Monthly Archives: January 2014

The polar vortex has me in a rut. Nothing too serious, but the past few days have definitely been an “it’s too cold to leave the house so why even change out of my pajamas?” situation.

Such are the dangers of working from home. In spending a year trying to channel my favorite celebrities for my upcoming book Jennifer, Gwyneth & Me, I was able get myself in the habit of getting dressed in the morning (I know this shouldn’t even need to be a habit and instead, like, common courtesy, but it’s surprisingly easy to find yourself at 4 pm still in PJs) but polar vortexes throw a wrench in that lifestyle. The temperature was something like -11 degrees yesterday. It hurt to breathe when I left the house to get my diet coke.

As a result, I’ve spent a lot of time daydreaming about vacations. For some reason I can’t stop thinking about Paris, which is strange because it isn’t especially warm there either (though it’s currently 42 degrees, which I’d take in a heartbeat). And my daydreams aren’t even of regular Paris, but specifically of Carrie-Bradshaw-at-the-end-of-Sex-and-the-City Paris. You know, when she’s wearing the striped top with the big rose, or meeting bookstore owners who want to throw her impromptu dinner parties with too much wine. In my daydreams,  I am the one carrying the red umbrella and wearing the polka-dot dress and heels, despite knowing that walking cobblestone streets in heels is difficult and painful and horribly un-graceful and I would most definitely sprain an ankle.

Am I the only one who does this? Does anyone else find themselves fantasizing not just of warmer climates, but of themselves as fictional characters IN those climates? Someone out there has daydreamed of being Audrey Hepburn outside Tiffany’s, right? Or in The Holiday’s version of LA, Kate Winslet-style? Maybe I should just put on some heels and walk around the house. It’s not Paris, but heels may be the lift (har har) I need.

Remember when an actor was just an actor, and a singer was just a singer? Me neither, really, but I’m pretty sure it was a thing once.

Now every celebrity has her own fashion line, or cookbook, or blog empire. It started with Goop, Gwyneth’s (divisive) website/weekly newsletter dedicated to telling regular women how to live as fabulously as she does (spoiler alert: it involves trips to Marrakesh and $90 t-shirts and weekly blow-outs). Heidi Klum followed suit, with Heidi Klum on AOL, “a little bit of everything that I love, including fashion and beauty, fitness and nutrition, lifestyle, entertaining, recipes, parenting and more.” Jessica Alba wrote The Honest Life. Cameron Diaz wrote The Body Book. Just this week I learned that Drew Barrymore is the new editor-at-large for the style website Refinery29 and Rashida Jones is the new relationship columnist for Glamour. 

Any celebrity who wants to stay in the fame game, it seems, has to have her hand in the “how to be fabulous” business.

I’m not against this, I don’t think. I subscribe to Goop. I own that Jessica Alba book. I’ll basically do whatever Jennifer Aniston or Kristen Bell or Mindy Kaling tell me to. And I really like Drew Barrymore, so I’m perfectly happy to learn more about her favorite breakfast sandwich. I believe that their lives are more fabulous and exciting than mine, so who am I to turn away from advice, or reject a peek into their daily rituals. If I want to be more like them, that seems a good place to start.

On the other hand… I do wonder what qualifies Gwyneth and Jessica and Drew et al as experts. Just being famous? Having money? Granted the whole “lifestyle expert” title is pretty all-encompassing (I define it as “person who exists”), so really it can be tacked onto just about anyone. Celebrities live really well because they have access and moolah. They have help. And thus they have time. And maybe it’s not exactly fair for them to be telling us how we should live, when most of us are short on the access and the moolah and the help and the time.

But back to that first hand…We are [I am?] hungry for celebrity everything. We devour Us Weekly and People. We watch the Kardashians (did you  know that after Kourtney named her son Mason the name shot up to #2 in the most popular baby names for boys? Number 2!). We tweet at Lena Dunham. If there’s a market for their lifestyle advice, isn’t it ok for the starlets to capitalize on that?

And yet, to that second hand again. I love Rashida Jones. I really do. She’s funny. She rallied against pop-star crotch shots. She also happens to be stunning. But still, what makes her a relationship expert? She’s not married or in a long-term relationship, as far as I know. (I think maybe she’s dating this guy?) She’s not a therapist. She’s just a really smart, funny, beautiful woman. Which isn’t nothing, and maybe qualifies her to give her thoughts about relationships as much as anyone, but when I hear “expert” I want credentials. Maybe that’s just me.

Clearly, I’m torn. At first I was all about the celebrity-as-lifestyle-guru, since I’d like the confidence and togetherness and altogether fabulosity of my favorite celebs. I want to walk down the street and ooze cool instead of my current I-wore-these-sweatpants-to-bed-what-of-it? state. But the market is getting saturated. Now that any beautiful female celebrity can double as a connoisseur of, um, life, I’m getting over it. I mean, how many green juice recipes does one girl need? Just put the kale in the blender and be done with it.

What do you guys think? Do you flock to this sort of celebrity lifestyle content? Is there one celeb in particular who deserves the lifestyle guru title? Or is it all BS? These aren’t rhetorical questions, I really want to know. Do tell!