Word: worshipping
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...pretty well known that professional photographers are weird, which is why I worship them. They are persnickety about all things yet have pulses that never exceed 60 beats a minute. Who else, on seeing men, women, children and livestock fleeing, would run in the direction of the horror? Kupcake (whose real name is Dean) is typical of the breed. When he was a younger man, he used to ride his bike 80 miles (130 km) to his job, along the freeways of Southern California. Then he'd ride home and work out. I tell you all this to qualify Kupcake...
...among us hasn't fallen victim to a little celebrity worship? Whether the object of our affections are movie stars, athletes, poets or politicians (just look at how many Americans are getting a buzz off Sarah Palin and Barack Obama), we're hungry for information about them. We want to know what they're saying, what they're wearing, where they're going and whom they're with. Indeed, billion-dollar industries revolve around our indefatigable obsession with celebrities. And now new scientific research has found that celebri-crushes are not only common but maybe even healthy: a study published...
Shira Gabriel, a psychologist at the University at Buffalo, conducted a series of three studies on celebrity worship, focusing specifically on how admiration from afar may affect the admirer's self-esteem. "It was seven or eight years ago during the Michael Jackson trial," she says, "and I was fascinated by the people who were obsessed with him, who flew to the trial and made banners. I thought, What would bring somebody to do something like that?" One possible reason, which Gabriel decided to explore, was the vicarious pleasure that regular people get from following the lives of famous people...
Though it borders on creepy, it's not an entirely surprising idea. And from a scientific point of view, it was intriguing to Gabriel: Could science actually measure the psychological benefit of celebrity worship? Gabriel enlisted a group of 348 college students, one-fifth of whom admitted to having a celebrity crush. She gave all the students an 11-item self-esteem questionnaire; their responses allowed researchers to rank the participants according to their baseline level of self-esteem. Next, she instructed the students to spend five minutes writing an essay about their favorite celebrity, an exercise designed to bring...
...that doesn't mean you need TMZ.com to boost your morale. Gabriel is the first to acknowledge that her results are not a blanket endorsement of celebrity worship for mental stability. A little can be good, but a lot can become harmful - as stalking and more obsessive behaviors prove. Recent research has even found that celebrity worship can decrease a person's self-esteem because the endless admiration and yearning for a life and lifestyle that are out of reach may end up cementing one's feelings of isolation and inadequacy. Studies conducted in Britain found a range of celebrity...