Proceedings of The 2nd International Conference on Future of Social Sciences and Humanities
Year: 2020
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/2nd.fshconf.2020.09.172
Pornography of Poverty: Celebrities’ Sexual Appeal at Service to the Poor?
Ehsan Shahghasemi
ABSTRACT:
Mid-ninetieth century witnessed a dramatic rise in celebrity culture. Celebrities from all walks of life popped up everywhere in the industrialized world and from there flew to underdeveloped nations. As celebrity itself is a construct, smart publicists started to look for new ways of enhancing celebrities’ reputation. Among many ways, humanitarian work proved to have had a decisive positive effect on celebrities’ place in the public eyes. Hence forth, we have witnessed celebrities intervene in different spheres of professional work like relief, medicine, education, gender equality, public policy, etc., in which they have no expertise. In fact, this paper argues, celebrities’ engagements in different spheres of action is designed to serve celebrities themselves, and not those who are in need. As a result, we can see increasingly some celebrities publish adds appealing followers to donate in exchange for nude photos of him/herself. Some celebrities take sexy gestures on charity adds which seems to be pinpointing the very problem for which that charity was established to solve in the first place.
Keywords: Pornography of Humanitarianism, Celebrity Culture, Pornography of Charity work, Post-Colonialism, Third World.