Pop culture often gets blamed for things such as low self-esteem, poor body image, and anorexia in young girls. Girls binge and purge because Barbie taught them to do that. Magazines say that stick thin models are the definition of beauty. Kids are violent because of video games. Teen athletes take steroids because they are used by professional athletes. Teens get into drugs, alcohol, and other questionable behaviors because that is what everyone in high school does on TV. We tend to believe that popular culture is the cause of society’s troubles.

Pop culture has truly become a scapegoat for any problem that arises. When people’s ideas begin to change for better or worse, we promptly turn to pop culture to assess the majority of the blame. The problem with this assessment is that it does not explain how things such as anorexia and violence existed before the technology that has globalized pop culture. Anorexia is not a new thing. It is believed that the disease existed as far back as the Middle Ages and was even prevalent in monarchs like Mary, Queen of Scots. The disease was identified and named in 1873, during the Victorian Era, a time when anorexia was commonplace in middle and upper classes. This was long before ideas could be spread in an instant, milliseconds away from preying on the minds of innocent girls.

Violence has always been a part of society. There has never been a time when countries did not fight wars, men did not kill each other, people did not steal from one another. Violent video games have only recently become a popular phenomenon. In order to attribute violence to pop culture, there would have to be proof that video games were a major contributor, yet that is nearly impossible. Violent crimes can be linked to several factors, such as gun control laws, poverty levels, and mental states of the perpetrators. Many teenagers and young adults play violent video games, but only a small amount ever engage in violent behavior, not necessarily linked directly to the video games themselves.

If these things were a part of life before, why would they all of a sudden be a byproduct of contemporary pop culture, something that has not existed as long? Does it not seem peculiar to blame pop culture when the problems existed long beforehand? Perhaps today’s media has exacerbated the issue, but it has by no means been the root of society’s problems.

Maybe we need to stop playing the blame game and focus on fixing the problems. Pop culture is not to blame for our own personal issues. By blaming pop culture, we are simply avoiding the responsibility of improving our own lives. We believe everything is the media’s fault, so it should be solving our problems. When we depend on pop culture to correct our problems, nothing is going to be resolved. Pop culture is not a thing or person that can fix everything; only we can mend our own lives. It is time that we put an end to incessant blaming and figure out where the true origins of our problems lie.

We often tend to believe that pop culture puts pressure on average people to be perfect. The opposite is true. We are the ones that put the pressure on those in the spotlight to be the ideal fantasy that we have formulated in our minds. In the mind of an average person, a celebrity is not a real human being, just an idealized depiction of what we all wish we could be. We hold public figures on a pedestal and expect them to always be perfect. We await their failure, and when it arrives, we celebrate because the godlike figure has stooped down to our level, that of lowly scum. The magazines jump at every opportunity to find an actress who is not looking her best, an actor who has let his perfect abs go, the country singer who has some cellulite on her legs. In doing so, we have put immense pressure on those who occupy the spotlight. A celebrity is never allowed to do anything wrong because he or she is always being watched.

Oftentimes this burden gets to be too much for some. With the pressure to be perfect nonstop, some go to great lengths, often detrimental to their health and well being. There are many examples of celebrities in contemporary society that have gone off the deep end: Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Bynes, and Kesha, just to name a few. These celebrities, who were once average people, have been so put down and pressured by pop culture that it has made them do questionable things. While it is impossible to solely blame fame, it has been shown that this type of occurrence is common in pop culture.

What happens when Lindsay Lohan fails a drug test or is sent to jail? Do we hope she is okay and gets better? Do we hope she receives help? No. We buy magazines that exploit the actress and gossip about it like it is our own business. We immediately go to the internet to make jokes and slams at the poor girl, not really knowing the true person behind the façade. We do not know how hard it can be in Hollywood. We make a point to get involved, when we should step back and just hope she can get help from her family and friends. We are inconsiderate; we never stop to think about what a person is really going through.

What we tend to forget through all of this is that pop culture is of our own creation. Magazines show skinny models because that is what we have programmed pop culture to do--to be that image of perfection, a fantasy we can only aspire to be. We tend to live vicariously through pop culture, molding it into whatever form we desire. We can complain all we want about a thin model, but we are the ones that keep putting these images out there. We keep buying the magazines. We keep reading the articles. We keep asking for more.

In a famous interview in 1967, Paul McCartney spelled out this idea quite clearly. When asked if his LSD use would encourage his fans to use the drug, he responded:

I don't think my fans are going to take drugs just because I did, you know. But the thing is -- that's not the point anyway. I was asked whether I had or not. And from then on, the whole bit about how far it's gonna go and how many people it's going to encourage is up to the newspapers, and up to you on television. I mean, you're spreading this now, at this moment.
The people that are a part of pop culture are not to blame for society’s problems. If anything, we should be blaming ourselves. We have set the outrageous standards to which pop culture conforms. Some of the issues we associate with pop culture have existed for ages, proving that these are societal problems, not the results of pop culture. If we want things to start changing, we need to stop worrying about who’s getting arrested or who wore it best or whose beach body is the worst. We just need to worry about ourselves.