we tell ourselves that it’s perfectly healthy to worship people that we don’t know. we tell ourselves that it’s okay to put them on a moral pedestal to remove their bad qualities. in reality, this kind of behavior is dehumanizing.
and it’s bound to devastate us when this picture is shattered because we’ve convinced ourselves that it was real or, at least, that we didn’t need to know about the bad things. we’ve convinced ourselves that we didn’t need to see this celebrity as we would a real person.
then, when this rose-tinted picture shatters, we only blame the celebrity. we hate them for not being who we thought they were; we lash out in anger because they turned out to be a flawed human being.
what should we actually do? we shouldn’t just condemn the bad/toxic behavior of the people we “stan”. we should self-reflect.
we should ask ourselves if we’ve ever engaged in toxic behavior on behalf of celebrities, if we’ve ever ignored cyber-bullying or harassment, if we’ve ever put unfair pressure on celebrities to fulfil our ideals, if we’ve ever excused the toxic behavior of other people because we care about them.
i know, for a fact, that i’ve ignored some terrible comments online when i should’ve spoken up. i’ve chosen to stay silent about things that deserved to be discussed and called out.
i think it’s really important for us to realize that the most important change doesn’t come from “unstanning” celebrities that we don’t have a personal relationship with. condemning their actions is just another way of diverting the attention from our own bad behavior.
take a step back. self-reflect. that makes all the difference.
I love that people think we want Bellarke cause it’s a relationship between a man and a woman when in reality, I wouldn’t care if it was Man x man or woman x woman. It has best build up and the best chemistry…I said what I said 🤷🏽♀️
