On Celebrities' School Life

I was too lazy to go out these past two weeks so I ended up spending my time either watching TV, sleeping, playing Sims 3 or reading and rereading. My grade school and part of my high school years were all about the Harry Potter Series so I decided to read all seven books again.

While reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, my attention was grabbed by the fame of Harry especially how people treated him, looked at him, and even the way they uttered his name. It's not so surprising since they considered him the savior from all the terrible things You-Know-Who did before. Even when he was with the Dursleys and wasn't yet aware of his fame, people bowed to him and shook his hand. His experience at the Leaky Cauldron was like a surprise handshaking event but it was probably due to Hagrid boasting. As soon as he boarded the Hogwarts Express, students started whispering and treated him differently. Wherever he walked people pointed; whenever he enters a room, students whisper. Although there are countless times these happened in the series, Harry did experience a normal school life (if we remove the parts where he risks his and his friends' lives in order to defeat He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named). He can walk freely, eat freely, sleep freely, study freely around his schoolmates. It might be difficult to agree with me here but my focus is on Harry as a celebrity school boy and not as a wizard battling against Voldemort. 

Moving from fiction to reality television, I recently saw how some of the Girls' Generation members were treated in their respective schools. Sooyoung and Yuri experienced what we would expect a celebrity to go through in a mall: chauffeured to they stick to themselves, they bring their manager, they don't go to crowded places. In one of the episodes of KBS Star Life Theater, it was shown how both girls had to quickly buy food in a small convenience store and go back to their classroom in order to avoid the crowd getting bigger. When I watched it, I felt sad for them because they couldn't enjoy the life of a normal college student.

Here comes Seohyun in the next episode who took a taxi by herself to school, waited by the school benches for her friends, walked and attended class with classmates, lined up in the school cafeteria for omurice, and ate in the patio tables of the cafeteria. Her life looked so normal that I realized that although the fame does make one well known, a celebrity can live an ordinary life like us. She can move as freely as the school hearthrob. Sure some guys asked to take pictures and for some autographs but they didn't swarm around her. She had space to breathe.

From reality television, it might be even better to share actual encounters. I remember passing by Robi Domingo countless times in school and looking back once, sometimes not even. I saw the Magalona sisters registering for classes without the paparazzi or fans outside the door nor the school gates. The Younghusband brothers trained in school one summer but only took pictures after training and only with a few people. I didn't bother much about celebrities in school because I considered them as ordinary students like me. They go to school to attend classes, not fan meetings and are thus treated like students and not celebrities. 

In my opinion, it really depends on your attitude, the friends around you and the atmosphere of the place. With Seohyun and Harry, they had friends around them so even if people whisper or take pictures, it wasn't much of deal really. They had protection which people didn't treat as bodyguards or managers. Their lives went on normally in school. Sooyoung, Yuri, and other celebrities may share the same suffocating school life but at least it's not as bad as when they go for guerilla dates or concerts. I can't say for sure if it's their attitude or their fellow schoolmates' attitude but for me, it should start from them if they want to live a normal school life. Bringing a manager or a filming crew or even just dressing up too flashy invites people to treat them as famous celebrities and not as students. Who am I to judge though? It is possible they just got used to it or they might have actually wanted it.

* I just grabbed the photos off the internet :)