A very common phenomenon
Tony Curtis talking to a lot of people he doesn’t know. Washington DC, February 2007.
U.S. Navy image in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
“[Fame is] like having Alzheimer’s Disease. You don’t know anybody, but they all know you.” — Tony Curtis
“Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to be insulted.” — Sammy Davis Jr.
“Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.” — Cary Grant
“With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon.” — Albert Einstein
This post is for everyone who has ever felt overlooked or under-appreciated. I suspect that includes most of us. Today we hear directly from those who have been there and know: fame isn’t always as wonderful as it may appear to be.
If you’re reading this blog, it almost certainly means you aren’t famous. Today, I encourage you to join me in celebrating our (relative) anonymity. Though social media and ever-intrusive forms of surveillance have seriously compromised the privacy we once took for granted, we can still go to the grocery store without being mobbed for autographs or castigated for our political views. As celebrities might be quick to tell you, that’s something for which to be thankful.
Go ahead — have as many bad hair days as you like, wear your most comfortable clothing, and ditch the self-conscious worries about what people are going to think of you. Unless you have someone nearby snapping cell phone photos and posting them to Instagram, no one is likely to notice. Besides, even the people you may see face to face probably are looking more at their smart phones or portable devices than they are looking at you. In a weird way, the digital revolution may actually give some of us MORE privacy than we had before.
So dress for less stress, and I’ll see you at Kohl’s or Cracker Barrel or Target. But you might not recognize me. I would never post a photo online that shows what I actually look like most of the time! 😀
One year ago today:
This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.
- Posted in: Uncategorized
- Tagged: anonymity, audience, celebrity, confidence, critics, fame, glory, praise, self-conciousness
Defeat Despair 
