Rita Ora continues to make headlines this week after hosting her 30th birthday party at Casa Cruz restaurant in London with more than 30 guests. Her lockdown party was quickly followed by an apology from the singer, but she’s likely to get off without a personal fine for breaching lockdown rules. Casa Cruz may not be so lucky, as the restaurant is now under investigation and faces a £10,000 penalty.
If you’ve kept up with your usual crop of celebrities over the course of lockdown, you may wonder what’s so special about Rita Ora’s lockdown birthday party that has sent the public into a frenzy. After all, there are a number of other UK celebrities that have breached lockdown. In November, Geordie Shore star Chloe Ferry was fined £10,000 for attending parties instead of self-isolating after a trip to Turkey. TOWIE star Danielle Armstrong also faced lockdown breach accusations after videos showed her dancing around a kitchen with six other women and a DJ playing music.
According to other reports, Gordon Ramsey has faced backlash for travelling to his second home in Cornwall after government guidelines advised against doing exactly that. Reports say he has been given multiple warnings by the Cornwall coastguard after his neighbours reported seeing him out and about often - and the boyfriends of his two daughters were reportedly spotted staying at his £4million mansion in Trebetherick.
But it’s not just the celebrities facing lockdown breaches that are infuriating to watch, is it? It’s the countless others that are currently holidaying around Dubai and the Maldives, seemingly escaping the travel restrictions we’re all under right now – for what we can only assume is work-related purposes. Non-essential travel is meant to be banned at the moment, with travel abroad only allowed for work or education purposes.
What all of these things symbolise is one simple truth: it’s one rule for them, another for us. And Rita Ora seems to be receiving the brunt of the publics annoyance at that. While some other celebrities fly under the radar with their lockdown breaches, her Casa Cruz party continues to top Google Search results and make numerous headlines.
Perhaps it was Rita’s apology, which riled the public up after she claimed her party ‘was a spur of the moment decision made with the misguided view that we were coming out of lockdown and this would be OK.’ It has certainly been slammed in the press and on social media, but the vitriol does seem to speak to our larger frustrations with the entirety of the A-list and beyond right now.
Because it’s not just about the particular ‘lockdown breaches’, it’s about the lack of care for other people. That’s obvious from the frustration many face with US celebrities, where lockdown rules are notably more relaxed than the UK despite 13.6million cases and 268,000 deaths across the country. UK fans of Hollywood celebrities and influencers are seeing their favourites attend host party after party - Kendall Jenner's birthday being case en point -, ignoring the backlash and forging on with their mask-less pursuits.
We’ve always watched celebrities – be from the UK or US – live drastically different lives to us, and maybe we’ve been jealous or inspired or indifferent. We’ve known that they experience different privileges, from holidays to healthcare. But watching the way some have behaved at a time when the whole world is at risk, there has never been a starker reminder just how protected they are, and how little some seem to care that their own actions can reduce how protected we are.
A £10K fine would plunge most of us in the UK into poverty, a £10k fine to a celebrity like Rita Ora, Chloe Ferry or Gordon Ramsey might just dent their monthly savings a little. And while celebrities flout the rules, everyday working people are forced to both serve their whims and be subject to their irresponsibility.
We’ve all managed our personal responsibility differently in lockdown, but when it comes to these brazen displays of privilege and lack of empathy, seeing the most influential people in our society get away with what we never could again and again, it’s no wonder that Rita Ora is facing the publics frustrations now.
It’s been building for nine months - as we watch these celebrities holiday while we stayed home, party while we looked after ill relatives, post their brand deals while we struggled on furlough – and it seems Rita’s party came at just the time the public was about done with celebrity privilege.
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