Controversially known as the best film of 2023, Oppenheimer was a must-see for any breathing being when it came out. Although I'm not much of a fan of historical movies, my TikTok feed was blowing up with short, pirated clips of the movie; and while it's known that Oppenheimer tells us about the first nuclear weapons in Word War II, no explosions were seen in my feed. Instead, most videos were focused on the star of the movie, Cillian Murphy, and his piercing blue eyes. Many fans, especially young teens,
instantly fell in love with this 47-year-old man: teens are even making thirsty TikToks, leaving disconcerting comments like "I know I'm too young for him, but...". While there's nothing harmful about having a little crush on a celebrity, some adolescents are literally in love with this man. Just take a look at this video: TikTok. Some teens even thought of finding Murphy's children on social media (who are 19 and 17), building a friendship with them, and using them just to get close to their attractive father. Cillian Murphy isn't the only "lucky" man experiencing this amount of thirst from teenagers: Channing Tatum, Angelina Jolie, and Leonardo DiCaprio are all prime examples of actors who've received the same type of attention. So, at what point do these celebrity obsessions cross a line and become a little bit more than a crush, and why is this so common?
Many scientists believe that celebrity obsession is actually a critical part of adolescence. As teenagers drift from their parents and begin to develop their own personalities, they tend to look at other individuals and strive for different attributes. Dr. Ravitz, an adolescent psychiatrist at the Child Mind Institute, claims that "no matter the culture, they (teenagers) need somebody to look to, aside from their parents, for guidance and a model for becoming an adult. In our culture, this is often a sports figure, an actor, or a pop star". The psychiatrist also believes a teenager's high curiosity and imagination coupled with a need for independence can create a heavy adoration and love for a celebrity. This basically means that adolescent brains are designed to absorb the characteristics of people in their surroundings to develop their own individual selves; and with the majority of our culture being controlled by social media, it's not unfathomable to believe that teens associate so much of their identity with celebrities.
Although it's expected for adolescents to look up to celebrities as role models, this can become a concern when feelings become too strong and excessive. When individuals believe they hold an actual mutual relationship with a celebrity or try to become a part of a celebrity's life, this is nicknamed "celebrity worship". Celebrity worship is a parasocial relationship: a psychological relationship in which a fan holds an unreciprocated, one-sided sense of intimacy for a prominent figure. According to a 2003 study led by McCutcheon and Maltby, there are three levels of parasocial relationships. The most minor version is the Entertainment-Social type, in which people find it entertaining and fun to follow their favorite celebrities and discuss the details of their lives with similarly-obsessed friends. The second level, Intense-Personal, includes feeling intense emotions for a celebrity, and doing things like calling them their soulmate. A popular example of this is the obsession that singer Billie Eilish had for Justin Beiber at the ripe age of seventeen. Young Eilish was so head-over-heels that she would sit in her room and cry for hours about him; when she finally met him at a Coachella festival, she collapsed into his arms and began sobbing. If you think it can't get worse, it does. The final grouping is Borderline-Pathological, where fans have extreme thoughts about a celebrity and make impulsive decisions due to their obsession. If you believe that this level of crazy doesn't exist, take a look at a video of this young girl who refused to give her phone to the police while being arrested since she wouldn't be able to talk to her "boyfriend", actor Joshua Bassett. While Bassett doesn't even know that she exists, this girl piled up a handful of legal charges due to her fictional relationship with him. And no, this girl isn't a one-in-a-million case: the 2003 study revealed that out of 607 young students, about one-third of the population scored on the Intense-Personal and Borderline-Pathological levels of a parasocial relationship. This means that if you put 100 adolescents in a room, 33 of them would claim to feel actual attraction and love towards a celebrity. I really, really encourage these 33 individuals to go outside and touch some grass.
Jokes aside, it's important to address that there are many more traits that come along with celebrity worship other than love. Rather than celebrity worship syndrome causing symptoms, it's more accurate to say that obsessing over celebrities is usually linked to an underlying mental disorder and can be a symptom itself. One study discovered that young adults with stage two or three of the syndrome lacked healthy relationships with their parents as a child, leading them to become obsessive later in life. Another study revealed that when three samples (males and females that are minors, undergraduate students, and adults) were tested to find the relationship between celebrity worship and body image, it was found that para-social relationships for females at ages 14-16 are the highest at risk for poor body image. This proves that celebrity worship can lead to a poor body image for young girls due to comparing themselves to stars with good body shapes. Interestingly, scientists also discovered that this negative body image from parasocial relationships tends to disappear once adulthood begins to settle at ages 17-20. Although the adults in the study suffered just as much from celebrity worship as the minors, it proved easier for them to separate a celebrity's image from their own. This fact is concerning when we consider that, on average, a third of adolescents have severe levels of celebrity worship, meaning that this third probably suffers from poor body image due to constantly comparing themselves with perfect celebrities. Think about how easy it is to compare yourself to a celebrity: they're in every corner of the world, including the billboards you drive by, the magazines you find thrown on the street, and even the annoying fifteen-second ads on Youtube videos that are impossible to skip. And with teenagers constantly on social media, it makes sense that they suffer the most from poor body image when it takes a few taps on a phone to pull up a celebrity's flawless Instagram page.
At the end of the day, it's inevitable for a young teen to develop a silly crush on a celebrity (personally, I was part of the Harry Styles Fan Club during middle school). However, a little crush shouldn't become a full-blown obsession that actually interferes with your health and personal life. And if you ever find yourself a little too close to crossing the big, fat, red line between crushing on a celebrity and being absolutely delusional, try taking a break from your phone for a long, long time...
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