As a society, we should think long and hard about where the culture of celebrity is leading us.
Celebrity is built on novelty. When celebrities see their star beginning to wane, they often turn to shock value to rescue them from obscurity. But when something loses its shock value, something even more alarming has to take its place - and the downward spiral begins.
What may start out as a ploy to gain publicity can all too quickly become a life-threatening bondage.
Celebrity is largely about image, and image can be a dangerous thing.
Julian Lennon, son of John, reportedly said: 'The only thing I ever learned from my dad was how not to be a father.' Image can ruin families. It also warps our sense of who we are. Marilyn Monroe once said, 'I seem to be a whole superstructure without a foundation.'
Celebrity also turns a person's work into their entire meaning for existence - creating a dangerous bias away from inherent self-worth, toward performance-based value.
Unless they're deliberately acting up in some way, all we people know about celebrities is what we see of them when they're functioning in the area of their greatest gift.
We all have special gifts, activities in which we excel. Imagine other people only ever saw you when you were doing that one special thing. They would only see you at your very best.
That may sound attractive, but before long you would begin to feel guilty about the other areas of your life, where you're not so strong. In the areas where we are weak we need the support and understanding of others.
In the end, if people only see the best side of us they place upon us expectations that we can't possibly fulfil. When that happens, a well-balanced self-image becomes impossible, and relationships become very difficult to sustain, for relationship is built on vulnerability as well as strength.
Reading today's news reports, I can't help feeling that a relatively quiet and normal life would suit someone like Susan Boyle far better than the life of instant worldwide name and face recognition that seems to have opened up before her.
I'm fairly sure she didn't enter Britain's Got Talent to become a cog in a huge money-making machine - to improve her lot, yes; to show what she could do, definitely; but not to become either a sign-on-the-line corporate slave or fodder for press headlines.
In the end, celebrity is a poor substitute for what we as human beings really crave, which is not image but influence.
About Mal Fletcher:
Mal Fletcher is an author, business and media consultant, media commentator, global conference speaker and broadcaster based in London.
He has pioneered several major leadership networks and is the chairman of 2020 Plus, a London-based leadership and communications consultancy which is helping business, media and community groups to proactively engage future change, especially in difficult times.
Mal hosts the annual Strategic Leadership Consultation, which he founded in 1998, and was the founding National Director of Youth Alive Australia, a large, nationwide organisation teaching positive values to young people and running drug and alcohol-free events.
Follow Mal on Twitter www.twitter.com/malfletcher or go to www.2020Plus.org for more information. Copyright Mal Fletcher 2009
