Celebrity crushes seen as safe rite of passage for girls

c. 1996 Religion News Service (RNS)-His eyes are long-lashed and baby blue. His surfer-boy hair is mussed. He’s got a dog named Mac and a cat named Samantha. His ideal date would be an afternoon of fishing and dinner at a Mexican vegetarian restaurant. His name is Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and his poster hangs on […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(RNS)-His eyes are long-lashed and baby blue. His surfer-boy hair is mussed. He’s got a dog named Mac and a cat named Samantha. His ideal date would be an afternoon of fishing and dinner at a Mexican vegetarian restaurant.

His name is Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and his poster hangs on the bedroom walls of Colleen Doyle and her friend, Melissa Scimeca, two 10-year-olds from Bridgewater, N.J. Together, they like to discuss what Jonathan, 15, wore on the latest episode of his TV show, “Home Improvement,” and whether they liked his hair better short or long.


Colleen knows that Jonathan’s favorite color is dark blue and that he likes his pizza plain. Melissa admits to the occasional daydream about him. “We’re having fun together and we go to a park,” she says. “We go on rides and stuff.”

Psychologist Karen Zager knows why boys like Jonathan are important to girls like Colleen and Melissa, and why celebrity crushes have a different meaning for children than they do for adults. For some kids, infatuations with sports figures, actors or pop stars are practically a rite of passage, says Zager. They can also be a means of self-discovery. Colleen’s desire to know about a TV star’s favorite food is not as trivial as it seems, according to Zager.

“Part of it is just a normal craving for information about people outside their own family,” says Zager, a Manhattan therapist who specializes in adolescents.

“They go out into the big wide world and their families aren’t their only source of information anymore. Using pizza as a metaphor, they know what kind of pizza their parents and their aunts and uncles eat, but not what kind of pizza other people eat.”

Young girls often have another use for celebrities. For them, pin-ups like Jonathan Taylor Thomas can function as transitional figures between childhood and the world of real-life romance, says Zager.

“It’s a safe way to be in love,” says Zager, a member of the American Psychological Association’s presidential task force on adolescent girls. “They don’t have to go out on dates. There’s no requirement of holding hands, no peer pressure.”

Linda Doyle, Colleen’s mom, agrees. “It’s easier to like a boy on a show than to have to deal with kids in your own school. It’s easier and it’s probably better. It’s almost unreachable.”


Kimberly Chase, a 14-year-old from Passaic, N.J., isn’t so impressed with the boys at her own school. “They’re cute, but they’re annoying. A lot of cute boys don’t go to school or they’re a waste of time,” she says.

That’s not the case with Method Man, a smoldering, sloe-eyed rap star who compels Kimberly to shriek whenever she catches a glimpse of him on TV.

“I wish I could meet him. I think I would faint,” she gushes. “I’d ask if I could follow him around for the day just to be near him.”

Normally, says Zager, a case of idol worship is nothing for parents to worry about. “Up to a certain point, it’s healthy and it’s part of natural development.”

There’s cause for concern, however, when curiosity about a star becomes an attempt to imitate the star’s lifestyle. “It goes overboard when instead of balancing other lifestyles with their own, they jump into that,” says Zager. “Some teens use it as a way to jump into someone else’s life.”

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For many young teens and preteens, the celebrity crush enables them to explore budding interests and values, says Zager.


When Shoshanna Page of Passaic is faced with a difficult situation, she sometimes imagines how Chili, her favorite singer from the group TLC, would handle it. “If Chili had an argument with someone, I think she’d deal with it by just talking or reasoning, but I know there’d be a certain point where she’d want to fight,” says Shoshanna, who’s 13. “She influences me. She’s independent.”

According to Zager, loving a celebrity can be a painless way to explore romantic rivalry. “Say it’s a group of girls who all worship a particular movie star,” says Zager. “They have a chance to compare notes. There’s competition, `Who would he go out with, what (does) he like about you?’ There’s peer pressure, but it’s very safe. They don’t have to come face to face with that person, it serves a purpose of testing out your reaction in a peer group.”

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With boys, celebrity worship isn’t as much of a social activity, says Zager. “It’s just one of those cultural legacies. You very rarely see a group of boys chatting about what women need, what they like, what they want. Boys tend to be out playing ball. I think that’s changing, but it hasn’t become equal yet.”

While teenybopper magazines, which cater to girls, feature endless stories on the likes and dislikes of celebrities _ and even tell fans how to ingratiate themselves should they ever meet the star _ the supply and demand for that kind of information is rare among boys, says Zager. “A lot of the female celebrities are portrayed as sex objects. They don’t tell you much other than what her measurements are,” she observes. “It’s not a story about what kind of pizza she wants to eat.”

For boys and girls alike, the intensity of a celebrity crush usually dies down by the late teens.

Monica Edwards, a 16-year-old who lives in Newark, N.J., remembers when she used to pine for a singing group called The Boys, and though she still has sporadic fantasies of playing the drums for rapper LL Cool J, she’s outgrown the dizzying fandom that possessed her two years ago. Back then, a chance sighting of The Boys at a local restaurant left her speechless.


Now that she’s more mature, Monica understands that celebrities are unattainable, and she no longer hopes to attain them. “When you become an older teen, you start to associate with your friends more and you realize there’s hardly a chance you’d ever get to meet them,” says Monica. “Their world is different from your world.”

MJP END STETLER

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