Kristen Stewart Has New Shoes?

The perks of having a blog are that you get to express your feelings semi-anonymously. Other perks include being able to express your annoyance at all the work you have to complete by next week that is apparently very irrelevant to anything you'll need in later life; being able to make your pages look pretty and being able to insert humour at appropriate intervals without anyone really taking any notice. But that, I fear, is beside the point.

What I really want to talk about is teen idols. These days, it is all too easy to become infatuated with idols through the various media such as television, movies, books, sports people, and of course, the internet. Without these, it would evidently be somewhat more difficult for celebrities to acclaim themselves and naturally it would be infinitely harder to keep up to date with what they're doing and where there going.

This is, of course, to assume that we want to know what they're doing and where there going. I am under the impression that some fans purely admire the talent of certain idols, whether that be sports people or musicians, groups and bands, writers or actors. I'm sure that there are other fans who adore the beauty and good looks of their idols: some wish to befriend them and go about 'following' celebrities on Twitter and constantly 'tweeting' about their whereabouts and what they did last night at 11.05am. I'm not saying there's necessarily anything wrong with any of these - I'm just saying that, if I were an actress or a singer or whatever who was so talented that my name and work was internationally credited - I'm not sure I'd actually want one million followers on Twitter. To be honest, I probably wouldn't even have an account on Twitter at all.

And of course, like anything, things get out of hand. One of my favourite actresses at the moment is Kristen Stewart, best known - perhaps - for her recent role as Bella Swan in the Twilight Saga. I think she's incredibly talented - the way with which she presents herself in interviews etc. is totally un-fake and I love that she doesn't try to present a false persona when speaking to the press. I can't imagine that it's easy to be totally honest when you have a camera shoved in your face, a microphone jabbing your teeth and crowds of flashing lightbulbs and hungry reporters eager to present scrupulous gossip to the world. At the end of the day, the press are only doing their job and if they didn't report things, they wouldn't have a job. But, do they have to be so pushy? I was watching an interview once on Youtube and one of the reporters was asking about the fictional relationship between Bella, Jacob and Edward in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga. She said something along the lines of, "Are you more 'Team Edward' or 'Team Jacob'?" I think Kristen replied 'Team Edward', though I can't remember fully. As was to be expected, the reporter went on to ask her, "So, in real life, are you 'Team Edward' too?" Kristen walked off, refusing to answer any further questions. The reporter made some witty comment that may have lead readers to believe that she was, even though she hadn't said anything in response.

All I can say here is, quite frankly, Go Kristen. As far as I know - and I appreciate that this isn't very much at all - her private life and the life she chooses to reveal to the press are, for the most part, private. And so they should be. If she doesn't want to reveal certain things about her social life, her family life and her love life, why should she? She's just a normal girl - in a way, she's just like every other nineteen year old girl in the world. Yes, she's famous and yes, she is amazingly talented - but if you were her, would you really want to be interrogated about whether or not you were dating one of your co-stars? Would you want fans pouring over a picture of you and wondering if that shirt is borrowed from him?! Because let me tell you, I have seen this kind of thing. It exists. It happens.

What I'm trying to say is that, whilst it's absolutely brilliant that we have idols who we take inspiration from and who we aspire to, it doesn't mean this should become obsessional or take over our lives. I don't think that we should be invading on their lives - of course we can watch their movies; read their books; have posters of them on our bedroom walls, but I don't think we should be hanging on to see the latest pictures of our favourite idol arriving at NYC Airport, or something. That seems like it's taking things too far.

So please, before you judge celebrities after something you've heard - a rumour maybe or some article in the paper - if you were famous, would you really want all this hype in the press, every scrap of your personal life laid out like a canvas to which anyone and everyone could see it? I know that I wouldn't want that for myself. I'm only human.