Lana Del Rey and her mask appearance: The paradox of the role model

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Singer Lana Del Rey: in particular focus

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Mat Hayward / Getty Images

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" sings Lana Del Rey, the flower-crowned woman who was able to poet her heavy-bloodedness into a musical business model.

"Yes, but please not to Corona!" The Internet roared back this week.

At the book premiere of her volume of poetry "Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass" and the subsequent book signing in a bookstore in Los Angeles, she wore a wide-meshed fishnet mask while everyone and her team followed the AHA rules.

The mouth and nose protection was undoubtedly decorative, only she might as well have drawn an orange net over her face, the permeability would probably have been the same.

She did not clarify whether she was wearing another, transparent, actually protective material underneath.

But the appearance of a health-endangering vanity has meanwhile taken on a life of its own anyway.

The fact that Del Rey took photos head to head with a number of fans didn't improve the impression of negligence.

Samira El Ouassil Right Arrow

Photo: Stefan Klüter

Born in Munich in 1984, is an actress and author.

In 2016 her book "The 100 most important things" (with Timon Kaleyta and Martin Schlesinger) was published by Hatje Cantz Verlag.

In 2009 she was the candidate for chancellor of the PARTY, which at that time was not admitted to the federal election.

She was recently awarded the Bert Donnepp ​​Prize for media journalism for her media critical column "Wochenschau" (uebermedien.de).

Currently, people from the public are in particular focus.

Stars and celebrities take a closer look to see whether they are adhering to the measures to contain the pandemic, any self-forgetfulness is registered and immediately criticized.

Christian Lindner and Ricarda Lang, among others, have already experienced this in Germany.

The unprecedented loss of control in people to whom one ascribes a role model function is all the more frustrating when one believes oneself to adhere to the rules.

Because then frustration turns into judgment.

At the same time, one is moved by the disappointment that a role model is just as fallible, if not more fallible than you are.

The public feels it is downright insulting when an idol falls from a social pedestal or at least wobbles on it.

This leads us to the “role model paradox”, as I would like to call it: We expect people in the public to be role models for us, for our children, for society;

at the same time, however, we adore them for not corresponding to the average, but to the illusion of a supposedly unattainable ideal.

They are idols because they serve an "unavailability", as the sociologist Hartmut Rosa calls it;

so something that we cannot control and plan.

Accordingly, stars are actually rather bad role models, precisely because they are stars.

Their main promise is not that they are like us, but rather their myth, their image, their narrative suggest to us at best that they were never and never will be like us.

At the same time, stars inevitably become role models because they exist in the public eye.

Your actions have a style-defining effect and set the tone for what is considered worthwhile.

Lana Del Rey's ornamental mask illustrates in a special way how the model paradox is reinforced by Covid-19: On the one hand, celebrities now have to take their duties as role models very seriously because their exemplary character is literally existential - because why should one yourself Wear a mask when even politicians and singers don't?

On the other hand, the pandemic revealed even more clearly how far away celebrities actually live from a society busy with protective measures.

An affirmatively purred "Hey guys, stay at home" from Reality and Contouring Queen Kim Kardashian, who has a private chef, hairdresser and trainer at home, seems empty and pale in view of the reality of a cashier working 12-hour shifts.

Consistent in its discrepancy

When Jennifer Lopez noticed in March that she didn't go to any more restaurants, but that she could take the "restaurant" home, where her son then rushed past the pool on a mini Segway through the garden to watch her like a show. Handing a drink to the waiter, we found that setting an example is easier for some than for others.

A frustrated "I'm so bored, I wish I had kids" from Ellen DeGeneres, who also streamed the statement in March from a 8,188-square-foot Balinese-style property, seems arrogant, especially when she calls her closest friends like Michelle Obama, Justin Timberlake and John Legend, to do something about boredom - how to do it.

In view of the large families who had to sit on top of each other in 2-room home office apartments at a time when the playgrounds were closed, such private celebrity insights seem completely unworldly.

That the summertime melancholy Del Rey wears a presumably useless mask, but one that fits her aesthetic and brand, for which she is adored and loved by her fans, only so that she apparently fulfills the gesture of wearing a mask that she expected - that is his Discrepancy basically consistent.

Because this is exactly where the role model ceases to be a role model: When stars notice how exhausting it can be to have to be like everyone else.

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