Celebrities in Repose

Hi there! I'm trying to find out what works best here on Not the Marrying Kind, and I'd really like your help. I've created a short survey in order to get some feedback on what goes on with my wee small blog. I have a lot of lurkers that visit, seemingly consistently, but are silent observers. I respect silence on blogs, but if you could please break your silence in a completely anonymous way and let me know what you think of some stuff around this, here stretch of the internet, that would be oh, so wonderful! You can access the survey here and it will be up until July 15th. I will probably remind you about this on a daily basis, so please don't get mad at me, k? (PS. A.P. told me that nobody would fill out my survey. Help me prove him, and all men, wrong by sticking it to him. Seriously. Go here.) And thank you to those that have already filled it out! Your feedback is very helpful!

Last week, I deleted all my gossip links from this blog. It was a big deal to do that. It meant admitting a weird truth about myself: I don't much care for gossip anymore. My 20's were spent keeping up with the A-list, B-list, and sometimes lower-list celebrities. When I first graduated college, before the internet became my lover, I spent a sick amount of cash on gossip magazines. Then, when I worked in advertising, I started each day by reading all the gossip articles on MSN. From there I discovered Perez Hilton, TMZ, The Superficial, and so many more. I read them obsessively. I knew about celebrities whose names I didn't even recognize! I never watched The Hills, but I could tell you the cast and some details about their lives.

It was around the time that Britney Spears had her public meltdown that gossip left a sour taste in my mouth. It felt so wrong. All these people taking pictures of her, writing stories about her, hanging out with her, using her, but no one helping her. I've seen bipolar disorder up close and I felt so bad for her because the girl was just losing her shit and everyone else was there to leech off her and take advantage of her fame. It struck me as terrible that I was partaking in the exploitative nature of gossip. So, I started reading less and less, and now I don't read it online at all. Every once in a while, I will buy a magazine, but for the most part, I try not to.

One thing I've noticed is that instead of gossip, I'm increasingly obsessed with vintage celebrity photos. I find them more fascinating than gossip because they're also real celebrities. Gossip magazines today are riddled with stories about reality TV stars I could give two craps about (except The Bachelorette...we all know I'm influential when it comes to that). The other day, I happened onto these amazing photographs of Paul McCartney and his family. These were all shot by Paul's then wife, Linda. Aren't these amazing?


If you're on Pinterest, my boards We're in Lurve, Stolen Souls, and Girl Porn all feature these types of photos of celebrities. Feel free to check them out or subscribe to them!

PS. This is a small shout out for my friend, The Half-Breed Swede, who I thought of oh, so many times when I was writing this post. : O )

(All Photos by Linda McCartney via Miss Design)