by Anna Maria Ryan

Created on: June 01, 2009   Last Updated: June 02, 2009

This a tricky question as the meaning of the word "celebrity" has changed in recent years. A celebrity no longer needs to have any real talent for anything. They do not have to act, sing, or dance in order for the public to pay attention to them. They can simply be famous for "being famous". What a world we live in!

The celebrities who parade through our magazines nowadays are, more often than not, people who you would not even stop in the street and have a chat with if they were your next door neighbor. These are people who have gotten their faces in the paper for being obnoxious, rude, or unbelievably stupid. Of course, there are still plenty of celebrities out there who became famous the old fashioned way and just took their clothes off. These people are not good at anything, not good role models, and certainly no good to be used as icons for how to get famous.

This group of celebrities, in my opinion, have less of a right for privacy. They do have some rights as they are still human beings, and therefore entitled to the same rights as any of the rest of us, but these are the people who want the public to know everything they do. These are the people who sell the press the rights to every party, event, and special moment in their lives. These are the people who deserve little privacy, and even less respect, because nothing is sacred to them. When you have people willing to go on a television show and have a diet "doctor" wade through what was once in their colon, you could argue these people give up their rights for privacy.

However, the paparazzi have taken the public's need to know everything about famous people to a new, disgusting level. In the old days we got our background on celebrity's lives from interviews they willingly gave to magazines, radios, and television chat show hosts. For a long time this seemed to satisfy us. Then for some reason, according to the tabloid papers and magazines, we suddenly needed to see famous people with no make up, at the supermarket, and in one magazine a few years ago; a four page pull out of celebrities picking up their dog poop. Who doesn't need to see that image as they're having their lunch and thumbing through a mag?

Then you have the top end of the celebrity tree. The ones that are actually famous for acting, singing, etc. These people, for the most part, got to where they are by doing their job. They entertain us. They give interviews. They tell us what they want us to know about themselves, and then they

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