Fame is indeed a fickle thing. Chasing it is as insane as running purposefully towards unhappiness. Many sacrifice themselves for this kind of dream only to either get worn off by the constant running, never reaching peace, never really sure about having achieved their goal, or simply fall and get stamped over, burried under mockery and indifference.
Yesterday I was remembering one of these flickering stars, a lovely Italian singer known to the world as Tiziano Ferro. Sang song both in Spanish and Italian, maybe even in English, and was regarded for a speck por a moment, as the next Eros Ramazzotti. Then, one day he went missing, wiped off the face of the Universe as if he had never existed in the first place. The radio stations stopped broadcasting his songs, MTV stopped showing his vids and the magazines stopped printing his pictures on glossy paper. For someone who simply enjoyed his music, the sudden disappearance of the performer of songs such as "Perdono", "Non me lo so spiegare", "Sere nere" and "Rosso Relativo" was a mystery. The question hung in the air like the title of a horror movie from the black and white days.
"What Ever Happened to Tiziano Ferro?" The answer to this is far more bizarre than a movie by Robert Aldrich.
Stupid or not, Mr. Ferro was victim of his own fans, and fell under to thinking he had the right to an opinion and that he could voice it. It is said that once, in Italy, he commited the fatal mistake of saying that Mexican women are ugly. I've never been to Mexico, but from everyone who has been there I've heard one thing: beautiful cities, HIDEOUS women. It's like the ugliest women in the world are born there. And the thing is that it seems Mexican women don't look exactly like their telenovela counterparts, but they are just as vain, and so this mob of ugly women drawned him, pulled him down and stamped him into the mud.
From the point of view of an average person, this sounds ridiculous. So what if he thinks that Mexican women are ugly? He's job is to sing, not to ooze praises to women around the world. But truth is that the "right to an opinion" is exclusive of the mob. Regular people can have an opinion, celebrities have the opinion the people wants them to have. Looking at this I wonder why is there people still trying to be famous? Or is it that they already have no opinion, so they don't mind others telling them what should they think?
On the other hand, there's more sorrow in this incident that simply the denying of a human being to his opinion. There's the impact on women about one men thinking that they are ugly. First of all, why is it so important what one guy thinks? And if it weren't just one guy, but many, many guys, then what? A woman won't be prettier or uglier simply because others believe her one way or the other. Ugly, pretty, these are things that matter only when you think them about yourself. If you think you are pretty, then you are, and if you think you are ugly, then you are ugly. But no.
In pretty much every society the one worth women have are "beauty". Women dress up "to kill" and are expected to walk around looking beautiful and desirable. They must buy creams and make up and designer clothes and in exchange they expect to be called beautiful, because if they are not, then they are flawed. Naturally, many women, when called "normal" or "ugly" rant againt the "offender" instead of either give it a rat's ass, or doing something about it. But then again, with beauty feed you? Will beauty dress you? Will beauty educate you? Will beauty make you a house? And even if it does, what will happen when beauty wilts away? And this is the same question, the same topic I have been writing about for quite some time now.
LADIES: BEAUTY IS IRRELEVANT IF YOU ARE NOT A PERSON FIRST!Be... something. Have a personality. Have dreams, goals, temper, strenght... Measure yourselves by who you are, what you are capable of, through your virtues and flaws, through the things that make you who you are, and that stay, that remain with you, not flimsy things like beauty or youth. Of course, such a philosophy could throw down a multi-million industry that builds upon the low self-esteem of billions of women, killing them into extreme thinness, making feel unworthy those whose size is healthy, and not a tenth of it, making them believe that there's no happiness without a Louis Vuiton bag, or a Manolo Blahnik pair of shoes.
Truth is that there's more to life than fashion and beauty, and this comes from a Swatch and Benetton fan, so I guess I do have a say in this. However I know, simply know that these words won't make a dent on those who live deep inside the belly of this evil. How could they, after all these people has invested in this mistaken believe? After years of devoting to beauty, years of making a self image based on shallow values, how could they turn back? When years weight on their shoulders, years that might be many or just a few, but none of them dedicated to what really matters? It must be beyond painful.
So, back to our Italian singer, could this be the root of his crime? Shedding up light on the fact that they were all failing at the one goal they have set out for themselves? Where have we gotten to with this twisted perception of ourselves and others, specially when we won't stop a second to think when it comes to sacrifice someone for the sake of these "ideals"?
