Most teenagers nowadays have a celebrity role model that they look up to. In theory, this should be a good person that no sensible human being would be ashamed to be like, but sadly many teenagers today choose their role model purely based on their fame, their money and their looks. This often leads to some very bad choices, but there’s no reason for this to even be the case, because good role models do not necessarily have to be poor and ugly. A good role model for young women could be Anne Hathaway, and we can compare her with a very bad role model like Paris Hilton.
Anne Hathaway became a famous actress by actually acting. She began on the stage, like many talented actors and actresses do, before moving into film. And she has won a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, an Emmy and many other awards, but she worked hard to get where she is today and got there through merit. Then you have Paris Hilton, who only became an ‘actress’ because she was already famous, for being rich through her great-grandfather. She first became really famous (well, infamous) for a sex tape that appeared ten years ago. So the role model for many teenagers is a woman whose acting debut was on a sex tape, when there are plenty of talented and dignified actresses that they could look up to.
Another key difference between the two is their private lives. Paris Hilton seems to love nothing more than broadcasting every detail of her life on reality television shows and in the media – every sort of media! She is the classic case of being famous just for being famous, and seems to value nothing other than being famous for the sake of it. Anne Hathaway, on the other hand, keeps her private life very private. She refuses to discuss details of her relationships with journalists, and has often said that family and friends come first over her career and that she would give up acting if needed. There are personal dramas to be found if you dig deep, but we all have them, and she chooses not to reveal everything to the whole world.
The final thing is the responsibility that goes with being so famous. Paris Hilton is seen all over the television and in magazines and newspapers, drunk at all-night parties, not caring that young, impressionable women who look up to her could be influenced by her behaviour. Anne Hathaway, on the other hand, refused to release the details of the diet she followed for Les Miserables because she didn’t want other people to copy and lose weight unhealthily. All in all, there’s no excuse to follow bad role models when there are so many better equivalents out there.
