Stars, They’re Just Like Us!

By Dr. Robert Kelly, For The Mountain Times

I know magazines and newspapers are not as prevalent as they used to be, but back in the 90s, before smart phones and tech took over, they were consumed vociferously by the public for all the latest news, gossip, and entertainment.  

One entertainment, celebrity, and pop culture magazine, US Weekly, had a routine section called “Stars, They’re Just Like Us!” and it would showcase random pictures of celebrities doing “normal people” things like shopping at the grocery store, getting into their car, walking their dogs on the sidewalk. It seemed totally ridiculous to pay that much attention, but man did it ever sell, and for some reason we just couldn’t help ourselves.  I don’t know why but seeing celebrities in day-to-day attire doing mundane day to day activities was so exciting!

An article I saw in E News today (online now, of course) took me back to that section.  The article started by talking about the most recent Miss Thailand pageant, where one of the contestants had a teeth malfunction in the middle of the competition. Bad timing!  She lost some veneers in the preliminary round and the footage went viral.  She was praised for handling it so well, as she nonchalantly carried on with the competition as if nothing had happened.  She even poked fun at it later on in the competition, when, in the final round, she came out with her natural teeth first before putting in a temporary denture, then winked and smiled.  

Although the contestant, Kamolwan Chanago, did not win the competition, the judges did commend her for her “professionalism and composure” in a difficult situation!

The article went on to mention another celebrity who had a tooth problem unexpectedly in public and on stage.

Taylor Swift in 2013 on her Red tour accidently broke a front tooth when she quickly pulled the mic a little too hard to her face to sing.  She said to Rolling Stone magazine “And then part of it fell onto the stage and I was like, Oh I wonder how bad that was. It’s just gonna be a little bit jagged, I guess.”

There was another incident last year when signer LeAnn Rimes was in concert in Washington State and a whole bridge fell out mid concert.  She quickly had to run off stage to reinsert it and then came back on, all the while laughing with her audience about what had just happened.  She joked on Instagram later that “The show can go on even in the midst of sheer utter embarrassment.”

When I was reading these articles I also saw that Katie Perry and Reese Witherspoon displayed funny selfies of themselves at the dentist recently online. Not sure if this is a new trend, but celebrities have to get dental work too and apparently this is interesting for all of us?

What have we learned from this?  Number One: teeth problems can occur at some very inopportune times. And number two, as the tabloid segment goes …“Stars: their teeth problems are just like ours!”