A Celebrity Everywhere I Look. Help.

Lately, I’ve been chained to my computer pulling 12 hour research and paper writing binges. While this may sound like the most thrilling thing on planet earth, I am here to assure you; it’s not.  It leaves me with little time to be a human, let alone have anything remotely considered a life. It also leads to tremendous brain exhaustion and overload, which allows me to do little else besides stare vapidly into space once I pry myself from my laptop.  To revive the brain cells, I’ve been known peruse through a magazine or 20, looking for inspiration, or just pretty pictures.  I’ve been doing this for the past few days, and last night it just hit me—celebrities have got their grubby little paws on damn near everything!!  Now, don’t get me wrong, I expect to see them in a magazine, that’s kind of the point. However, do I really need to see them in my clothing store? Or the card aisle of the drug store? Or in the fragrance department? Or, in the holiest of grounds… the book store?!  The answer is, no, I damn sure don’t, but guess what? They’re there!

 Can someone please tell me when a famous person suddenly morphed into a famous for every single creative outlet there is person?? Why can’t an actor just be an actor? Isn’t that enough? Can’t a singer just sing? Why do they have to make bad couture clothes and cheap perfume that they wouldn’t even wear? (Yes you can apply Beyonce here, but it’s not just her… it’s any other number of random “singing sensations”) In one magazine alone, take a gander at all the “crossover” celebrity crap I came across: Katy Perry has a perfume. Justin Timberlake has a new line of clothing for Target (by the way, a $200 jacket is so not a Target price, ok?).  Taylor Swift has a line of greeting cards (just couldn’t leave that to the struggling writers, could ya, Taylor?) James Franco (who??) has a gallery showing of his art. Really? I want to vomit even as I write this.

And now on to the most highly offensive thing that celebrities have felt the need to infiltrate: Writing.
I could live with clothes, the perfumes, I can even take the greeting cards (not easily, but I guess). What I can’t live with, however, is the notion that just because someone got famous for something (could be anything these days… for proof, look up “The Situation”) that they are suddenly deemed a good, worthy writer deserving of publication. What?! What?! Yes, in the same magazine, there was a list of four, count ‘em, four, celebrities who now have fiction books out.  Fiction! Books! For sale! Someone please tell me what business Nicole Richie, James Franco (again, who?), Lauren Conrad, and Hillary Duff have sticking their names in the “author” section of a book? Call me a hater, go ahead! I’m hatin’! I sure am! It’s not bad enough we have to live in the constant, annoying shadow of talentless people in movies, but now they are taking over the land of books? What!? This is where I draw the line.  I feel very passionate about writing, and I don’t take it lightly. I don’t think that just because a person is already famous for acting or singing (or whatever the hell Nicole Richie does) that they should automatically be granted published writer status. I demand they be removed from my bookstore!! Ok, fine, it’s likely this will never happen, but I need my voice to be heard, damnit! And yes, I am judging a book by its cover on this one, but please, I know I am soooo right. 

I will also render a guess that these books were not in fact written by the name on the cover, so to the ghostwriters out there I say, God bless you for making that money, but damn you for feeding into the idea that Hillary Duff should be a writer!!