Talents and fans

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

Distant stars are always the brightest. The inaccessible and inaccessible men are always the best. The forbidden fruit is the sweetest … What makes hundreds and thousands of women look at the TV screen with loving eyes, catch every word, every sound, every smile of a complete stranger? What is special about him if she is willing to spend long evenings with magazine clippings about him, and not with men in the flesh? And how to protect oneself from the magic charms of popularity, from the illusion that it was on this character that the light came together like a wedge?..

Alina, a neighbor in the stairwell, whom I have known for many years, led me to these thoughts. As a child, she was in love with Elvis Presley, whom her parents listened to, in her youth - with Duncan McCloud and D'Artagnan, who were for her a model of masculinity, then with half of the male characters in the television series Ambulance. At first, the fascination with screen heroes was quite harmless, but over the years everything became much worse …

Symptoms of serious falling in love with an idol are in most cases about the same. The only difference is in the degree of involvement in the labyrinths of their own experiences …

… She talks to him out loud. She writes him long diary letters, in which she confesses with the sincerity of a child, and never sends them. She watches all films with his participation, and, recording them on cassettes, she revises them twice a week. Cuts out articles about him from magazines, collects his photographs. Only one hero lives in her erotic fantasies - He. She masturbates with him, because you can't run away from the needs of your body, and the men who are nearby look so little like him … And, besides, they should be attractive, be able to flirt and chirp about nothing, to become a competitive woman who is ready to charm the best of the best. And He, the only one, unique and amazing, could have already seen her untainted soul, understood all her impulses and aspirations, turned from Cinderella into a Beautiful Princess….

An addicted, almost manic craving for an unattainable man, despite the fact that you are on opposite sides of the television screen, and sometimes even on opposite sides of the ocean. There is even a special term proposed by Vladimir Levy: pedestalization is a quick and energetic rise of a loved one, or rather, his image in our eyes, to an unattainable height, in a halo of infallibility and perfection …

We fall in love with the image that we have invented for ourselves. We endow someone with those qualities that, sometimes, unsuccessfully seek in life. A beautiful male appearance, one hundred percent charm, the ability to aesthetically hold oneself in public and speak or sing excitingly, masculinity and real sexuality - all this attracts attention and delights, all this is attributed not to the stage image of the screen hero, but to the person with whom we are fascinated. And if this is an actor, then it is very difficult to separate the character from the performer, because all the characters played by Richard Gere in the eternal role of "hero-lover" have Richard Gere's eyes, his body, his smile. We look for what we lack in idols: good guys, noble knights and skillful lovers. And it does not occur to him that he is angry, capricious or irritated. That he might have a bad temper …

A problem is what is experienced as a problem. And unrequited love is what is experienced as love. You can understand intellectually that if you took in a homeless kitten, there would be more love in the world than from suffering when looking at a photo of a distant idol, but for some reason you continue to cherish and cherish your feelings. Although from such love no one becomes warmer. Yes, and you do not become happy, and after all, you are a person worthy of love …

Manic love for an idol, which manifested itself in adolescence with a dysfunctional passage of the difficulties of transitional age, in crisis conditions or in people with a hysterical disposition, can take extreme forms. There is even such a special term, which came from American slang and appeared during the first wave of violent love for rock stars - "groupie". As a rule, groupies are teenage girls raving about pop stars, everywhere following the objects of passion and ready for any kind of service, including sexual … most likely, sexual. Forming a "support group" for the musicians, the insanely enthusiastic girls could not separate love for music from love for performers, and love for performers from quite normal sexual attraction. And, getting excited by the familiar chords played by other men's hands, they wanted to be in these hands, to touch the "idol" at any cost, by any means … In the book about the history of the "Rolling Stones" the following fact is given: as many as 287 "groupie friends" for each!.. Fans watched them on the street, in cafes, in hotel rooms, managing to hide from guards even in closets … And the musicians, naturally, did not take on the functions of moral education of the generation and did not a vow of chastity, and even a rare man, spoiled by fame and power, will resist the temptation to enjoy a young girl's body and other parts of his stellar body floating in his arms … In addition, fanaticism can be dangerous, and not only for the fans themselves, but and for objects of worship.

Militant fans are people (most often teenagers aged 13-19) with sharply low self-esteem. They strive to join something "great", thus increasing their own significance. Psychologists consider the behavior of fanatical fans to be a deviation from normal behavior, and say that in most cases, they no longer need calming friendly participation, but professional psychological and medical help.

True, if adolescent love for an idol is not so extreme, then this is a completely normal, almost inevitable, stage of growing up. Whole generations, in their youth "recovered" from such love, have grown into successful and full-fledged people. And hippie youth is a reason to tell a true story to grandchildren …

The peculiarities of a child's love for an idol are not only and not so much in riot and fanaticism (this does not happen so often), but in the fact that a growing up person can not yet clearly separate the creativity so cute to him from the performer himself, he often does not able to share love for the result and love for the source. And at this age, the sex of the idol does not really matter - in the girl's love for a fashionable singer there is not even a hint of a sexual background. By the way, according to polls, the most ardent fans of Britney Spears are girls aged 7 - 8 years. They strive to imitate their idol in everything and, oddly enough, very often this is even beneficial. The twelve-year-old daughter of a friend of mine learned English in order to understand the lyrics of all the songs and started dancing to learn how to move in the same way. It is better to try to direct the child's interest in a positive direction than to repeat from day to day about the enormity of his addictions and about the fact that at his age you were dragged exclusively from Mozart …

If obsessive love for an idol manifests itself not in adolescence, but in quite mature, and replaces real life, then the reasons are likely to lie in low self-esteem,and often in a banal inability to communicate, or in a romantic desire to escape from the gray hateful everyday life. In general, "I want a sweet life …". But girls, inclined to romanticize their feelings for an idol and idealize an object of worship, often withdraw into themselves and pass by real people, by, perhaps, their own destiny. They spend invaluable time in their lives on imaginary feelings, depriving themselves of true love …

What to do if someone close to you is too carried away by an unattainable character? How can you help if, for all reasonable arguments, he (or, most likely, she) only sighs pitifully and sadly looks at you in search of sympathy? Here's what you can try:

1) Try to subtly distract. Not by persuasion and explanations, but by some interesting business in which she will feel significant. From creative party organization to charity work.

2) Offer her an unexpected option - to transform her hobby into her own hobby! She is in love with an actor, singer or musician - great! In order to understand how the idol lives, she can go to acting classes, take vocal lessons, master the guitar or restore her school piano skills! Following this path, she will quickly meet like-minded people, and among them there are very nice and quite real personalities …

3) Take her to the gym, aerobics class, or the pool. Firstly, playing sports and regular physical activity "cleanse" the brain, because when the body is really tired, it will be difficult to think about the imaginary needs of the spirit, and secondly, there may be "hairy muscular basketball players" who pull all the female attention to themselves, and thirdly, it is useful in any case …

4) Expand the circle of her acquaintances! Introduce her to your friends, the friends of your friends and buddies, or any other good people. Everything works here: from visiting your favorite club on weekends to a joint hiking trip. The main thing is that there are interesting and worthy people around all the time.

5) Encourage her to use her feelings for creative purposes. A huge number of masterpieces were created thanks to the ebullient energy of unrequited love. For example, she can write a story of her feelings and tell it to people. Or start writing poetry. Perhaps she will discover talents that were unknown to her before …

What if not someone is in love with a distant "star", but you? What then to do ?! In general, everything is the same.

The rescue of drowning people is the work of the drowning people themselves!..

And by the way, obsessive cravings for a popular man are a signal of unsatisfied sexuality. Because when everything is in order not only in your soul, but also in bed, you have neither the strength nor the desire to get excited by the picture! And the idol is the talking picture! As soon as everything becomes really good in your sex life, love craving for an idol will slowly but surely turn into love for art, and the characters will separate from the performers …

In order to pull yourself out of the swamp of unhappy love by the hair, you can try to dig up some "comrade in misfortune", or rather, a sister in mind, and try to help her. Firstly, as one of the greats said, best of all we teach what we do not know how to do ourselves, and secondly, by helping your neighbor, you will most likely help yourself …

It is much worse if you can reach the idol you are in love with. After all, "local stars" are also becoming idols: teachers, teachers, leaders, popular and fashionable in their circle, and all kinds of musicians, poets or actors who have not even reached the rank of "super-star". Of course, this means that you are just a fan, a person from the crowd, and not a friend or at least a close acquaintance, because in this case your relationship may work out quite well, but this is already a relationship between a man and a woman, not talent and fan. The most severe disappointments happen if you find that you have endowed the chosen one with features that did not exist and that you came up with, watching how he smiles at people. The farther a man is from you, the greater the chance of falling in love with a ghost. You should not chase ghosts when there are a lot of interesting and bright people around, you just need to just see them. And without creating an idol for yourself, you can yourself become an idol for someone. For the many admirers of your talent or for your One …