I live in a weird world where I spend a lot of time reviewing celebrity attire for work, but I also don't watch television. I'm enough of an internet maven to kind of know what's going on in pop culture, but when it comes to things like Top 40 Radio and the Disney Channel, I remain blissfully ignorant. For some reason, this baby-faced teenager keeps entering my purview, and she thoroughly creeps me out. You know her as Selena Gomez, I know her as "hamster face."
She doesn't look like a real person to me, but more like the embodiment of a Bratz doll. The proportion of her doe-eyes to the rest of her heart-shaped face is other-worldly. Her flawless skin looks plastic. I know she's dating Justin Bieber, but I don't think he's a real person either. They're a matching set of terrifyingly perfect looking children. If they actual have genitals instead of the sloping emptiness found between the legs of Ken & Barbie dolls, they'll one day be able to make monstrously adorable children.
Selena Gomez is like a hamster mashed up with the Gerber Baby and a chihuahua - grotesquely cute and also a horrifying abomination. She popped up in The Muppet Movie for whatever reason and I was like, "AAAHHH! That Muppet is terrifying! Uncanny valley! Uncanny valley! It's scarier than the Swedish chef's inexplicably human hands!" Then I realized it was a "cameo." She was all flippant like, "Fuck you, Muppets, my agent told me to be here." and that was basically it. I don't understand why she was there, except as a ploy to lure in dopey tweens who would otherwise never watch something so pure and magical as The Muppets.
Anyway, she punctured my carefully cultivated world that rejects such things as mass produced, flawless looking human beings, and I'm pissed off about it. Really, it's not her that I'm pissed off at. All of this rage is fake in order to make the thesis work.
I was trying to find some pictures of her on the internet carefully, without trying to find out too much about her. I just don't want to know. However, I couldn't help but come across such savory gossip as the time Justin Bieber wooed her by shutting down some stadium in Los Angeles and watching Titanic with her. Stories like that make me want to break my own fingers, which is why I was trying to avoid them. The excess and stupidity of it all angers me, but it's such futile and unfulfilling anger that I end up having no where to put it. Then I just feel dumb.
I don't really care what these people do. I don't really think they actually do half the stuff that's in tabloids. I don't think for a second that Kim Kardashian didn't have her 72-day marriage planned every hour, on the hour. Pop culture has made me so cynical.
I feel bad for ragging on this poor child. She looks like she's maybe 9 years old, but the internet tells me she's 19. She's probably nice, or something. But she still creeps me out! That oversexualized appearance, the layers of makeup, the extensions in her hair, the suggestive but stylish clothes are all attempts at making her look older and more appealing to men. I looked at pictures of her throughout the last few years (read: before she was of legal age), and she was still slicked up with makeup and skimpy clothes, tempered with an innocent smile.
Young girls aspire to look like her as a result of this carefully cultivated persona because their young brains cannot understand the sickening amount of studied and calculated marketing manipulation that goes into creating a person like Selena Gomez. Tween girls and boys are fans because they have no choice but to be fans, that's the outcome of Gomez's Disney manufactured schtick. I don't really hold her ultimately responsible for this. The adults that surround the Selena circus of celebrity, who are responsible for CREATING the Selena circus of celebrity in fact, are to blame. Feed off a child's ethereal beauty and mediocre talent by painting her face and packaging her up to consumed by the masses = Sick.
What I'm getting at is that this post isn't really about Selena Gomez or her creepy cuteness. It's about the people that make children like her dance for the public. That's my real problem here. Thanks for reading my annual Rage post. I am sorry I vented all over you.
She doesn't look like a real person to me, but more like the embodiment of a Bratz doll. The proportion of her doe-eyes to the rest of her heart-shaped face is other-worldly. Her flawless skin looks plastic. I know she's dating Justin Bieber, but I don't think he's a real person either. They're a matching set of terrifyingly perfect looking children. If they actual have genitals instead of the sloping emptiness found between the legs of Ken & Barbie dolls, they'll one day be able to make monstrously adorable children.
Selena Gomez is like a hamster mashed up with the Gerber Baby and a chihuahua - grotesquely cute and also a horrifying abomination. She popped up in The Muppet Movie for whatever reason and I was like, "AAAHHH! That Muppet is terrifying! Uncanny valley! Uncanny valley! It's scarier than the Swedish chef's inexplicably human hands!" Then I realized it was a "cameo." She was all flippant like, "Fuck you, Muppets, my agent told me to be here." and that was basically it. I don't understand why she was there, except as a ploy to lure in dopey tweens who would otherwise never watch something so pure and magical as The Muppets.
Anyway, she punctured my carefully cultivated world that rejects such things as mass produced, flawless looking human beings, and I'm pissed off about it. Really, it's not her that I'm pissed off at. All of this rage is fake in order to make the thesis work.
I was trying to find some pictures of her on the internet carefully, without trying to find out too much about her. I just don't want to know. However, I couldn't help but come across such savory gossip as the time Justin Bieber wooed her by shutting down some stadium in Los Angeles and watching Titanic with her. Stories like that make me want to break my own fingers, which is why I was trying to avoid them. The excess and stupidity of it all angers me, but it's such futile and unfulfilling anger that I end up having no where to put it. Then I just feel dumb.
I don't really care what these people do. I don't really think they actually do half the stuff that's in tabloids. I don't think for a second that Kim Kardashian didn't have her 72-day marriage planned every hour, on the hour. Pop culture has made me so cynical.
I feel bad for ragging on this poor child. She looks like she's maybe 9 years old, but the internet tells me she's 19. She's probably nice, or something. But she still creeps me out! That oversexualized appearance, the layers of makeup, the extensions in her hair, the suggestive but stylish clothes are all attempts at making her look older and more appealing to men. I looked at pictures of her throughout the last few years (read: before she was of legal age), and she was still slicked up with makeup and skimpy clothes, tempered with an innocent smile.
Young girls aspire to look like her as a result of this carefully cultivated persona because their young brains cannot understand the sickening amount of studied and calculated marketing manipulation that goes into creating a person like Selena Gomez. Tween girls and boys are fans because they have no choice but to be fans, that's the outcome of Gomez's Disney manufactured schtick. I don't really hold her ultimately responsible for this. The adults that surround the Selena circus of celebrity, who are responsible for CREATING the Selena circus of celebrity in fact, are to blame. Feed off a child's ethereal beauty and mediocre talent by painting her face and packaging her up to consumed by the masses = Sick.
What I'm getting at is that this post isn't really about Selena Gomez or her creepy cuteness. It's about the people that make children like her dance for the public. That's my real problem here. Thanks for reading my annual Rage post. I am sorry I vented all over you.
3 comments:
hahaha i think she is creepy too.
I'm all for the end message.
though, I just wanted to add - fwiw - that Selena Gomez is pretty funny. my son watches the Disney channel like it's his job, and I've been known to catch quite a few episodes of 'wizards of waverly place' (which I've come to adore, btw). the one thing that has always stuck out about Selena, and her character in that show, is that she appears to be nothing like any other young celebrity...in that: she's quirky and funny, to her core -- not just on the surface. she seems to have some real spunk.
plus, 'like a love song' has a sitar in it...and that just makes the whole thing super cool & unique in my book ;)
but again: all for the end message!
Oh, I'm glad I'm not alone in thinking this. When I first saw her -I was baby sitting for my bestfriend's 8yo. at the time, Selena's demographic- she was in a music video. Wearing a really short maids uniform, singing and dancing. You get the picture. The first thing that came to my mind was baby prostitute.
I, like you am scared at what the media is selling to tomorrow's young women. What will happen it's our children's turn?
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