Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan: More grounding, less swooning

All right, I admit it. I have a touch of celebrity fever.

To be fair, I'm not the only one suffering from this affliction, characterized by excessive interest in celebrities. Any famous face can trigger an attack, but movie stars and pop singers seem to provoke the most acute cases. Basically, it's all forms of celebrity adoration, from papering the walls with pinups of Britney Spears to driving around Los Angeles, desperate to catch a glimpse of Tom Hanks' house.

I'll confess. That's exactly what I spent an afternoon doing last week over spring break. I found L.A. to be a wonderful city, full of ocean views and mountains and pleasantly high mercury levels -- but a city obsessed with celebrity.

This makes some sense, considering Southern California's status as home base for the movie industry. Actors have to cluster in the area to be close to the studios so they're always around town; Hollywood is big business out there, lending a certain sparkle to the landscape. But being pleasantly surprised to run into George Clooney at the gas station and skulking around his backyard trying to peek in the windows are two very different things.

What exactly is it about the rich and famous that so enraptures us? The perceived glamour of celebrity has something to do with it. Just look at them on the red carpet. Those elegant gowns! That perfect hair! Those extra-pearly teeth! These beautiful people with their multimillion-dollar paychecks must have equally beautiful lives. At least, their fabulous cars and dramatic breakups are more thrilling than our mundane existences. It's juicy stuff -- so an occasional flip through Vanity Fair is forgivable.

The sad part comes in when the vicarious kicks become more fun than the real ones. If you cried when Bruce and Demi broke up -- if you spend more time fantasizing about meeting Justin Timberlake than studying for finals -- you need to get a life. Celebrity worship is an awfully futile way to add meaning to your days. Rationally, it's a giant waste of time. Why spend hours mooning over someone you'll probably never meet (unless you live in the 90210 zip code, that is)? Even if you do get lucky, do you honestly think they'd care about how much you adored their last films? Our outpourings of love would be received with indifference at best, a beatdown from a burly bodyguard at worst.

Celebrity worship doesn't just carry negative consequences for us fans, though. Just think of all the damage we're doing to these poor stars, inflating their egos and encouraging them to wear hideous sparkly ensembles and strut for photographers. No one should have to live under a burden of such self-importance. In fact, not only should we refrain from fawning over their every move, we should actively help keep them grounded. Every resident of Beverly Hills should be forced to take a monthly walking tour of West Philly. Maybe then they'd realize the answer to life's troubles doesn't involve the purchase of a sixth car.

This star adoration thing wouldn't be so bad if we paid attention to more worthy individuals. I have a healthy respect for actors and musicians, of course. Hey, it's art, and far be it for me to belittle the psychological benefits of entertainment. But wouldn't it make more sense to show some appreciation for other kinds of heroes? Doctors, writers, the scientist developing an artificial heart -- surely they deserve at least as much praise as Joe Millionaire. Celebrity fever is more than a fun diversion. It's a massive misalignment of priorities.

I realize all this now, but a few more days of tooling around Hollywood may have skewed my attitude. It's easy to be excited by all things movie-related when you're gazing at Mann's Chinese Theater handprints, after all.

Thankfully, though, the second half of my spring break trip, a stop at home, gave me a reality check. My mother, the most difficult person in the world to impress, set me straight. Her view has always been that movie stars are just people -- if Brad Pitt sat down in front of her in a theater, she'd ask him to move his big head. And while it was fun to show my family the pictures I took of Bob Dylan's house, I was reminded of the silliness of my enjoyment.

So go ahead, watch E! once in a while and put photos of Tom Cruise on your wall. Just don't let them outnumber the ones of your real friends...

Omigod, you'll have to excuse me. I think I just saw Mel Gibson.

Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan is a junior communications major from Wheaton, Ill.

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