The who's who
hy do we feature celebrities in magazines? It’s on old question’a bit of cliché, even. The usual answer is also quite clichéd: Because they serve as our role models. But in this day and age, where gossip is a commodity and every Tweet, photo or caption is scrutinized at the speed of light, is it still relevant to say that actors, singers and other public figures are people worth parading as paragons that we should imitate? The short answer is: yes. And now for the long answer. The thing with role models is that they are not meant to be imitated. They are meant to inspire. Or to put it in another way: You don’t imitate the lives of your role models—you imitate their attitude. Some would say that this is just a matter of semantics, but I would argue that this distinction is important, and that is why we feature the people we feature.
When you move past the stylish photos and the stories of success, we often find the driving force behind that success. Take, for example, our second-time DAMAN Darling Mentari de Marelle, who freely talks about taking the time to find herself during a time of uncertainty. Or our cover boy Ben Hardy, who took “taking a crash course in preparation for a movie role” to a whole different level. If that’s not a textbook definition of determination, I don’t know what is.
Again, these stories might seem overly simplistic, clichéd or even naïve. But the simple fact is, we actually need simple yet inspiring stories—now more than ever. That’s why we carry the tales of Mentari de Marelle and Ben Hardy, Ario Bayu and Cameron Cuffe, and many more. And as always, we invite you to find your own bits of inspiration in the pages to come and also as we retell them in smaller bits through our social media accounts and expand them through videos and online features. Happy reading.