This is Carlizina Jolectron, the latest Hollywood beauty. While she doesn’t look at all like any Hollywood celebrity we know, she does look eerily familiar. That is because she really is a composite of three actresses we know: she has the lips of Angelina Jolie, the eyes of Carmen Electra and the nose of Charlize Theron.
She is just one of the entries of Worth1000.com’s contest to find the ultimate celebrity. The contest came a week after a survey by Beverly Hills’ plastic surgeons named the most desirable celebrity body parts requested by their customers: Angelina Jolie’s full lips, Katie Holmes’ doe-eyes, Keira Knightley’s high cheekbones and Katherine Heigl’s button nose. Here’s one more…

That’s Michelle Pfeiffer and Charlize Theron combined.This whole Photoshop contest got me thinking. There was a movie several years ago called S 1 M 0 N E. It tells the story of Viktor Taransky, a movie director who goes to extreme lengths to save his latest film — and his career. After the lead actress (played by Winona Ryder, if my memory serves me right) drops out of his latest project, he replaces her with an entirely CGI/digitally mastered-character. His creation becomes a major star and an international sensation. Taransky must continue the charade to save face and save his career. The charade goes on until the film’s end.

We now have the capacity to “make” celebrities–well, not literally like Simone (by the way, Simone is short for SIMulation ONE). Not yet anyway. But we do “make” our celebrities nowadays. The proliferation of reality shows like American Idol, America’s Next Top Model, etc. is proof of this and is really society’s way of “shortcutting” the whole celebrity-making process.

Celebrities in the past gradually made it over time–they make movies, and/or model products, and they slowly gather a following, win the Oscars and become known all over the world. Some of them die young–James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Di, John Lennon. Others endure over time–Michael Jackson, Liz Taylor. Others move on to alternative careers–Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Foreman, Ronald Reagan. But they earn their chops. They go through the process. And this process usually takes years.

Nowadays, the process is short-circuited by holding a contest over national (or international) television. Even before they win, or lose, or get booted out, they have become celebrities. They literally become celebrities before our very eyes. This is society’s (or showbiz’s) sure-fire formula of making celebrities nowadays–gather unknown talents from all over, give them a make-over so they look good on camera, hold a contest over international television, tell people interesting tidbits about them–sometimes this means digging up nude photos of the contestants taken when they were college students somewhere or looking for skeletons in their closets, put in (three) experts to be the “voice of wisdom” in the whole process and make people vote for their “idol”.

And we vote for them. In the end, American Idol has shown us what we’ve known all along about celebrities: it is really about OUR VOTE of confidence. We may not have voted literally before, but celebrities in the past became celebrities because people have “voted” for them–watched their movies, paid for the products they endorsed, bought magazines with their pictures in it. American Idol has just turned it over its head and said–this, people, is how you make an idol. When in fact that is how we’ve always made celebrities and idols in the past anyway–that was just a longer, more circuitous route.

And amazingly, it works because we want to (feel that we) have a stake at everything. It is a human need to “vote”. Cavemen leaders became heads of their packs because the rest of their cavemen posse gave them the vote of confidence to lead. Kings became kings partly because they have a whole band of paid soldiers protecting them (and the human fact that says “money is power” is an altogether different topic of another post), but also because the people under them allow them to–which is a skewed version of a vote.

We want to have a “stake” at the life of our celebrities. That is why we love reading about the latest juicy tidbit about them. That is why we buy magazines with celebrity sightings and paparrazi shots: them in skimpy bikinis somewhere in the Maldives or their upskirts or in their drunken disheveled moments. We want to “humanize” them–strip them of their make-up, without their celebrity gowns, without jewelry, and to their barest essentials.

Probably in our heart of hearts we want to be celebrities ourselves. And to see them “human” and “real” makes it more probably for us to join their ranks. At one time or another, we have imagined what life would be like if we were in their shoes.

The paradox of celebrity is this: we make them–like Carlizina Jolectron–into our own likeness, into what we think they should be. But they also have the capacity to “make” us as well. Because we imitate them–buy the face cream they use, use the shampoo they endorse, go to their salon, wear the wardrobe they wore to the Oscars.

And when some of them do not fit the mold that we have created, they lose our vote of confidence. And they are the one-hit wonders, the instant celebrities who go back to anonymity in an instant as well.

Some have endured because of our vote of confidence, and sometimes despite our vote of non-confidence. These are the lucky few.

These are the ones worthy to be called celebrities.

And we’re still voting for them until now.