It’s 2023: Let’s Stop Saying That Celebrities Can’t Have Feelings

I’m gonna paint you a picture. You’re scrolling through your phone sometime in the past year or two, and a headline about Kim

Kardashian’s divorce with Kanye West pops up. You click on it and read the details of another scandal -- Kanye said something awful about Kim online, and now it’s all anyone can talk about. Then maybe a clip pops up from a particularly emotional episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, in which Kim is sobbing because she feels terrible about the situation with Kanye, her sisters desperately trying to comfort her. Kim may be privileged, a little mean, and pretty unlikeable, but you can’t help but feel bad for her at this moment, right? Right?

In the past decade or so, we as a society tend to disregard the emotions of the rich and famous, even going so far as to shame them for complaining or expressing any negative emotion, which are things that everybody does. Even when we do express our sympathy towards celebrities, we almost always belittle whatever they’re suffering in the same sentence. You’ve probably heard this before: “I mean, I know so-and-so is like, super wealthy, but I still feel bad for them.” And while yes, the rich and famous don’t have to worry about feeding their kids or paying the bills, that doesn’t mean their lives are easy. 

Recently, I watched the Harry & Meghan docuseries on Netflix, in which they spilled many of the details of their time in the royal family. The British royals are often regarded as the most privileged of the privileged, yet, at least for me, that whole idea was upended after watching the show. One expert in the docuseries described being a royal, and I’m paraphrasing here, but as something along the lines of “living in a gilded cage.” The individual members have very little freedom about where they can go or what they can do, less so than the average British or American citizen. The show goes into great detail about how, in exchange for their living expenses being paid for by British taxpayers, the royals give up all semblance of privacy. Every single part of their day-to-day life is exploited by UK tabloids, who will do anything to blow up drama by spreading scandalous and harmful rumors. 

Watching the show, I felt extremely bad for Meghan Markle, who teared up as she talked about how she had felt unsafe in her own home due to harassment from the press. The UK tabloids have always had a massive influence on public opinion in the nation, and when Meghan first began dating Prince Harry they had made her seem like a manipulative monster from a poor, trashy background, an inaccurate depiction that seemed to be heavily based on her race. Their depiction caused waves of people online to hate her, some going so far as to say they wanted her dead. 

I was also deeply moved by Prince Harry’s suffering in his early life -- after the death of his mother, Princess Diana, he wasn’t allowed to grieve in public, and was later painted as a rebellious teen as he tried to cope with his loss. Harry, unlike Meghan or his late mother, was raised as a royal, yet the tragedies of his life far surpass anybody I know. That’s not to say that he’s experienced more pain than anybody ever -- of course there are millions who have been through far worse, but his upbringing was by no means easy. 

The thing is, despite the effort that Harry & Meghan made to explain that, even though all the living expenses of the royal family are taken care of by UK taxpayers, it’s not nearly as glamorous or fun as it seems, there was still backlash and insensitivity towards their plight. I watched the docuseries with my mom, who had talked about it with some of her coworkers, and a few felt that it was “tone-deaf and that Harry and Meghan were unlikeable.” Online, I’ve seen several people belittling and invalidating the couple’s feelings, and I know a few people personally who don’t want to see it because they think that people in such a position as the royals have nothing to complain about. And yes, all their problems are first-world. But when I think about Meghan and her family being stalked not just on the internet but at her actual home, being constantly judged by the media and the public, being depicted as something she wasn’t because more drama = more clicks, and on top of that having people who she thought loved and cared about her, including her father, sell her out to the press for money, I think maybe it’s time we show a little more empathy. Those are horrible things that almost none of us have to deal with, so how can we tell celebrities that they shouldn’t be upset about it? 

Now, I know I sound preachy, and it is a bit hypocritical of me because I’m guilty of invalidating famous people’s feelings as well, but it’s a new year. So although I don’t usually do resolutions, I think this is a pretty easy one. This year, I want to look past the privileges of the extremely wealthy, and recognize that loss and hardship is loss and hardship -- my mother didn’t die in a horrible car accident when I was young, so I have no right to say that Prince Harry has had it easy. And I’ve never had to divorce an egotistical (and anti-Semitic), unstable person while the details of my relationship are broadcast to the whole world, so I’m not gonna tell Kim Kardashian, no matter how unlikeable she may be, to stop complaining. There are so many horrible things that I will probably never have to experience but that a famous person has -- I’ll never be under a conservatorship for over a decade like Britney Spears, or be painted as a rebellious youth by the media every time I make a mistake like all the celebrities who got famous as  kids, or be constantly told that I don’t deserve my success like any Tik Tok star who tries to break into the mainstream. Famous people experience tragic and unfortunate things just like the rest of us, so let’s stop telling the Prince Harrys, Meghan Markles, Kim Kardashians, Britney Spearses, Miley Cyruses, and Charli D’Amelios of the world that they don’t have a right to be unhappy or to complain.