THE IMPORTANCE OF IDOLS

Hi Readers,

I want to start by apologising for the lack of posts for the last couple of weeks. Last week I sat my final exam, so I've been super busy revising, stressing and freaking out over the future! Instead I thought I'd post tonight as well as on Sunday so that I'm semi-caught up! 

If you were mad enough to read the first version of this blog about three years ago, where I was massively inconsistent and all over the place, you may remember a post I did about meeting the people you idolise. This is kind of a recreation of that post. 

The inspiration behind this post comes from the highly publicised story a few years ago involving Ian Watkins, the singer from the Lostprophets. In case you didn't know, the singer was convicted of some of the worst sex offences you could possible imagine, which is even what the judge of the case at the time said. He was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison for offences involving incredibly young children, alongside the mother of one of these babies who encouraged the whole ordeal. 

The story shocked everyone, but especially the fans of the band, including me. An old friend of mine attended a Lostprophets concert around two months before Watkins' crimes hit the media. Like many people do after a concert, he waited around outside to meet his favourite band, only to be disappointed when the lead singer was ushered away from fans and straight onto the tour bus. The devastation he caused to his family, friends and anyone involved with him was massive, but to the people who had no idea what he was really like and idolised him so much so that he was in a position to use his fame to commit these crimes were arguably even more shocked and upset by his actions. 

This led me to thinking about whether we should ever aspire to meet our idols. After almost any rock gig, fans will crowd around tour buses in the hopes that their favourite band will come out and take photos with them. I have friends who have been invited to parties with their favourite bands. Everyone I know has been lucky in that the idols they have met have been polite and courteous to them. But the people we see on camera, in videos or movies are not real people. Anyone in any kind of limelight will act in a certain way in order to make fans and admirers happy, which means that when we meet them we are often disappointed. We put famous people on such high pedestals that when we realise they are just normal people it can have an enormous effect on us. So maybe it is better to go to a gig and simply enjoy the music and atmosphere, or go to the cinema and enjoy a movie than it is to go all the way to be disappointed by your idol just for the sake of a new Facebook profile picture. If we can be happy in continuing our perception of our favourite famous people, and consider that meeting them will always be unachievable those idols will always be good, funny, romantic, or whatever they portray from a distance. If we never seek to meet and become friends or lovers with our idols and these things remain fantasies to us, then we can never be disappointed by the people we hold highest in the world. 

Ian Watkins was a horrific, unimaginable exception, but now I'm happy to say that I never took a photo with him. I never told him I loved him (except one time when I tweeted him in 2010 asking him to marry me), and I never felt bitterly disappointed by the way he acted towards me when I met him, because I never did. When his horrific story came to light, it was easy to dismiss him as a monster. This, I feel, would be much harder to do if you were disappointed by someone you had one perception of that let you down in person.

As always thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this post! Let me know what you think - have you been disappointed by a famous person? Also be sure to come back on Sunday for my May Favourites! See you then! x

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