy plus the popularity and prettiness of another girl equals a vicious trashing of said girl when she's spotted filling an embarrassing prescription or wearing mom jeans. Insecurity drives us to cruelty.

The jealous schoolgirl model of our relationship with celebrities makes the most sense to me, since I'm convinced that the lessons of celebrity worship/bashing have a lot to do with self — how we view ourselves and the purpose of our lives. Within the neon pink whirlwind that is the Brit Pack phenomenon, there is a yin and yang of Hiltonian self-indulgence and violent self-destruction.

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Do you think you're influenced by Hollywood culture?

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We have exalted a handful of women for their beauty and wealth. And one by one, they stumble, all teeth and elbows and flailing hair, and we are there, in the crowd, watching. Whether we are filled with gleeful smugness, compassion or activism depends on how we view ourselves.

Getting over celebrity overload might require a look in the mirror, intentionally, decisively developing a sense of ourselves as divine image-bearers. Step one: a little abstinence from ogling — and trashing — the Brit Pack.