Confession time.
We have all celebrities that we care about more than others, those movie stars or musical artists or political figures that we admire and follow closely. Sometimes we might even get a little bit obsessed, read their wikipedia page a few times, check their personal websites, and follow them on twitter. We start to feel like we know these people even though we’ve never spoken a single word to them in real life and they have no idea that we exist.
At least, I’m assuming that’s not just me.
One celebrity that I feel like I actually know (or should know, anyway) is Hilary Duff. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she is only eighteen days younger than I am.
I met her in the same way most kids our age did, in that hour or so between school and dinner, when she was on Lizzie Maguire. At the time I really watched the show for the little brother, Matt, but I began to pay more attention to her when she starred in some films and her music videos started playing on Disney channel.
I decided I liked her when I saw her in theater-released movies such as Raise Your Voice and The Perfect Man. When I downloaded Metaphormasis, I had to admit that she was my guilty pleasure listening choice (leading the way to other teen pop choices such as Justin Beiber and One Direction. Sorry, guys, I know I have poor taste in music).
In the past few years she hasn’t acted as much, but I managed to catch her in According to Greta, and I checked up on her every once and a while to make sure she wasn’t doing anything important that I needed to know about.
After all her teenage relationship drama with Aaron Carter and Joel Madden, I was glad to hear that in the past few years she has settled down. She married a hockey player and has a daughter who is only a little younger than my own. Her pursuits other than acting include writing a series of children’s books.
When I see that Hilary Duff turned out a lot more normal and less messed up than most child stars (cough Lindsey Lohan cough), I feel proud of her, as if I had something to do with it.
So what does Hilary Duff and my faux relationship with her have to do with my writing career? Nothing really, excpet that it might suprise you to find out that it has taken me so long to model one of my characters after her.
No, I’m not writing a story about a girl who was a movie star and then was a musician and then became a mom. (Oh wait, I did write a story like that, but that was a long time ago and wasn’t at all what I was talking about. Heh.) I mean I’m writing about a strong, independent, basically perfect young woman who has everything going for her. I don’t know what Hilary’s life looks like from the inside, but from here it looks pretty perfect.
So now I have a character named Cameille who looks pretty much like Hilary Duff and will face her life problems in the same way that pretty much every Hilary Duff character has faced hers: with cheerfulness, determination, and maybe even some song.
Hilary Duff isn’t perfect, and neither is my character, but anyway, I was just thinking about all these things as I pre-wrote my next short story today and listened to some Hilary Duff.
And that is how things are going with me.