celebrity culture

We live in an era where anyone can increasingly curate their own personas, even us “normals” as 30 Rock's Jenna Maroney would say. Any nobody with the internet can create and filter the public perception of their personality, but of course this self-conscious curation is most obvious with pop stars—Lizzy Grant turned into Lana Del Rey, Christian pop singer Katy Perry became whipped-cream-loving pop superstar Katy Perry. 

No one is better at this than Beyoncé. With Life Is But a Dream—the documentary directed, written and produced by Beyoncé herself that aired on HBO this weekend—Beyoncé appeared to give fans an intimate peek into her life while actually delivering, of course, a carefully constructed portrait.

The film is a mishmash of home videos, selfie Photobooth confessional videos (always sans makeup and looking flawless) and more typical documentary style video. It’s not completely linear—it’s more like you are watching a collage, a scrapbook of moments in Beyoncé’s life.

 

Chaz Bono's new memoir, Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man, co-written with Billie Fitzpatrick, brims with candid emotion. It covers his entire life so far, and as the title implies, it frequently comes back to Chaz's lifelong discomfort with being thought to be female and his gradual acceptance of himself as a trans guy. Unfortunately, it's also full of sexist statements about who men and women can be.

Both Angelina Jolie and Shakira have made headlines recently with their respective humanitarian work, Jolie with a recent Time magazine article, and a New York Times Magazine piece on Shakira's efforts to make child welfare reform a reality in Latin America. How do the two compare?

Read on for 5 things I don't want to read about anymore: