Crushing

by Allison Pang

I've been thinking on and off about this topic for the last few days and to be honest...I'm at a bit of a loss. I mean, it's not that I don't crush to celebrities - I do...but not as much as I used to. (Maybe I just don't have time.)

When I was younger, crushing was easy. All a young girl had to do was get the latest issue of Bop or Tiger Beat or whatever fluff piece of crap mag that was out. And it would be full of little pull outs and pin ups of hottie teenage superstars, along with cute little nuggets of information guaranteed to make our pre-teen hearts swoon.

"You mean Hottie McHotterson likes kittens and long walks on the beach too? OMG we're SOUL-MATES!"

And of course, this was all before Twitter and Facebook and all that fun social networking stuff that so many celebrities have embraced, so the most we could do is send off a letter to a fanclub address somewhere and be ecstatic when we got a signed print 6 months later.

And that was about it. You watched them in your favorite TV show or movie and dreamed your little dreams and off you went.

And maybe that's all it really should be about. Because these days it's all too easy to get more than a casual glimpse into a celebrity's life. And while we're usually only seeing one facet of their personality, sometimes that's more than enough to break the illusion of who we thought they were. (And it really can get depressing - drug use, explosive tempers, conflicting political views, whatever.)

At any rate, to stay on topic here, I don't know if I have any celebrity crushes at this point. And those of you who know me are going to wag your fingers and say "what about *that* guy?" And you'd be right...except I've met him a few times and the reality doesn't live up to the hype. One of the dangers of actually cutting through that fourth wall, I suppose. (And no, I'm not naming names.)

I'll admit to liking a fair number of the people listed by my fellow word-whores this week - Viggo, Hugh Jackman, Johnny Depp - but as I analyze who I find myself crushing on, it's pretty obvious to me that it's way more than just a pretty face. As has been pointed out earlier, for celebs, they all seem to have their heads on straight, with stable family lives...and who often march to the beat of their own drum.

And if I want to go super deep, I'll admit to myself that it's not even the celebrity I that I might be crushing on, but the character they play. Two totally different things (and a rather unfair comparison...because really, Hugh Jackman *isn't* Wolverine, no matter how much I might wish it. Although it does crack me up to learn that his wife made him keep his X-men costume for...personal use. And if it was me? I'd do it too.)