March 7th 2007
Celebrity Advice, Take 3
Filed under: newspaper — rebecca @ 2:31 pm
We’ve discussed the topic before: celebrities give lots of advice. We’ve also recommended that you research on your own before listening to random advice from people that aren’t necessarily experts.
This week the Ottawa Citizen takes an in-depth (5 pages, seriously?) look at the issue with their main point being, “Celebrities are no smarter than the rest of us. So why do we take their advice?”
They interviewed some experts and here’s what one had to say: “Because they’re successful,” laughs Diane Pacom, a sociology professor at the University of Ottawa who studies youth and popular culture. “It’s as simple as that. Success in our society is measured by two things — money and visibility in the media. These people are exactly what we’d like to be, so their advice is much more important than anybody else’s around us.”
I have to say, however, that a celebrity like George Clooney bringing attention to the situation in Darfur, or Leonardo DiCaprio bringing light to the world of conflict diamonds, feels very different from Suzanne Somers recommending a medicine.
The article goes on to discuss how celebrities have used their “expertise” on certain issues to pull them out of a career or media slump. Think: Angelina wearing Billy Bob’s blood and almost frenching her brother to the Angie everyone loves today.
I’d love to hear any reader thoughts on the topic of celebrity advice, benefits and negative aspects of being in the spotlight, and more.
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