I recently came in contact with a stack of month-old celebrity magazines in which I immersed myself in. My family isn’t one to give money for glossy pictures of skinny, drunk celebs with paragraphs about their rehab, relationships, and shopping cart items. Thus, I was excited to finally get a chance to indulge myself and read about other people’s glamorous yet troubled lives.

Right away I noticed how each magazine seemed to be a copy of the other. They had headlines that were almost identical and the pictures were all the same. By my third magazine, I had to check back to make sure that I wasn’t reading the exact thing I’d finished twenty minutes ago. I must’ve read the same information several times, just in a different format. Still, the pictures of perfectly constructed faces with cute designer outfits going on with their daily lives made me read on.

Wait, celebrities taking their dogs on walks? Spending an afternoon at a park? All of these things seemed so ordinary, things my own family and I do together often. I suddenly realized how un-extraordinary the people in these magazines were. They are simply normal people who happen to have cool jobs and a ton of money. For some reason, pictures of them doing things like pushing their kid on a swing or buying milk at the grocery appeals to millions of readers. They shovel out several bucks every month to look at regular people doing regular things. Then, when these regular people mess up, their mistake is blown out of proportion and painted onto hundreds of newspapers and internet sites.

What if every time we made a mistake, it was made public? Have you ever failed a test? Imagine seeing shots of you on the front of a tabloid with headlines like, “Is Boarding School Next?” or “Regular Schooling Isn’t Enough”. You’d be mortified. Now, I’m not necessarily taking the celebrity’s side. I’m more revealing the fact that these people we obsess and fantasize over are merely regular, ordinary beings with a bunch of photographers following them around. Role models? I’d think not. Personally, I’d rather look up to people in my community who’ve accomplished a lot instead of an ordinary person walking their dog in Beverly Hills.