I read an article in the Guardian the other day that made me (partially) reconsider my position regarding the current trend of criticising celebrities for having a few pimples, knobbly knees or being “fat”. I’m not usually a fan of Julie Burchill’s rants but it got me thinking anyway.

When Heather, Cat and I initially came up with the idea of Fametastic, we decided that we were going to steer clear of that sort of commentary because we’re not interested in reading it elsewhere. We’re all about celebrating celebrities and not picking faults where faults don’t really exist. (We consider our Fashiontastic posts to be an exception to this all-love attitude because people choose to wear hideous things when they know they’re going to be in the public eye on the red carpet - and they deserve to have those faults pointed out to them as loudly as the hideous print on their over-engineered dresses.)

It also seemed like the lowest common denominator in the celebrity gossip world - it amazes me how the majority of content in so many magazines is pretty much just full-page photos of different celebrities out running errands, with just a single comment bitching about their hair or what they look like without make up on. I realise everyone likes different things - some people like magazines they can flick through in a single bus journey - but we prefer full stories so that’s what we do here.

For me personally, the “Look who got fat!/spotty!/bony!” attitude also always smacked of a sexist attitude towards women - the objectification of the flesh, like it’s all that matters about the person - and is often very judgemental in tone (for example, I read this week that three spots on Lindsay Lohan’s chin were “acne” because she’s been partying too hard and partying is bad if you’re a young woman, m’kay?). And of course there is the weight obsession issue - it’s hard to be comfortable about being a healthy UK size 12 when that’s called “FAT!!!” on the front page of every magazine in the shop.

But after reading the Guardian article, I agreed with Julie that there is more honesty in the tabloid end of the magazine world as opposed to the PR-people sanitised interview/airbrushed photos of the glossy magazines. I still detest the judgement side of it but at the end of the day, I can see the value in that honesty: it helps us to see celebrities as real people instead of perfect gods. Sometimes I worry I’m the only 28 year old that suffers from the occasional spot-tastic eruption then I see a picture of Kate Moss sans foundation and realise if it can happen to her with, presumably, access to the best cleansers and whatnot then it can happen to me with my bog-standard cheap one - and that’s ok. The article reminds us that “beauty comes and goes with smoke and mirrors - it’s all a construct and, as such, liable to fall apart at any time” but that’s ok too because it falls apart for Eva Longoria as easily as it does for the rest of us. On a night out, we’re all only as perfect as our last application of mascara and lip gloss.

The real-not-gods thing can also be a good thing for the celebrities themselves. Airbrushing (pictures and interviews) creates false, unrealistic images and it must be hard to live up to that day in, day out. If we don’t see celebrities as these impossible creatures, then maybe we won’t be so harsh on them when they make human errors or maybe we won’t have such a craving for pictures of them going about their daily lives because they’re just normal people and we can see normal people by looking out of the window.

I’m not saying this honesty justifies all the misogyny and hateful nitpicking that goes on (a lot of it seems to be more being mean for the sake of being mean than just a factual commentary, and developing/maintaining such an overly critical culture is bad for self-esteem) - and I’m not going to be lobbying for a change in Fametastic’s editorial policy regarding that type of thing just yet - but I found it an interesting observation, particularly when tabloid magazines are often dismissed as fluff compared to the glossies with their high-end fashion and occasional hard-hitting report about something series. The lower-end ones might not have as high of a words/pictures ratio but their content is arguably more real than the press release copy found elsewhere.