Paper Doll Politics

Before three dimensional Barby and Ken, we had either or both, baby dolls and paper dolls. The paper kind were a sort of transition from the bisque baby dolls to a more fashionable venue in our child  play. Our paper dolls or "cut-out dolls" had to be snipped carefully from books with their attire and accessories. Kids sat on the floor or carpet with the cardboard dolls and an array of their gorgeous clothes and in their young imaginations, went places and did things that only the rich and famous could do. Hours were spent taking Scarlett O'Hara  and Brett, Lana Turner, Betty Grable and other notables to balls and dangers and on tours to exotic places and gala parties. We did the scripts and the dancing and all the things we heard on the radio and read in movie magazines about their escapades and achievements and made them ours. These joyous times made us, as children, what we could never hope to be. Today, the "paper dolls" are the royalty and the top politicos and the actors and the comic book heroes. But they aren't made of paper; they are real, and their lives are vicariously lived in the everyday lives of modern adults. The paper medium that was for the dolls is now the media and for hours we peruse the news, the e magazines, the screens of various kinds and drool over the Kardashians and Meghans, and Batmans  and The Trumps and the Justins of the planet. They are ours. We live  in their mansions, exercise and eat their diets and savour their wardrobes and jewels. We excite over their heroic mis or adventures and weep over their filmed roles. They are us secretly, and for some who sadly forget their actual world and become overwhelmed into a kind of worshipful fantasy that the icons love us the same way we love them, their stalkers. The latter is dangerous and to blame in part, are the purveyors of the media who try to bring to us every tiny detail of the current paper dolls' lives. For the average person who denies they care a whiff, inadvertently, they become a model. These idols who are filmed and interviewed and pursued  brow beatingly, in an attempt to eke out every tiny private iota of their personal trivia to feed the hungry public that surely must have no life of its own. Every small aspect of each of these nouveau paper doll creatures' existences become news. Hungrily, what Meghan wears if at all affordable is grabbed up for purchase. The Kardashian fashion, if it can be called fashion, is copied and emulated.  Melania's latest dress or killer heels become news flashes. The fans of the royalty defend fiercely any negative report of their idols. People will spend hundreds of dollars to sit, stand or wave their cell phones in a gigantic space to watch a hologram of a completely unreal singing sixteen year old created dummy. Ohh! I wonder where that shoe box is, with my old Diana paper doll. She was real once, and I miss her.