Hot off the heels of the Lance Armstrong scandal (and the bizarre Manti Te’o “fake girlfriend” incident), I am once again reminded that celebrities are people, and people make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes are awful and my childhood heroes and role models are knocked off a pedestal and smashed into a hundred pieces like the splinters of my heart.
It happens, right?
Okay, I’m being a little hyperbolic, but let’s face it: when a celebrity scandal like this goes down, it’s hard not to feel a little betrayed. Here are 3 celebrities who won my heart then broke it.
Lance Armstrong
I’m not anymore into cycling than the average person on the street, but Lance Armstrong was bigger than just a cyclist. He was a symbol. He conquered cancer, won the Tour de France (a big deal, as I’m sure you know) a record 7 times, and even started a non-profit for cancer research spawning the rubber wristband trend that nearly defined my middle school years. He had an awful cameo in Dodgeball, but failure to act was a forgiveable offense in an athlete. He was seen as more than just an athlete, but this superhuman manifestation of awesomeness and fighting to live a full life! Now of course, he has admitted to doping and I feel so betrayed. I wanted to believe for so many years that he hadn’t cheated and even bought into the conspiracy theory that he claimed was the root of the allegations. How could you, Lance? How could you?
Madonna
I loved Madonna. I thought she was amazing for not just her music but her general attitude of being bold, never watering herself down. She was the Lady Gaga of my parents’ generation and enjoying 80s pop music from a fairly impressionable age, I thought she was totally cool. She was an icon, you know? Madonna was a household name, a staple, and every once in a while she’d come out with a new song and I’d eat it up. But recently, she has been going to some pretty extreme lengths to seem relevant. Most recently she’s been trying to bust into the EDM scene, and has been doing so in a pretty tasteless way, by trying to seem hip to the drug use that the EDM community is associated with. Deadmau5 has called her out on it, saying that he thought it was such a desperate move and really counter-productive to the music scene. He’s plainly upset that Madonna was trying to glorify the drug use that he saw as hurting of his fans. Madonna also made headlines when just hours after the Aurora Colorado “Dark Knight Rises” shootings, she appeared on stage in Scotland waving around a fake gun, despite being told by police to cut the fake weapons from her show– and even continued to do so in a Denver show just a few months after. She argues that the guns were too important to the show to be cut and were supposed to be symbolic, not literal. I used to admire the way Madonna pushed the envelope but now, she just strikes me as an old woman struggling to stay relevant and doing so in ways what are not just questionable but downright offensive and destructive.
Chris Brown
Chris Brown has talent. But what he also has is a problem with hitting women. The horrifying incident happened back in 2009 unfolded when one of the darling couples of the American music scene was splashed across newsfeeds in a way no one expected. Chris Brown had physically assaulted Rihanna. There is a lot of criticism of how this has gone down and the public reaction since then, but I think we can all agree on one thing: It was low. It was despicable. It is never going to be okay for anyone to do that. He’s also gotten into fights with Drake and now Frank Ocean has been added to the list. And if that was not enough to make you sick to your stomach, in the years to follow, both immediately following the incident and during his return to the public eye, girls began tweeting things like “Chris Brown can beat me anytime.” What kind of society are we living in that girls think that is okay? What does it say about how we view celebrity and women and abuse and love? The whole thing is disgusting.
When these people are made to be so public, it is really hard not to feel invested in them and look up to them for their talent. Everybody makes mistakes but it’s definitely a lot harder when someone you put up so high falls especially low. Talent and fame will never undo the things these three did or make up for it. It all leaves me with a feeling of sadness. Maybe, like The Dark Knight suggested, either you die a hero or you live long enough to become a villain.
But then I remember that there are people in the world like Tina Fey and my worldview and faith in humanity is once again restored.
(Don’t let me down, Tina, my world hinges on you!)