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For all the flak Paris Hilton gets, deserved and undeserved, I give her credit for one thing; she has basically created a new type of celebrity: the tabloid star.  The tabloid star is not the old model of stardom where someone appears in the tabloids because of movie, music, television or fashion stardom.  This type of celebrity is always primarily considered an actor, musician or fashion designer.  They just happen to appear in the papers a lot.  No, the tabloid star is a new model where someone gets work in movies, television or fashion because they appeared regularly in tabloids first.  Instead of being entertainers and fashionistas that end up as constant tabloid stories, they start off as constant tabloid stories and parlay that exposure into entertainment and fashion work.  And the patron saint of this new category of stardom is Paris Hilton.  For better or worse, she’s basically changed the nature of the fame game more than anyone else in recent history. 

Sure there were people who got well-known off reality shows in the past, like in the early seasons of The Real World, but they would never become regular tabloid fodder.  They just earned more appearances on Real World followup shows.  After Paris Hilton hit the scene though, people realized that it was possible to get constant tabloid exposure and greatly increase public awareness of yourself without having any notable accomplishments beforehand.  And then the floodgates opened up as tons of wannabes and used-to-bes went out of their way to appear and be photographed at any major event where paparazzi would be and aspiring socialites even started hiring publicists.

The reason for this is simple: there are simply too many outlets out there devoted to celebrities.  We have a ton of channels now thanks to cable.  Hundreds of channels.  A lot of those channels have a celebrity gossip show.  One channel, E!, is solely devoted to celebrities.  Two if you count the current incarnation of VH1.  Then there’s the rise of celebrity gossip magazines.  Then there’s the blogosphere, where celebrity blogs are proliferating and are among the most popular blogs.  Anyone with a celeb obsession, a PC and too much time on their hands can create a popular celeb blog with an immediate following.  So when you have this many outlets to cover celebrities, how do you fill up all that space with content?  By generating celebrities!  This is why we have the rise of the B-lister and C-lister and why the fame and accomplishment threshold for appearing in tabloids has been lowered so drastically: there simply aren’t enough A-list notable celebrities to fill up all those shows, magazines and blogs.  You need to start scraping the bottom and getting people from The Bachelor.  Paris Hilton took advantage of this media climate and staked her claim to fame.

These seem to be the main routes to becoming a tabloid star:

1. Be born obscenely rich or be related to a famous icon. (Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie)
2. Be a nobody who gained notoriety on a “storyline” reality show (Omarosa or anyone from The Hills or Laguna Beach)
3. Be a relatively new entertainer trying to catapult their fledgling entertainment career into mainstream success (Lindsey Lohan, Jessica Simpson, anyone from Making the Band)
4. Be a formerly huge entertainer trying to resuscitate a flagging career (Britney Spears, Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown, anyone who has appeared on Dancing with the Stars)
5. Any combination of the above four categories (Brooke Hogan)

The major drawback to being a tabloid star though is that once you become one, it’s extremely hard to be taken seriously as anything else.  This is the big folly of anyone who tries to become a successful entertainer through appearing on storyline reality shows and continual tabloid appearances.  They become pigeonholed as tabloid stars and end up stuck going back and forth between tabloid appearances and reality shows and never get a foothold into the A-list arena.  Sure they may get occasional cameo appearances on TV shows or a small role in a cheesy movie, but they’re always that reality or tabloid person that just happens to be in a TV show or movie.  Paris Hilton will never be truly considered an actress or a pop star, no matter how many movies and songs does; it will always be about the novelty of a tabloid star doing a movie or a song.  Lauren Conrad will never really be taken seriously as a fashionista either.  Winners of America’s Next Top Model will never actually be taken seriously by anyone in the modeling industry except for the judges.  Winners often complained that after the show, when they got sent on castings, people kept telling them “Oh, you’re that reality girl” rather than treating them as a bona fide fashion model.

The winners of American Idol get bona fide success as artists, but keep in mind that (1) American Idol isn’t a storyline reality show and (2) they don’t usually go out of their way to appear on the tabloids, Page 6 or the blogosphere every minute of every day after winning.  If anything, I have a feeling that their handlers try to keep them from getting overexposed after they win and instead rush them to the studios to start recording.

Jessica Simpson, after the success of her reality show Newlyweds, tried to keep the fame game going by becoming daily tabloid fodder like Paris Hilton.  She appeared everywhere she could.  As her exposure grew and she became a household name, she really seemed to believe that she was on the path to music stardom.  Yet people still don’t flock to buy her albums.  Instead they keep flocking to the magazine stands to read her latest personal exploits.  Tabloid stardom, instead of becoming a means to an end, has just become an end.

Similarly Lindsey Lohan and her publicists, seeking to help her make the jump from niche Disney teen queen to household name A-list movie actress launched a tabloid barrage.  She appeared on every red carpet, hot nightclub, awards show and celebrity event…basically any place where paparazzi were guaranteed to be.  She did outrageous things to guarantee she’d receive salacious reports in the tabloid press.  And as far as increasing her fame, it’s totally worked.  But how long will it take you to name the last three movies she was in?  And did you see them?  Now try to name her last three tabloid scandals.  I’m sure that’s much easier.  Her tabloid career ended up overshadowing her legitimate career.  Sometimes people even forget she’s supposed to be an actress.

Brooke Hogan is another good example.  It’s easier to remember her last tabloid buzz (her dad applying suntan lotion to her) than it is to remember the name of any of her singles.  If she wants to get legitimate pop success, she’s going about it the wrong way.  She’s more likely to just end up with a string of VH-1 reality shows and a bullshit fashion line for tweens.  Britney Spears and Whitney Houston crossed the threshold from legitimate pop stars to tabloid stars and are now trapped in that role.  Brintey can sell papers much easier than she can sell albums now, as opposed to Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera, who don’t generate as much nonstop tabloid fodder and therefore can still be primarily known for legitimate pop careers.  The acting career limbo of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes right now shows you how much their media barrage a few years ago helped their careers.  Katie Holmes ended up with tabloid stardom instead of movie stardom while Tom Cruise’s box office pull has plummeted.  Amy Winehouse is currently a music industry darling, but if she keeps up the tabloid exploits I’m sure her music career will eventually suffer and be replaced by tabloid stardom.

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are two actors who endangered their blockbuster acting careers by courting the tabloids too much.  If you notice, they’ve both seriously scaled back their publicity hounding considerably and have done their best to get their past tabloid notoriety to die down.  Both their careers are still suffering from that tabloid period.

What’s the human nature lesson here?  Repeating someone else’s actions will earn you the same results and reputation as that person.  People thought they could take the publicity route of a Paris Hilton by acting like airheads, seeking out and posing for every paparazzi in site like an obvious publicity whore and constantly generate salacious fodder for tabloids by appearing drunk in public, partying, drinking, drugging and making sex tapes, yet somehow avoid the loss of respect and the bad reputation that comes along with it.  People do this all the time in their everyday lives.  They adopt the questionable behavior of others because they want the benefits that come with that behavior, but for some reason they are surprised when they also get the same negative side-effects that come with that behavior. Similarly, in the case of rising stars, washed-up celebrities and nobodies trying to duplicate Paris Hilton’s lifestyle and publicity whoring, they got the positives (increased buzz), but also got the negatives that come with it (worse reputation and the inability to be appreciated for anything but appearing in tabloids and reality shows).

In your life, whenever you see a person benefitting from a certain behavior and you want to model that behavior and receive the same benefits, make sure you also understand all the negatives that person receives from that certain behavior because you’re sure to receive those too.  Too many of us suffer from what’s calld optimistic bias: we perceive ourselves to be invulnerable and unique and therefore immune to the same risks as others.  Surveys consistently show that people always believe they can chain smoke but be less likely than the average chain smoker to receive cancer, that they can try highly addictive drugs but be less likely than the average drug user to get addicted, that they can drink and drive regularly but be less likely to get into an accident than the average drunk driver, that they can engage in high-risk sex behavior but somehow be less likely than others to get pregnant or get VD, that their marriage is immune to the possibility of divorce, even after hearing sobering divorce statistics…the list goes on and on and on.

Optimistic bias is why there will always be another Eliot Spitzer scandal with politicians, even after tons of earlier politicians have been taken down by sex scandals.  Or why people will still engage in pyramid scheme behaviors despite all the evidence that they are scams that bankrupt the average participant.  Or why rock stars will do the fast life of drugs, sex and booze that is the foundation of every Behind the Music special yet still think they’re immune to the eventual downward spiral and rehab stint that happened to everyone else.  Or why a woman thinks she has that “magic pussy” that will allow her to be the exception when she marries a guy who has cheated on and left every woman he’s been with before her.  Or why women date pro athletes and expect to be the only athlete wife whose husband remains faithful and avoids groupies.  These are people who all repeat the behavior of their predecessors to get the same benefits, yet believe they’ll be immune to the same negative effects.

Always remember that you’re not as special as you think you are.

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