Cheryl Cole - person who has made the most positive impact in the world today?

[NorhamGardens]

My Sister's very gifted 14 year old daughter was asked to pick the a person to do a project on. The emphasis was on choosing someone who had overcome huge odds to make a positive impact on the world today or similar. Person that deserves huge admiration and respect, that sort of thing. Deserves to be a national icon and so on.

Three quarters of my niece's class chose Cheryl Cole. No Nelson Mandela? No Mother Theresa?

I questioned her. She explained that it would have been all to easy for Cheryl to descend into drugs like others on her Estate. She has huge talent and gifts - a great dancer who studied at the Royal Ballet School and stayed despite teasing and bullying. (A quick google showed she did a summer camp or similar and didn't pursue in part due to bullying/teasing).

I am noticing that my niece and her generation appear to value 'prettiness' above all else and that is really why they admire Cheryl in the main. That and thinking she's cool. Let's face it if she was plug ugly it's very likely she would never have gone as far as she has.

AIBU to think that it's pretty shocking they didn't think to choose someone else? AIBU to hope that so many didn't tie up their self worth with their 'attractiveness'. (A look at their Facebook accounts would make you weep? Or is it all about being a teenager and Cheryl is to be admired in this way? She's cool, she's down to earth, beautiful and talented etc..Maybe I am the old fart here ?

IFancyKevinELevin if your last post is directed at me, I think you've misread what I wrote. I've said I don't think she should be labelled a yob for all time because she was once convicted of assault and I also said that assaulting someone was thuggish behaviour. Hate the sin and not the sinner, and all that. I haven't defended the choice of her as a role model -- I don't think she's a good choice. But that's different from calling her a thug or a yob.

I have no time for her but don't hate or despise her. As for thug, if she goes on to abstain from any more thug related incidents - will people perhaps let it lie? I doubt she is that racist - I think we can all make out of order comments when angry, anything we know will annoy the other person whether we believe it or not.

Also, what is wrong with telling your kids that it's ok to sometimes hit back? Or is it just too working class/ council estateish?

Slhilly, I am up late tonight and I hear you.

What I find interesting is that whilst the Cheryl incident was quickly forgiven the Jade incident was not. I mentioned earlier I think perhaps it was because Jade's 'incident' was played out on TV and Cheryl's wasn't? Perhaps Jade's 'crime' was judged to be far worse? I think that Jade used the language she knew to hit out and wasn't articulate enough to state the things she found annoying - not anything to do with her culture or race really - about Shilpa? (Who IMO, and as someone else said, perhaps enjoyed her role wronged/saintly martyr a little too much)? Not to say Shilpa should have tolerated racist abuse. We forgive someone's violence when provoked more easily than we do words of hatred?

NorhamGardens, I'm not sure I agree with your starting assumption that Cheryl has been "forgiven". While lots of people don't remember or care about it, this very thread demonstrates that quite a lot of people do remember and haven't "forgiven".

As to why the Jade incident was more of a storm than the Cheryl incident, I think that had two causes:

1. it was shown on prime-time TV, on a notorious show
2. many people already thought of her as loud, stupid and irritating. So the incident fitted preconceptions. Her appearance also fitted preconceptions, but I think it was a secondary factor.

I think 1 was more important than 2. I'm pretty sure that if Cheryl had been on Big Brother and said the same things Jade had said, there would have been a storm of just about equal size. For sure, if the toilet incident had been filmed, it would have been a bigger storm -- physical violence would have trumped violent words.

Re Shilpa. I'm not sure how you can stand in judgement over her, especially given your judgement is based on her internal emotional state. How do you know whether she enjoyed her role or not?

I think one of the most pernicious elements of celebrity culture is how it encourages us to judge other people, of whom we know nothing, and then say "well, they put themselves in the public eye, so they were asking for it". Given your OP was complaining about celeb culture, I think it doesn't make sense for you to join in with it in this way. Sorry to be blunt.

Apparently Cheryl Cole is also the second most beautiful woman of the 20th Century according to a survey reported in the Mirror today.

How sad and small minded does one have to be when you set out a "mission" to remind people that she is a "thug!"

When you compare the girl she was back then to the woman she is now, there is no comparison. She has grow up and her actions over the last few years have proved this.

I am not one to label someone for life over something they did when they were very young. That's not to say i excuse what she did to that toilet attendant but i certainly won't judge her for it for the rest of her days in the public eye.

Then there is those who on this thread that are calling her a racist (yawn) when she clearly isn't one. Like it has been pointed out already, she was found not guilty of racism, that's NOT GUILTY incase you didn't get that one.

The way she has handled her cheating husband has really shown just how much she has grown as a person. She hasn't slagged him off in the papers or sold her story. She gave him a second chance then even after the second lot of cheating gave a dignified silence over the matter.

If that isn't the actions of someone who has grow up and moved away from her bad actions of the past then i don't know what is?

I think that being judgmental about either people is much worse than admiring them because they're pretty or talented (as these girls think she is). I think it's pretty natural that teenage girls would aspire to be like a woman who is attractive, dignified, well-liked, and appears to be carving out a very strong career for herself, and it's pretty natural that they'd want to be like a pop star.

But of course the OP is NBU, because the question was about someone who has made a positive impact on the world today! School, imo, should be a place where children learn about/are exposed to people and places and ideas that aren't rammed down their throats in the media all the time. So I'd hope they would be getting other options for role models in school than they already get from X Factor/MTV. History, English Lit, Geography, RS, - all these subjects can do loads to get kids thinking outside their own frames of reference (and give them a lot of skills to boot). So I'd hope, perhaps by the time they leave school, that Cheryl wouldn't be the first name they thought of!

If that's true sammie it's nuts. But I really don't believe anything I read about any of that stuff (in fact, I don't read it unless I'm in the hairdresser's!). I read an article a while back that professed to explain how curvy women got their 'amazing' figures. There were pictures of each of these women papped on holidays, including Cheryl (as if she's curvy!) and Kelly Brook. And for each of these women the formula was exactly the same: 'Kelly Brook won [x, y, z award for amazing body]. At 5'10" and 9 stone she has 34D boobs and a gorgeous curvy bottom' etc. Clearly they made up these weights - at 5'10" and 9 stone you'd be a rake, not a curvy girl! It is all about making women feel inadequate about their bodies, or like there is a 'perfect' goal to reach, and making us buy products that help us get there. Whether they profess to prefer one body shape or another, they still encourage women to obsess. So I wouldn't believe this crazy thing about carbs. It doesn't even make sense.

I do agree that Cheryl's body is extremely thin and it would be dreadful for young girls to want to aspire to be like that - or to aspire, in fact, to change their bodies to look like anybody else (especially someone of an unhealthy weight). But the OP said people chose Cheryl at least ostensibly for moral/pesonal reasons and not because of her inability to eat carbs.

Plus all people are a mixed bag of positive and negative traits - war heroes or pop stars or footballers or political leaders - if you isolated one thing about them you could make them positive or negative as you chose.

I think that fighting in a public toilet and abusing someone is thuggish behaviour not that she should be particularly judged by it now but it happened ..Oh and for the record 'racist' people who use 'racist' language do actually marry and have relationships with people of colour..strange but true...