Bella and Gigi Hadid. The entire Kardashian/Jenner sisters. Hailey Bieber. Just one look at your Instagram feed, and you’ll probably see some of these women. And they all have one thing in common: famous parents who have helped their career. Yes, they might all be glamorous, but their lives might have been very different if they weren’t instantly born into limelight, connections and money.
Another person that you might have forgotten has a famous parent is Mrs Goop herself: Gwyneth Paltrow. She recently joined the aforementioned Hailey Bieber on a video about smoothies (so far, so Gwyneth) and gave her thoughts about being successful while having famous parents.
And, like many nepotism babies, she said that children of celebrities actually have to work harder. Yawn.
‘As the child of someone, you get access other people don’t have, so the playing field is not level in that way,’ Gwyneth - who is the child of actress Blythe Danner and producer Bruce Paltrow - said. ‘However, I really do feel that once your foot is in the door, which you unfairly got in, then you almost have to work twice as hard and be twice as good.’ (‘I agree, I need to hear this today,’ Hailey - daughter of actor Stephen Baldwin - replied.)
While Gwyneth has briefly acknowledged the privilege celebrity kids have getting in the industry, I’m tired of hearing that along with the caveat they have to work so much harder than any other ‘normal’ singer/actress/whatever who are dying to have somebody take a chance on them. Gwyneth isn’t the first person to say it, and she won’t be the last; we’ve all heard Kendall Jenner saying she had to work a lot harder as a model because of the success of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.
And yes, people might have preconceptions about celeb kids - as Gwyneth also says ‘People are ready to pull you down and say, “You don't belong there” or “You are only there because of your dad or your mom” - but I don’t believe they work harder. And there’s no way they have to be twice as good to get booked for jobs. When you have a famous parent, sometimes that’s enough reason to hire you for a job in the first place - regardless of your actual talent, and whether there’s hundreds of more talented people vying for the same position.
Gwyneth added that ‘nobody in the world, especially anybody that doesn’t know you, should have a negative impact on your path or the decision that you make.’ And while that might be true, and Gwyneth might be a very talented actress, I’m sick of hearing celebrities’ offspring say they’re so much more talented and hard working than the rest of us. It might make them feel better, but it doesn’t fool the rest of us.