The Absurd and Unfortunate Need For Celebrity Position Stances

I currently live with my boyfriend in a rental house in one of the more secluded parts of Austin.

Before that, we lived in an inner-city apartment with one of those mixed-use situations — where it’s tons of living units above a bunch of small businesses.

We don’t miss the noise of construction and dumpster trucks waking us up multiple times per week, but we do miss that convenience.

Once a month or so, we drive back there to visit our usual salon spots, and that’s what we did Sunday.

Brandon makes an appointment with his barber who works a few floors under our old place, and I tag along to get a walk-in pedicure at my fave nail place across the street.

Before, when we lived there, these were things we did separately, as they were a short elevator ride or walk away.

Now, it’s a couples thing that includes a little 20-minute joy ride and some pampering.

Afterwards, we met in the little plaza between our buildings while Brandon finished his slushy from the nearby market and my toes got to dry.

While he waited for me, he found some shoes he was thinking of buying on his phone. Since he’s shooting a music video for one of his songs soon, the outfit hunt is on and I love it. It’s a rare and fun thing to talk about shopping with a guy who lives most of his life in t-shirts like I do.

While I was getting my toes done, I was unfortunately enlightened in all kinds of confusing ways over my Instagram and Twitter feeds full of news about the Israel-Gaza War.

It’s obviously an absolute horrible and disastrous situation when innocent lives are lost.

I can’t imagine what the fuck I would do if that were to happening in my country, city, home or family.

My heart bleeds for those who are affected by the carnage.

Sorrow is the first and immediate feeling.

Then it’s quickly followed by disgust of internet discourse.

You guys know how obsessed I am about the joys and opportunities that being online affords us.

But it also unfortunately allows and creates platforms for the most unfortunate conversations and comments to take place.

Since I am not from Israel, have no Israeli familial ties, and have only a very recent and limited knowledge about how this conflict started, I KNOW DAMN WELL it’s not my place to comment on these happenings themselves.

I feel comfortable and qualified to say how sad I am that people are dying in the name of other people’s ideas, which has always been something I’m fundamentally against.

Other than that, I am well aware of how UNqualified I am to speak on anything further than that.

But it is obvious that other people don’t feel that way.

THE OUTRIGHT AUDACITY of so many humans who couldn’t point out Israel on a map who have to tell you what they think about it is wild.

THE INSANITY of celebrities and influencers giving any opinions or “insights” on the situation is embarrassing.

It sounds kind of strange to make this leap but hear me out…

If there’s one thing that coaching for so many years taught me it’s this:

KNOW WHEN YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR SCOPE OF PRACTICE AND SHOULD BE REFERRING TO OTHER (MORE QUALIFIED) PEOPLE

The people you follow for lifestyle and workout advice shouldn’t be giving position stances or explainer posts on this situation. (Unless they have specific knowledge or ties on the matter.)

The people you follow from high school or college shouldn’t be giving position stances or explainer posts on this situation. (Unless they have specific knowledge or ties on the matter.)

The actors in your favorite movies and shows shouldn’t be giving position stances or explainer posts on this situation. (Unless they have specific knowledge or ties on the matter.)

That said, another observation to be made here is that we’ve all collectively contributed to this expectation that everyone with an online presence SHOULD feel like they must make a public declaration regarding every issue in the news cycle.

I’m not entirely sure if the need for a celebrity stance comes from the pressure of their viewers, or from themselves, or from their teams trying to keep their clients relevant.

Regardless, it feels icky.

And believe me, I see the irony of this post I’m writing.

I’m literally taking a stance against taking stances lol it’s absurd

But I just feel like omission of opinion is sometimes less harmful than the alternative in our online society.

Like sure, show compassion and perhaps acknowledge that this war is occurring.

However, if your only education on the matter began after the first attacks this past weekend, please refrain from “teaching” your “followers”.

(That was me speaking to famous people who will never see this post I’m writing. Again, I see the irony here.)

So as I sign off on this rant about other people ranting, I feel sad and confused.

I suppose “sad” and “confused” are normal things to feel in war times.

We’ll throw “anger” and “despair” in there as well.

Also some weird guilt for having gratitude that I was privileged enough to be born in a place that hasn’t yet had to deal with the horrors of militant attacks of this scale.

See! I told you there were lots of feelings!

And again, not to shy away from the fact that none of this is about me, of course.

I feel disgusting that I’m even writing about it while being so relatively unaffected by it compared to the unfortunate humans currently in the war zone.

But that’s a whole different beef I’m constantly fighting with society — that we’re supposed to pretend we’re not thinking of ourselves all the time, when that’s actually all any one person is doing at any point in their lives. It’s our nature.

It’s probably where all this war commentary posturing even comes from to begin with…”if I publicly show that I’m in-the-know about this war, then my online reputation will be elevated”.

Ugh…Pretending we care about others more than ourselves creates it’s own vicious cycle that we can discuss in another post for another day.

For now, I’m going to go crawl in a hole and hopefully clear out some of these emos before we talk again tomorrow.

Thanks for reading ❤️

xoxo,

AV