Kristen Stewart Cheating Fiasco: Yet Another Reason Why Celebrity Role Models Are The Pits

Here’s the thing: teens look up to celebrities. Heck, even moms look up to celebrities. Then they go and do something stupid like cheat on their boyfriend with a married man and there go all our hopes and dreams. The latest celebrity gossip, in case you’ve missed it, is that 22-year-old Kristen Stewart has cheated on her boyfriend-slash-Twilight-co-star Robert Pattison with her Snow White and the Hunstman director Rupert Sanders. Sanders, 41, is married to 33-year-old model Liberty Ross, and the couple has two children together, ages 7 and 5. Is this juicy or what?

Actually, as far as Hollywood scandals go, this one is quite tame. But that doesn’t change the fact that Stewart has countless teenage fans out there, girls who look up to her and who want to be just like her when they grow up. And that, my friends, is precisely the trouble with celebrity role models. Turns out they’re human, just like us, and that they screw up on occasion. Or in other instances, it turns out they’re absolutely nothing like us. Which is why we should be encouraging our children to look up to celebrities, sure, but to remind them that things are not always as they seem.

It sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But you’d be surprised how many teens I know personally who consider their chosen icon to be godly. And there’s danger in that. That said, we’ve written before on all the celebs out there who prove that brains are just as valuable as looks (actors like Ellen Page and Natalie Portman, for instance, or the late Nora Ephron, who showed that you can at once be smart, funny and all-around mensch). But it’s our job as mothers to remind our children that celebrity life is not real life, for better or for worse. The latest Twilight saga drives this point right home.