Teen Idol Caught Smoking
By Kim Ong – Dinh
Scandal, misjudgement and controversy
were all felt by anti-smokers everywhere when Nicole Kidman, role model
to thousands of teens, smoked at a press conference on May 20.
Nicole was televised lighting a cigarette and puffing at the Cannes Film
Festival in France, which has health experts fuming.
Anti-smokers everywhere think she has become a bad role model for Australian
youth, according to the British newspaper, The Guardian.
The critics say the sight of the Oscar-winning Australian lighting up in
front of the world’s media while promoting her film, ‘Dogville’,
was giving free advertising to the tobacco industry.
Anne Jones, of the Action on Smoking and Health group in Australia, says “Mass
media coverage of celebrity smokers, like Nicole Kidman, is priceless for
the tobacco industry, in their drive to addict new smokers, most of whom
are children.”
“ We accept that Nicole Kidman has the right to smoke. But with celebrity
comes a responsibility to avoid promoting lethal and addictive products
to young people.”
Smoking maybe an unpardonable sin to one, but perfectly normal to another.
So why go criticising just one celebrity for smoking, when there are so
many other serious issues happening in Hollywood on a daily basis?
After all, celebrities are also human beings who do things that we ‘ordinary’ people
do. So why pick on Nicole Kidman when she hasn’t done anything illegal.
She didn’t shoplift hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise like
Winona Ryder. She didn’t use illegal drugs and go into rehab like
Julia Roberts or Robert Downey Jr. and she didn’t get caught up in
a prostitution charge like Hugh Grant.
Adults don’t get lectured about why they shouldn’t smoke and
were once teenagers too and were also under the influence of their idols.
Furthermore, it’s debatable whether it’s the responsibility of
celebrities to worry about being role models. Stop young people from picking
up on this and other bad habits is the Government’s job, not an individuals.
If Governments banned showing smoking on TV and newspapers and put an R
rating on movies that showed smoking or drug use then we would never be
exposed to what celebrities do in public or in private.
That way they wouldn’t have to step out of the eye of the media because
the media would not be able to show it.
Welcome to the
Ross Smith E-View!
NEW ISSUE
TERM 3 2003
Ross Smith students are again leading the world in on-line publishing after the school became one of the first to feature student-produced videos on their website as part of the literacy project in 1999.
The Ross Smith E-View was started this year after articles were put onto an international schools website with wired.com, but in 2002 Ross Smith has made a magazine on the net for themselves.