We've all seen the blogs, Tweets, and Facebook statuses being posted after the raunchy performance of Miley Cyrus with Robin Thicke performing his song "Blurred Lines" at the VMA's.
The shock wasn't so much that a female singing artist did a sexualized performance at a venue known for big stars wearing outrageous outfits and doing taboo-breaking acts. The shock was that within a brief amount of time the girl once known as Hannah Montana, a character Miley Cyrus played on the hit Nickelodeon TV show, went from a cute child star loved by millions of children to what we saw at the VMA's.
For those who have been paying attention to the last 20 years of pop culture a trend seems to be showing itself more and more apparent among young female stars (singing and acting). For example, a young female artist breaks out on the scene, has huge success, then slowly becomes more and more sexually provocative in their songs, performances, or movies. The whirlwind of success and compromise begins to take a toll on the celebrity, and they lose touch with reality, i.e. Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Bynes. So the question arises, why does this happen? Here are a few reasons why:
1. Small Compromises Over Time: The nature of Hollywood and show business is that you have to assume a persona, take roles, sing songs, and perform shows based on the demand of the consumer. Some celebrities have managed to maintain their integrity at the expense of more money and popularity. Others give up who they are to meet the demand.
2. Success Versus Identity: The challenge of maintaining integrity is very hard. A rising star is offered roles or opportunities that would normally be refused, yet since there is pressure and big dollar signs attached to the offer, a small compromise is made. The compromises become bigger and bigger. This creates Cognitive Dissonance (which is holding two contradictory ideas in ones' mind, i.e. "I want to be successful" and "I want to maintain my integrity"). If a celebrity wants to be successful, unfortunately due to the nature of the business, that may require compromise. But in order to maintain integrity, one may need to turn down opportunities and settle for being not as popular. Over time, with enough compromises and unresolved cognitive dissonance, the person's identity erodes and they lose their grip on reality.
3. Parents Co-signing: Another unfortunate aspect of show business is that when a person gets successful, they become surrounded with "yes" people. In other words, people who are only involved in the celebrity's life to get something from them, and so they say and do anything to get what they want from the celebrity, including pushing them towards compromise. Typically, the only protector in the celebrity's life is their parents. Sadly though, parents can be sucked in by the promise of success and money, and so the only protector the celebrity might have is gone.
To listen to our podcast and hear more about what happens to Hollywood celebrity's when they compromise, check out
http://www.headshrinkinc.com/
*** Here's the direct link to the Podcast: http://headshrinkinc.podbean.com/2013/08/28/the-twerk-dont-work-miley-cyrus-edition/
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