Being a Role Model: It Begins at Home

Being a role model, like charity, begins at home. I don’t know about all of you, but I like to think that if my kids had seen the deeply-painful-to-watch spectacle of Miley grinding her way to infamy, they would have done the same thing I did:

Say, “WTF?” and move on.

But my kids and I didn’t see it, because we were off doing other things, as is often the case when “disaster” strikes on tv.

Here’s a funny story from our holiday in England. My husband was with our three boys en route to meet me at Covent Garden and passed a group of very excited people outside of a hotel. They stopped to ask what was going on, and were told that Hugh Jackman was about to leave the hotel to go to the London premiere of some movie he starred in. (OK, I know I should have put a Wolverine photo up, but this one’s so much better!)

The boys thought that was pretty cool, the fans gave them some photos to get signed, and they hung out for a while. Then a while longer. And then, well, it was time to go. It looked like Hugh had made an exit somewhere less busy. No big deal.

“But wait!” cried the fans. “Take more of these photos. You can go to the theatre and wait for him there! Don’t give up! Don’t you want to give your kids something to remember their trip to London by?”

Seeing as how we think we did an amazing job on the memories to take home from England score, we passed on the chance to stand around waiting for a phantom star appearance later that night.

And that, I think, sums up my approach to the hand-wringing about how celebrities are letting our kids down when they fail to be good role models. Do your own thing. If you don’t actually have too much invested in the fame of the famous, they won’t really have an impact on what memories you take home.