Are we too obsessed with celebrities?

Recently, a 33-year-old man, Toby Sheldon, paid $100,000 to look like his all-time favorite celebrity, Justin Bieber. He spent $21,000 to lower his hairline and grow out his bangs to resemble the “Bieb’s” younger look and $5,000 to have work done on his eyelids to lift them up.

When you look at a picture of your favorite celebrity in a magazine and say, “I want to be them,” do you actually mean it? If someone came up to you and gave you the opportunity to switch your looks with a celebrity’s, ultimately not looking anything like yourself anymore, would you?

We have become way too obsessed over what celebrities look like. We compare and contrast celebrities’ appearances with our own so often that we might as well have a Venn diagram set up in our heads. Cosmetic commercials always have celebrities who have the perfect everything sponsor their product because we want to have their perfections.

We are not only obsessed with celebrities’ appearances, but also with their personal lives. According to the Daily Mail, there is a psychological condition called Celebrity Worship Syndrome which refers to the people who are obsessed with celebrities. To have a condition like CWS be named because of our obsession over celebrities is ridiculous. We have gone way too far; we should be more concerned about our own personal lives than the ones of the famous people whom we adore and admire.

“Shipping” celebrities, taking two celebrities and making them a couple in one’s imagination, has also become a big issue. Some people’s OTP’s, one true pairing, have not only cluttered the minds of fangirls everywhere, but have also played significant roles in the celebrities’ lives. Many of them might feel uncomfortable when they hear about who they have been “shipped” with and how strongly the fans feel about the “ship” itself.

People have been going out of their way to write fanfictions about their “ships” having relationships on the Internet and reaching out to these celebrities on social media to insist that the relationship is real. Celebrities have consumed our lives because we have let them. We need to put down the magazines for a moment and realize that it is our lives we need to worry about, not theirs. Toby Sheldon wasted $100,000 on changing his appearance to look more like a nineteen year-old pop starr when he could have used that money to advance in his own life and career, or even given the money to people who are truly in need.