Taking out the trash

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Increasingly referred to as the Internet’s new boyfriend, Oscar Isaac succeeds many of the most well beloved male stars before him. He joins the ranks of the magnificent Idris Elba, the gentleman of the decade Tom Hiddleston and perhaps the fairest of them all, Benedict Cumberbatch, whose ascent to fame was fuelled by his breakout role as everyone’s favourite sociopathic detective Sherlock Holmes.

Most of us were introduced to Oscar Isaac through his own lucrative role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The publicity from Isaac’s involvement with Star Wars has, in turn, shed light on some of his other talents. An old YouTube video titled “The Measure of Things,” published circa 2010, shows he can sing and play the guitar, maybe even well enough to give John Mayer a run for his money. Anyone who has seen the iconic dance scene in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina knows exactly how well he can “tear up the dance floor.”

He even took an adorable Star Wars themed picture with the charming child actor Jacob Tremblay of Room fame. And as a champion of bringing more representation to Hollywood films, it seems safe to say that Oscar Isaac is, for all intents and purposes, flawless. Or so the media would have us believe.

Celebrity crushes are not a new concept. We are all familiar with the trope of the shameless teenager who tapes posters of stars to their bedroom wall, and I’ll even admit that, to a certain extent, I embody the trope myself: there’s nothing quite like waking up every morning to Dane DeHaan’s smiling, autographed face in all its perfection.

However, as long as we can recognize and distance ourselves from society’s unrealistic expectations of the human ideal, then fangirling about someone every now and then is relatively harmless.

Nowadays, if you’re obsessed with someone or something, it’s become common to refer to yourself as their “trash.” But while there has been a great deal of talk about reclaiming the word “trash” for modern use, we cannot simply disregard its classist and racist historical context in regards to the less privileged, or the way it suggests our guilty pleasures demean us. Oscar Isaac may be the Internet’s new boyfriend, but that does not make all of us “Oscar Isaac’s trash.”

Feeding into our celebrity crushes allows us to temporarily evade the aspects of relationships that make them so painfully real: the possible rejection, the doubts of self-worth, the disappointment when others let us down and most of all, the heartbreak. We shouldn’t feel ashamed to fantasize about the celebrities we love, but we should be able to do so without compromising our own integrity. Let’s leave the trash talk where it belongs.

Photo Credits: Nathaniel Goldberg, Mario Testino

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