People spend a great deal of time, money, and energy to see or read about movie stars, TV actors, singers, and athletes. Such celebrities often become idols. Posters, T-shirts, fan clubs, and attendance at live performances prove that. What do celebrities do to merit this attention?
Celebrities create excitement. They create excitement because they have done something or can do something that supposedly not everyone else can do. Raising a child, waking early to go to work each morning, building a home and a place in the community-these achievements actually deserve more admiration than rolling through Beverly Hills in a limousine or jetting across the Atlantic to star in a new movie. Yet because these achievements are part of many people's everyday lives, they are not considered special. Celebrities help us dream by lifting us out of our everyday lives and imagining ourselves doing other than everyday activities.
Celebrities also set styles. They become models for behavior, clothing, and hairdos. Just consider Elvis Presley or the Beatles, for example. Celebrities also influence politics, as Bob Hope and Robert Redford have done.
Celebrities' roles as "special people" and trendsetters, then, are the reason for the attention many of us lavish on them. In many ways, the celebrities of today have merely replaced the kings and queens of old.
