why does the world need child stars?

Fairytales are all about making dreams come true. They're also full of evildoers who kidnap and exploit the young. These villains are often motivated by a desire to consume the pure life force embodied by the child or youth, thus cheating their own mortality. Other stories speak of the societal benefits of child sacrifice. The virgins fed to the Minotaur of Ancient Athens. More recently, the dystopian “tribute” system at the center of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series.

            Doesn’t this sacrificial business hit a tweeny bit close to home? Modern America is obsessed with youth. Young celebrities are made, marketed, and ravenously descended upon. Their faces flood pop culture and entire lines of clothing, cosmetics, and other commodities are made in their name. They are milked for all they’re worth and then - when thoroughly drained of appeal - they are discarded and replaced with a newer model. The majority of child stars who fail to remain cute or transition to more mature success in their early twenties fall into the cavern between stardom and normalcy. Robbed of their formative years, they lack the skills to live an ordinary adult life and often find themselves on a downward spiral that can prove dismal and (too often) deadly. They may not be fed to a monster or forced to fight to the death, but it still sounds like a sacrifice to me.

            Why do we do this? The life-sucking witches of lore crave the beauty and zest of their victims. As though the blithe loveliness of youth can be absorbed through osmosis. The real world counterpart to this theme is understandable. As George Bernard Shaw said “Youth is wasted on the young”. Wouldn’t it be great if just a little of the magic stuff could be shared with those who really appreciate it? It is natural to be charmed by a talented young person, and to feel revived by their insouciance. But do we really have to act so shocked, so personally slighted when they grow up? Every year we bringin a bright-eyed new all-singing, all-dancing crop of innocents, and every year at least one former member of that cohort enters rehab.

            How many muffin-faced tributes have to overdose before we start to accept blame? Rather than address the problem, we prefer to lazily point fingers whenever a Mouseketeer does anything remotely controversial. 

            But corporations like Disney and Nickelodeon aren’t trying to be controversial. They’re going for mass appeal. With that in mind they have cultivated a kind of junior sexuality. A way for, in particular, young girls to be physically alluring without being overtly provocative. When Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez (and Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera before them) were way underage, they were dressed up in variations on the classic abbreviated schoolgirl’s uniform that attracted attention without screaming SEX. All of these starlets eventually reached a point where it was time to graduate from junior sex appeal. And they all did so, each receiving various amounts of public abuse. The public enjoyed adoring them as cutie pie puppets, but it really enjoyed castigating them as women attempting to claim ownership of their sexuality.

            Encouraging a young female star’s junior sex appeal and then shunning her for getting raunchier with age is hypocritical, but it’s not the worst of it. The worst cases occur when a once-promising individual appears to have been permanently warped by growing up in the spotlight. Who don’t just go through a phase but are legitimately driven insane by spending their most volatile formative years in the twilight zone of fame. Those who never manage to live a normal life or, due to the habits born out of perpetual discomfort, are robbed of their life altogether.

            Some do manage to emerge from the gamut of vehicular manslaughter, and psychological breakdowns unscathed, but even the survivors seldom amount to much. Most fade into obscurity, unable to shake the dubious label of “child star” and we can only hope that their parents invested their earnings responsibly during their moment in the limelight. For every one Justin Timberlake there are a dozen degenerates and a hundred nobodies. And those who don’t make it are left with an unfair legacy, forever remembered as their most awkward selves. If my diaries and actions and fashion choices from my teenage years were somehow made public, I’d be a laughing stock. It may not make headlines, but it’s a humiliation not easily scrubbed off.  

            So in many if not most cases, the effects of child stardom are negative. Which leads me to my titular question. Is it possible to simply abandon the practice altogether? Surely the commercial and entertainment value of these doomed youngsters does not outweigh the toll it takes on their lives as adults? 

            Unless…the fact that they’re doomed is half the fun. Unless their downfall is built into their entertainment value as a grotesque second act. In our world of screens and short attention spans, the goal of the entertainment industry is to keep us from looking away and if there’s one thing we can’t look away from it’s a train wreck. Perhaps we aren’t so different from the fictional child-sacrificing societies, and stardom is merely the ceremony before the slaughter.

            Amanda Bynes and Lindsay Lohan sold tabloids and kept paparazzi in business with their prolonged public breakdowns. And theirs’ was hardly the first generation to implode. By the time their prepubescent selves were brought onto the scene it was well known that child stars had a tendency to go red giant before their time. And yet we persist.  

            Pop stardom is a strange and powerful thing. It has bested some of the greatest creative minds of the last century. Young celebrities are lavished with luxuries, special treatment, and adoration. So it seems odd to liken their situation to child abuse, although it can produce similar effects. The tiny percent of young people who become wildly famous are disproportionately disposed towards mental illness, substance abuse, and other destructive behavior. In headlines, the phrases “overdose” and “child star” fit together as snugly as “Middle East” and “unrest”.            

            The fairytale takes a dark turn, and I wonder if the entertainment executives who first made dreams come true feel some tinge of responsibility. If so, judging by the continued output of juvenile megastars, they either don’t care or they’re doing it on purpose.

            The bad news is that as a generally myopic and youth-obsessed culture we are complicit in this. The good news is that also gives us some control. If we stop buying it, it will eventually go off the shelves. We should stop insisting, as a society, that pop stars start out so impossibly young. We should insist that children be entertained by cartoons, adults, puppets, the outdoors, whatever. Something that does not promote the idol worship of their own peers. Even if they do provide a public service by entertaining us, it’s not worth it. Because the truth is that youth is not wasted on the young. Youth belongs to the young, a fact refuted only by those who refused to accept wisdom as a fair exchange. So rather than prey on the innocent in hopes of retrieving something that is no longer ours, let’s exercise our wisdom, and let the young enjoy their youth.