Young people's uses of celebrity: class, gender and ‘improper’ celebrity

Abstract

In this article, we explore the question of how celebrity operates in young people's everyday lives, thus contributing to the urgent need to address celebrity's social function. Drawing on data from three studies in England on young people's perspectives on their educational and work futures, we show how celebrity operates as a classed and gendered discursive device within young people's identity work. We illustrate how young people draw upon class and gender distinctions that circulate within celebrity discourses (proper/improper, deserving/undeserving, talented/talentless and respectable/tacky) as they construct their own identities in relation to notions of work, aspiration and achievement. We argue that these distinctions operate as part of neoliberal demands to produce oneself as a ‘subject of value’. However, some participants produced readings that show ambivalence and even resistance to these dominant discourses. Young people's responses to celebrity are shown to relate to their own class and gender position.

Keywords:

• celebrity
• gender
• class
• aspirations
• neoliberalism

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the participants in the research and to the funders: Arts was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Drama by the British Academy and Maths by the Economic and Social Research Council (RES-000-23-1454), and the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science Engineering and Technology. In addition to the researchers mentioned in this article, we acknowledge the contributions of Teresa Cabajo Garcia, Nathan Fretwell and Sumi Hollingworth. We would also like to thank Jocey Quinn, Marie-Pierre Moreau, Bev Skeggs, Imogen Tyler, Rosalyn George, Sumi Hollingworth and Chairman Kenner for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this article. We are also grateful to the reviewers’ comments for helping us to improve this article.

Notes

1. Aspiration is a fraught concept which itself produces exclusion. For example, in UK Government discourses of educational achievement and Widening Participation in Higher Education there are assumptions that particular young people (and parents) – mainly working-class – ‘lack’ aspirations and need them to be raised. These are underlined by problematic assumptions of deficit and failure. Here we use the term ‘aspirations’ to refer to young people's desires for and perspectives on their future relationships to education and work. We concur with Burke (2006, p. 720) that processes of aspiration-making are ‘tied in with complex sets of shifting identifications … [and] are discursively re/fashioned through complex negotiations made within social contexts and relations’.

2. Both Katona and Goody are female working-class celebrities. Kerry Katona was briefly in the British female pop band Atomic Kitten before featuring in a series of Reality TV programmes. Jade Goody became famous when she participated in the third series of UK Big Brother in 2002. She was famously vilified in the press but revived her career through a range of other Reality TV shows.

3. The X-Factor (ITV) is British reality TV show which began in 2004, replacing similar shows Pop Idol (ITV) and Pop Stars (ITV). Based on the format of a signing contest, contestants are selected from national auditions and compete on live shows to win a record contract. The X-Factor has also been launched successfully in several other countries.

4. ‘Tacky’ is a colloquial word used to describe persons or things that are perceived to be lacking style or good taste.

5. Heat magazine is a British celebrity gossip magazine, launched in 1999. It is a leader in the celebrity weekly magazine market. For a critical analysis of Heat and its readers see Feasey (2008) and Holmes (2005).

6. Footballers’ Wives was a popular British television drama, based on the lives of footballers and their spouses. It aired on the UK television channel ITV from 2002 to 2006.