As we are all aware, due to the media coverage, that the new Royal Baby was delivered on Saturday morning. She is beautiful. It's not surprising that the growing population of Britain is seemingly obsessed with her already. However, I not only found the media's infatuation disturbing but even more so offensive. Imagine it for yourselves: either you yourself or your wife has just given birth and you can't even go to visit her without being photographed and filmed? We've all seen the video of the gorgeous Prince George being carried into the hospital to MEET his own sister for the first time but of course, before he could he had to stand and wave to a bunch of strangers with his Daddy. I'm not implying that it was wrong for William to encourage George to do this; he has to do so in order to prevent negative headlines. But isn't that tragic that the media stole priority over the baby?
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Considerably crueler than this was the reaction of the general public to Will and Kate's desire for some privacy. I took to twitter to convey my views on their departure in which my comments were of a similar tone to this post. I was disgusted by the amount of negative comments from people I know! One girl stated how she felt it was 'rude' that Will and Kate didn't speak to the media when they came out. For goodness sake. I don't think I would want to speak to a bunch of people invading my private moment if I had just given birth either. They're real people. Another girl replied to one of my tweets to state how amusing she found it that I referred to the couple as Will and Kate as if I am 'super chummy with them.' Of course I'm not but those are their names? They're people with names. Kate's birth name isn't The Duchess Of Cambridge it's Catherine. Why shouldn't they be called by their names? They're people!
This morning I even saw negative comments from people on Facebook slagging Kate off for how she looked when she came out of hospital. I can admit, I even felt slightly disheartened after seeing her leave and hoped desperately that I can look that good after I give birth. But the tone and nature of these comments were disturbing. Obviously she had to make herself up because she knew there were people outside waiting to photograph her! If she had left in joggers with her hair pulled up on her head like I'm sure she wanted to, think of all the preposterous articles we would have woken up to this morning? Do you not think it's tragic how much effort she had to put in just to make sure no one said anything bad about her?
The media has this kind of effect on every single celebrity and it can either coerce them into taking extra care of their words and appearance in order to convey a positive image or it can send them over the edge.
I swear by Taylor Swift. I will stick up for her until the end of the earth because of how much effort she has put in to give off a positive image. There has not been one scandal in her almost 10 year career. The worst thing the media can say about her is that she dates a lot of people and I have written in my previous post how sexist and cruel I think that is. Not only does Taylor make sure to write and act in a way that is healthy for young girls to look up to but she addresses this publicly often in order to convey to everyone how important it is that the media emits a positive image.
She said this in an interview on 60 minutes: “I definitely think about a million people when I am getting dressed in the morning,” “That’s just part of my life now. I think it’s my responsibility to know it and to be conscious of it.”. “It would be really easy to say…I’m 21 now. I do what I want. You raise your kids. But…that’s not the truth of it. The truth of it is that every singer out there with songs on the radio is raising the next generation. So make your words count.”
Not only this, but Taylor has to put in intense effort into her appearance every time she leaves the gym or goes out for a walk and when questioned about this, she is again very honest. A million people are going to be looking at her and taking pictures of her because of her career.
What is heartbreaking about the influence the media has had on Taylor Swift is how much it has changed her attitude to what she wants from life. As a huge Swiftie (and proud of it) I have watched Taylor grow from a hopeful 16 year old girl to a strong willed, intelligent young woman. You can hear this heartbreaking reality in her lyrics, in her interviews and in her honesty. From a young age and since her young debut she was determined to have a family. She wanted to get married and give up her career to bring up a family in order to follow in her mother's footsteps. She talked about it in so many interviews. That was the life she really wanted. Since then she wrote a tragically accurate song called 'The Lucky One' that found it's place on her fourth studio album: RED. The song is about how invaded the lives of celebrities are by the media. Since then, Taylor has stated how she would never have children. She thinks it would be cruel to try to convince them they have a 'normal life' when they would have strange men constantly putting cameras in their faces. Again, this conveys the tragic intrusion of the Royal Family's privacy because they couldn't make that choice. They have a duty to carry on the family. Will and Kate could never decide they didn't want to expose a family to the media.
It breaks my heart that the media have scared Taylor into not having her family because of the cruel way they have intruded into her private life.
Many people also talk in a malice way about Miley Cyrus who I have also previously mentioned when talking about sexism. I evaluated in my last post about how her choices and actions are media influenced. I do feel sorry for her because she is made to feel like she has to portray herself in a certain manor; however, I can't help but be angry by how little responsibility she takes. She could have an attitude like Taylor or like so many other celebrities who refuse to be that provocative and take a classier approach but she doesn't. Not only does she allow herself to be sexualised by she completely disregards any responsibility for her actions.It's almost as if the media's disregard for people's privacy has inspired celebrities to feel like they can use that as an excuse to do whatever they feel like doing.
Some may argue that being exposed by the media is simply 'part of the job' but it shouldn't be and it never used to be. There used to be singers and movie stars way before there were gossip magazines and corrupt media coverage. It's as if this rise in media usage has left people in the spotlight with little time to adapt and evolve to suit the new type of famous. If you take for example the royal family who go back centuries obviously, there was a time when they could leave their home to go for a walk without being followed by cameras. They could appear looking tired, let their hair go grey, wear what they wanted. Obviously, they would always have had a lot of money to make themselves look presentable but they could do so off their own backs, there wasn't this pressure. It illustrates an image of a fish out of water. The royal family worked even 50-60 years ago when media coverage wasn't as much of an issue but they're not designed for this kind of exposure. This is tragically highlighted in the events of the last 20 or so years regarding the private lives of the royal subjects.
You have to be smart to be a celebrity. People such as Justin Bieber, Meghan Trainor and so many others who clearly don't think about what impact their actions and words have result in heartbroken teenagers who think behaving in a certain way is okay. I cannot tell you how thankful I am that I found Taylor and had a good role model or who knows where I would have ended up.
It's true: Celebrities are bringing up the next generation through the media.
This whole outlook has completely scared me away from all of the things I love. I am terrified of getting my dream job. I want nothing more than to take my music all over the world and release albums and tour but I don't think I could handle it even if I had that opportunity. I don't think I'd have the energy to never make a single mistake. I couldn't put that much effort into making sure I always looked right and behaved right. I couldn't cope with the articles and the press and the interviews and always having to say the right thing.
I love writing. I plan to do english at university but I have no idea what I could do with it. If I can make sufficient money from writing this blog then great but I don't want to go into journalism because I find it boring. I could never write for a magazine either. As much as I love fashion and make-up and writing about that stuff I couldn't live with myself if I had to make money of writing horrible things about people. I don't want to write about how a certain celebrity still has stretch marks from the baby she gave birth to a few weeks ago, I mean how dare she? Or have to interview famous people and ask them hurtful, private questions.
It's cruel.
When you consider how much these celebrities have sacrificed for us to enjoy their music or films etc. Why should we then take more than they offer? Why bite the hand that feeds you? You don't need to know who they're dating or how many times they've worn a certain outfit. Of course they make a lot of money but no amount of cash could make me want to be exposed like that. I could never do that to somebody either.
The media is a great thing in some ways. We can learn so much and get in touch with so many things but it scares me how much we are going too far every single day. From all of this pressure on so many people, we are inches away from everything collapsing be it a metaphor or a physical tragedy.
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