Sandra Bullock was on a roll. Her romantic comedy, “The Proposal,” brought in an impressive $314 million worldwide, while the sports-drama “The Blind Side” made more than $287 million. Both films were among 2009’s most successful, and both films marked records in Bullock’s career. Her performance in “The Blind Side” was critically acclaimed, earning her a slew of awards, including a Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Actress. Sandra Bullock was a force to be reckoned with, one of Hollywood’s brightest stars.
And yet, only a few weeks after those achievements, her husband of five years, Jesse James, was found to be in an 11-month affair with stripper/tattoo model Michelle McGee. The two met while Bullock was in Atlanta filming “The Blind Side,” the work that would later land her an Oscar. Not that an Oscar changed anything for James, who continued to send McGee suggestive text messages just days after Bullock thanked him in her acceptance speech. A second stripper, Melissa Smith, claims to have had a two-year affair with James. Two other women have also recently come forward as James’ mistresses, putting the count thus far at four.
When the news broke, I felt more than contempt. I felt confused. Why would any man stray from Sandra Bullock—“America’s Sweetheart” and an Oscar-winning actress—and into the arms of far less successful women like McGee and Smith?
The media had similar questions when Tiger Woods admitted his infidelity to model Elin Nordegren, and when John Edwards cheated on his brave, cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth. It was as if we thought that unfaithfulness was a vice that only affected us ordinary people. While we settled with whoever was around, celebrities could have anyone they wanted—the most beautiful, the most talented, the wealthiest. Their unions were somehow more perfect than ours could ever hope to be.
These very public celebrity indiscretions, however, are proof that relationships between the rich and famous are subject to the same problems as anyone else’s—and it doesn’t matter whether your spouse is busy filming a blockbuster movie or just away on a weekend business trip, whether she has a perfect body or love handles.
Though about 50% of men and women in the U.S. engage in extramarital sex at some point during their relationship, we have the tendency to hold pop icons to a higher moral standard than we do ourselves. Celebrities are supposed to be role models and set examples, belonging to a different category completely—and so when they transgress, they become tabloid fodder to be judged and punished. You won’t lose your job, for example, if you choose to cheat on your partner. When Tiger Woods cheated, however, he lost major endorsements with AT&T, Gatorade, and Accenture.
Celebrities’ high-profile moral failures can indeed be useful tools for spreading awareness, and are important vehicles for defining our own ideals, but sometimes it’s just as instructive to view these failures for what they are. Let’s demythologize Jesse James’ adultery, for a moment, and let him exist not as the possibly insane man who cheated on a hugely successful and critically acclaimed actress, but simply as an ordinary person who cheated on another.
This deconstruction is, oddly enough, comforting, because it reminds us of what a relationship is ultimately founded on—and what it is not. We sometimes fixate on the trivial when forming our own relationships, equipped with mental images and descriptions of what our perfect girl or boy would look like. We wonder whether the person in front of us might be more attractive ten pounds lighter or slightly richer, hope for someone with better connections or from better stock.
But you could be an Academy Award-winning actress or a professional athlete with multi-million dollar endorsements, could date the rich and famous, and still find yourself miserable and humiliated.
The question, then, isn’t how someone could cheat on a woman as successful as Sandra Bullock, or as beautiful as Elin Nordegren—because the reasons are not in any way unique. Celebrity relationships, stripped of the paparazzi and red carpet dates, are in fact quite familiar and predictable. There are always in-laws, always arguments over what to watch on TV, always misunderstandings. Shared interests and values, honesty and trust sustain their relationships like any other. And without them, unfortunately, their relationships suffer like any other.
Aarti Iyer is a Columbia College junior majoring in creative writing. She is the editor-in-chief of The Fed. Culture Vulture runs alternate Fridays.
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