The truth about celebrities and PC culture? They all kinda suck at it

BEING PC – politically correct – isn’t a new concept. In fact, it’s been around since the 1900s; it was first used to mean that a person was following the policies or principles of their given party. 

Over time, the meaning of the term has transformed. Now, what people refer to as PC culture refers to using language that’s not offensive to any group, be it of race, gender, culture, sexual orientation, or otherwise. 

The responses to this culture have been mixed thus far. Many see it as a great avenue for people – minorities like African-Americans, Asians, and queer people, for example – for inclusivity, as seen in how more and more roles in Hollywood are being given to people of color instead of to white people, which is what so many have grown accustomed to. 

Others, though, seem to view it as a threat to free speech, saying that it’s simply a new way for people to censor the thoughts and feelings of others. Some even felt that it was a new form of discrimination, particularly against men or white people. 

The start of cancel culture

Stemming from PC culture, “call-out culture” became famous in the early 2010s and is known for calling out celebrities for what people have deemed to be problematic behavior. 

Following this was “cancel culture,” which many believe to have first been used during the 1990s, and evolved in the 2000s to mean boycotting people who have done offensive things. 

Some celebrities get canceled for things they’ve done recently: Lizzo, for example, was canceled by the internet after a few of her backup dancers filed a lawsuit against her, stating that the singer had fat-shamed one of them among a number of other accusations.

Quickly, the tweets started pouring in, with people saying things like “I’m glad Lizzo is canceled,” or even that her getting canceled was a great feeling. 

Even mistakes you made in the past can get you canceled, too. Chrissy Teigen was called out for tweets she’d made back in 2011, telling a woman to “go to sleep forever.” 

YouTuber Zoella was also called out for saying, “I find it funny when gay men spit, it’s like they’re trying to be a bit macho but it never works,” in 2010. 

In the realm of cancel culture, practically no one is safe. But is that really a bad thing? 

Expecting perfection

At their core, cancel and PC culture were made with good intentions in mind; for example, PC culture would’ve come in handy when actress Brooke Shields was a child. 

Can you imagine taking up the role of a prostitute at just 12 years old, starring in an R-rated film that you can’t even watch given your age? 

Or having to shoot several ‘sexy’ advertisements for Calvin Klein, having to say, “Do you know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing,” at just 15 years old? 

Or starring in The Blue Lagoon at just 14 years old, having to be swapped out with a body double for nude scenes, and then starring in Endless Love released just a year later, which had the same overly sexual themes? 

This doesn’t even cover all the horrible things Shields had to endure as a child. Now, at 57 years old, she’s still healing from the trauma that she went through then. She herself has said that she’s surprised that she’s managed to get through it all. 

“She was catapulted into the world of adult sexuality,” said actress Christina Applegate in the documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.

“I just always remembered thinking: I hope she’s okay.”

In the world of PC culture today, it’s doubtful that the same would’ve happened. 

Over time, though, it seems in the present day that being “politically correct” has been misconstrued into something entirely different: something driven more by hate and ego rather than a need for justice.

Cancel culture used to be a way of calling out problematic behavior and holding people accountable for their bad actions but it’s since seemed to evolve into a puritanical cleansing.

Here, any form of bad behavior – whether one’s apologized for it or not, whether one has changed or not – means people think you should be banished off the face of the earth. 

Even celebrities have started to speak up about how unfair this culture has grown to be. In the past, for example, Lizzo compared cancel culture to appropriation. 

“There was real outrage from truly marginalized people and now it’s become trendy, misused, and misdirected, [and] I hope we can phase out of this and focus our outrage on the real problems ” she’d said.

It’s understandable to want the people that you like to be good people. But as per the wise words of comedian John Mulaney: “Famous people are weird as sh*t.”

In one of his skits, he recounted some of his experiences as a former writer for Saturday Night Live with celebrities like Mick Jagger, where he’d said that celebrities aren’t always nice – or maybe they are, at least, for their version of life.

This, perhaps, is the best advice when it comes to dealing with the behavior of celebrities, especially if you stan some of them particularly hard: if you expect too much, you’re always going to find yourself disappointed. 

It may be sad, but that’s the truth. They’re only human after all.

Always gonna be disappointed

Perhaps one thing that I’ve never understood about our world today is why we expect such nuanced takes from the celebrities we see shaking their asses on national television and getting lip fillers to look good for the tabloids. 

Not that I’m shaming them for doing so – all I’m saying is that at the end of the day, they’re people.

They’re people that got famous for singing, or dancing, or rapping, or acting, or whatever else caught the public’s eye. They’re not members of the academia who have studied Feminist Theory, or are well-versed on the topics of socialism, communism, capitalism, and the like. 

For a lot of them, using weird like “F*ck the patriarchy” and “Eat the rich” are the most groundbreaking things we can expect. 

I’m not saying that we should never hold celebrities accountable for their actions, ever. Obviously when a celebrity is accused of something like sexual assault (hello, Harvey Weinstein) or racism (hello, Kanye West,) then they deserve to be called out for their behavior. 

But if we’re going to nitpick each and every bad thing a celebrity does, or every dumb little statement that they make, then I fear that we’ll have no “good” celebrities left. Why? 

Because in the real world, there is seldom a wholly good person or a wholly bad one. Though some may break that rule – Hitler, for example – the vast majority of people are just that: people.