Celebrity Obsession Gone Too Far

There are many things about celebrity obsession that I understand. I get the interest in every detail of their lives. I get the enormous volume of photos that are taken of them. But I do not understand why anybody cares about the pictures of them that were in their high school yearbooks.

The details of a celebrity's life actually have some relevance, and that's why they're smeared across the pages of every tabloid and screamed from every entertainment magazine show. When the cameras aren't rolling, their real lives aren't nearly so interesting, but they exist in a rarified world, and the "real" life they lead is understandably fascinating.

Celebrities are, in a sense, a cast of characters that live out the literary mandate in their regular lives. When Joe Schmo in Abilene, Texas, is diagnosed with cancer, nobody cares. When a celebrity is diagnosed with cancer, it becomes a big story that is repeated everywhere you look. This creates a reason for the society in general to discuss cancer. Any other issue is the same: depression, drug addiction, divorce, and so on. Celebrities act as a social cypher.

The people who become celebrities are chosen for their relevance, and in simple terms that means that they embody what most people strive for. In many cases that means that they are good looking, and even those who aren't traditionally attractive are interesting to look at. Therefore, the fact that they are photographed to ridiculous excess makes sense. They are chosen because they are people we want to see in pictures.

The celebrity photo machine also creates commercial opportunities. There is a tremendous value to having your clothing item, handbag, or other accessory somehow placed on a celebrity when that celebrity's picture is taken. That creates rabid competition among the producers of clothing items, handbags, and other accessories to get celebrities to carry them, and it creates a ready market for pictures. Wherever there's a market, someone will find a way to cater to it, so it's no surprise all those photos get taken.

But there's no rational explanation for going back and finding the pictures of a celebrity from their high school yearbook. Some people get famous when they're young and stay famous, but those aren't the celebrities whose high school pictures people are interested in. For those who were unknown in high school, that photograph isn't germane to their fame because it was taken before they became famous.

The fact that the high school yearbook picture is so fascinating to so many people and that celebrity yearbook pictures get shown as fun facts or trivia questions before so many commercial breaks is, to me, one indicator that celebrity obsession has gone too far. In a sense, showing that picture is more disrespectful of the celebrity's privacy than it would be to take a picture of them naked and blast that around the Internet.

Still, rational explanation or not, it seems like these pictures are never going to be left alone. Which is something that every young, aspiring actor or singer should bear in mind. Every teenager who's getting pictures taken for high school yearbooks today runs the risk of having those pictures show up in a segue to commercial ten years from now.