OPINION: ‘We Shouldn’t Expect Pop Stars to Be Good Role Models’

We should not expect pop stars to serve as good role models for young people. I don’t mean that they can’t be good role models. (A lot of them are.) I mean that we can’t hold them accountable when they are not. Yes, pop stars are public figures. They should know that thousands, even millions, of impressionable people look up to them. But they cannot be expected to live their lives with that at the forefront of their minds. Take Rihanna for example. Her latest music video for her new single B*tch Better Have My Money caused quite the stir when it appeared online, with many saying it glamorised violence and promoted racial stereotypes. I’m not going to say whether I agree with her critics or not. The fact is that Rihanna’s audience is over 18, the song title does not suggest that it is for children, there is a warning on the video and at the end of the day she is an entertainer. She is not a primary school teacher. She does not uphold herself as someone young kids and teens should aspire to. In saying that, she could be a good role model in terms of how much success she has had in her 27 years and how hard she works. Her personal life has also been scrutinised in the past for the message it sends to her fans. This, I think, is unfair. She’s a young woman. If she wants to party and dress in a risqué manner, she should be allowed to. It’s her choice. Miley Cyrus is another example of a singer who has been criticised for not being a good role model for her fans. This I understand a bit more as she started out as a child star in Hannah Montana. But that still shouldn’t mean that she constantly has to watch her behaviour and act like a child star for the rest of her life. She grew up and should be allowed to develop into the individual that she is. Accusing musicians of being bad role models isn’t fair. They are not there to educate and discipline the masses of young people across the world. Yes, of course they influence because they are in the spotlight, but kids should know the difference between right and wrong, good and bad. And they shouldn’t learn it from MTV. Sure I wanted to get my tongue pierced like Scary Spice when I was younger but I didn’t want to run around and mess up a hotel like they did in the music video for Wannabe, because I knew it was wrong. Like the rest of us, pop stars will do things that are questionable. Unlike us, their antics get reported on and they get publicly criticised. Of course they are role models but they’re also real people and everyone needs to understand that.