pop culture

Celebrities have been around forever but only recently we’ve been acknowledging reality stars as “celebrities” as well. Every channel you flip through will have at least one type of reality show that appeals to certain categories of viewers. I can’t even remember when reality shows didn’t exist, but now days it seems like reality is more popular than fictional.
My guilty pleasures are about watching these shows. If that wasn’t bad enough, I’m hooked on magazines such as US Weekly, Life and Style, and the not so tabloid Cosmpolitan and Glamour.
Us Weekly magazine will have to be my favorite. It comes with everything. The newest gossip, fashion trends, advertisement of products, reviews on upcoming movies, etc… I will literally read the whole magazine front to back. There’s pictures of celebrities just being their normal selves doing things that are “just like us.” There’s just something so appealing to me about living vicariously through these people.
The tabloid’s intent could be to promote these celebrities whether it is in a positive or negative way. For example, as soon as the Chris Brown and Rhianna abuse broke out, it was all over the tabloids. The positive aspect of covering this story was educating consumers about relationship abuse, physical or verbal, could happen to anyone and it is never acceptable (http://m.usmag.com/?redirurl=/healthylifestyle/new/rihanna-on-chris-brown-i-needed-that-wake-up-call-20102610). This incident headlined on the magazine for weeks but the mood was serious and even frightening. Other celebrities came out and gave their opinions or even their own experience with such trauma.
But when the cover story is about how a celebrity, such as Janet Jackson, lost a good amount of weight from dieting, it promotes what the physical standard of beauty should be. This issue covered how she lost weight, what her diet approach was, and what she’s doing to “not fall off the wagon” again. Janet Jackson suppositely gained a lot of weight for a role in a movie that she was going to portray but the movie fell through and she was stuck with the weight. She blew up, the pictures of her were hideous. So when Us Weekly came out with an issue about her transformation, it became one of their best selling issues and even came with a follow up issue on how she kept the weight off ( http://www.health-emark.com/janet-jackson-diet.html , http://justjared.buzznet.com/2007/05/23/janet-jackson-weight-loss/).
Magazines are a huge contribution to popular culture. One magazine could have different types of issues around the world. Cosmopolitan Japan, Vogue China, even tabloids about American celebrities are being translated in different languages. Celebrities are a international market. Whatever they promote, people want it. Whether they’re your favorite actor or musician, these people survive on their fans. Businesses are smart to know this supply and demand factor and thrive on them. If a celebrity is going green, then people will try to go green. If there’s a charity telethon, people will call and donate. Celebrities seem to have some sort of power to do good for the world but vice versa, these people aren’t “real leaders” yet we listen to them as if they were. Popular culture is the BOOM in our modern world. From UFC going international to American celebrities doing international commercials, marketing which nation is more popular is what keeps all eyes on that area.