Beyond the spotlight, we all are equal

''I want to be them. I want to be famous.''

Really?

More than a third of children today strive to live in the rich and famous world - dreams of being sports stars, singing sensations and award-winning actors.

They want to be in the spotlight.

No doubt the perks of living the famous life are as countless as Paris Hilton's shoe collection.

Some would call it the ''perfect'' life.

But ''All that glisters is not gold''.

There are many niggling negatives that take the shine out of the spotlight.

The number of celebrities in this small spinning world is like a grain of sand on Bondi Beach - 0.265%.

For a rainbow to be present, there always has to be a rain cloud.

For a star to shine, there always needs to be some sort of darkness.

Celebrities cannot do the ''normal'' everyday things.

They can't walk out of their own door to get the paper without camera-clutching shutterbugs being there.

Every fight with their partner, every drunken stagger, every wardrobe malfunction or cringeworthy moment is shone for the world to see.

That is exactly what happened to Zayn Malik of One Direction fame. He could not be a typical teenager and make those typical teenager mistakes.

When a picture of American swimmer Michael Phelps smoking a bong was leaked, his reputation was drowned.

In an interview, Phelps said he clearly made a mistake, but that mistake was repetitively thrown back in his face.

Everyone makes mistakes in life, especially when under immense pressure.

However, it should not be fair for the mistake of a global swimming star to be shared with every human being on earth by the menacing hands of media.

Media are everywhere. They take news and pictures and twist them to make shocking, juicy half-true stories.

Who demands these stories? We do. We constantly demand to be fed shocking celeb news. We roll in it like a pig in mud, soaking up all the juicy gossip, enjoying every second of it.

We chew shocking celeb tales of imperfection like a piece of gum, spitting it out once the flavour is gone before grabbing another celeb from the packet just like villainous Iago in Othello.

However we need to remember that nobody is perfect. We seem to forget that celebrities are just normal people like us; normal people doing their job of entertaining, like a normal person doing their job of teaching, fixing teeth or cleaning.

It should not matter what job one has, what race one is or how much money one has, as they are all still human kin who share this small world with equality.

Sadly, it's not like that. Partiality stands as a strong barrier. More than 7.125 billion people and more than 7.125 billion different standards when it should only be one.

However, this doesn't mean that a change can't be made. We need to stand up and make a change.

In Imagine, John Lennon sang: ''You may say I'm a dreamer; But I'm not the only one; I hope someday you'll join us; And the world will live as one.''

 


 By Holly Thompson, Year 13, Maniototo Area School

 

 

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