What is the cost in Celebrity?

            I remember sitting at lunch with my family a couple of weeks ago, when my Dad asked my brother, sister, and I what we wanted to be when we grew up. I immediately answered saying, “it might be nice to be famous…?” I have grown up my entire life trained to look up to celebrities and envy their money, cars, cloths, their bodies, and their boys. I didn’t think it was unreasonable to want that life too; but the look my dad shot at me was so cutting; you’d think I suggested dropping out of high school to clean outhouse toilets after every major concert. My Dad proceeded to sternly ask me, “why would you ever want to be famous?” I was startled because I had never really thought about the toll it takes to be famous or wealthy but because of my Dad’s explanation and Paul Piff’s Ted Talk, “Does Money Make You Mean?” I began to see past the glamour in celebrity.

            Paul Piff’s Ted Talk “Does Money Make You Mean?” explains how money and status corrodes positive character traits like compassion, empathy, and egalitarianism. In one of his studies, he rigged games of Monopoly by making one player very rich and the other very poor. He gave one player twice as much money, two dice, and twice the salary when passing go. After the game had finished (guess who won?) those who were Monopoly rich had explained to Piff and his team what he had done to make him win. Winners told them what their tactics were for buying property and putting up houses and hotels up, forgetting that the game was handed to them. Although Piff later on goes to explain how to fix this problem through small mindset interventions, I understood what my Dad was saying. Although there are perks to being famous, they will never outweigh the cost to my personality, my morals, and the way I treat others. I never want to be the monopoly player that complains about having too much money, laughs when the poor pay me, or become loud, obnoxious, and forget to be egalitarian, just to walk around in Valentino.