Jade Goody: A Pop Life and a Meaningful Death
Memo to Paris Hilton: It's never too late to use your celebrity for public good.
After apologizing for her in 2007, Brown praised Goody’s public fight after her death, speaking of her efforts to raise awareness about the disease, the need for screening, and the fact that cervical cancer can hit a woman at any age. He said:
She was a courageous woman both in life and death, and the whole country has admired her determination to provide a bright future for her children.
Since Goody’s public diagnosis, reports indicate that more women between the ages of 25 and 35 have been seeking out smear tests for cancer screening in the UK. In most cases, cervical cancer can be cured if caught early enough. Goody’s fight captured the UK’s heart because she chose to turn the cameras on herself. As a result, those who normally ignore such things have taken action. Already there is news that a film will be made about Goody’s life.
In a celebrity-obsessed culture, celebrities can have a bigger impact on their fans than politicians. Case in point: President Barack Obama’s mother died from cervical cancer at the age of 55, but that hasn’t led to a rise in cervical cancer screening since Obama’s election. So it would be refreshing if celebrities like Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian (whose own father died from esophageal cancer in 2003), would use their celebrity status to bring awareness to something like cervical cancer in the U.S.
Goody died tragically, yet she managed to use her celebrity status to do something positive. She could easily have focused on herself and railed against her death sentence. Instead, she put her children and her nation first and chose to do something positive for her fellow countrywomen. Goody may be one of the few examples of “celebrities for nothing” that actually did something worthwhile with their lives.
Come on Paris and Kim. Follow suit.
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Kim Dodge writes plays, novels, lyrics, and blogs at ktdodge.com. She resides with her husband Andrew Ian Dodge on the coast of Maine.
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13 Comments
1. Valerie:Jade did a lot in her short life. She may have been a ”reality” celeb but she was so authentic that she was a breath of fresh air to UK viewers. She was classier than a lot of what passes for class in the UK these days.
What a shame her kids won’t get to enjoy having her around.
Mar 31, 2009 - 2:40 am 2. Grantman:Wasn’t there a story/news blip in the past week or so that the British National Health System won’t cover pap smears until a woman is past a certain age? And the age is far older than it needs to be? I wonder if Jade’s death could be a catalyst for lowering that age.
Mar 31, 2009 - 4:21 am 3. liasu belinda:Jade was too much she opened everybody’s eye around the globe. I appreciate her efforts at given us the opportunity to know that early test is very important in woman’s life (smear test) not necessarily when she is in her late forties because going for the test.
Jade died great. I pray for her children whom she adores so much, they are going to miss her but her spirit will be with them.
Good night Jade!
Mar 31, 2009 - 6:44 am 4. 50'sdad:Get a grip people! Why this mourning for a person you didn’t know? Sure it’s sad,but the emotional out pourings seen on comment sections are pathetic.
She died of cancer,yes very sad,but she made a pact with the devil (the media) and I can’t help but think the whole thing was stage managed from the start of her career,right until the end.
Mar 31, 2009 - 7:41 am 5. Frank:Jane Goody was a racist slag and the world is better off without her
Mar 31, 2009 - 9:31 am 6. LizBert:She figured it out and turned her life into something worth remembering. 50’sdad & Frank, get going, there’s still time for you.
Mar 31, 2009 - 10:52 am 7. Ed N.:50’sdad, you ask, why this mourning? Because the world lost someone who took the remainder of her short life and made a tangible, positive impact with it, on those around her. Maybe it’s time for you to keep your thoughts to yourself.
Mar 31, 2009 - 11:38 am 8. Mary Jackson:As for Frank, why don’t you go ahead and tell that to Ms. Goody’s husband and children?
Come on Paris and Kim. Follow suit.
Trouble is they’d have to get cancer and die young, and that’s not something you’d wish on anyone.
One thing I’ll say for the otherwise unremarkable Jade Goody – she said she wanted the money she made from her story to be spent on her sons’ education so they wouldn’t grow up “stupid and ignorant” like her.
Usually people who are stupid and ignorant don’t know it. So maybe, at the end, she wasn’t that stupid or that ignorant.
Mar 31, 2009 - 3:15 pm 9. Someone75:Frank, 50sdad:
Way to expose yourselves as the insensitive jerks that you are. Insulting a dead cancer victim is a new low. Yes, I’m sure she made a deal with the media to deliberately die of cancer just to make YOU look bad. Wow . . .
Mar 31, 2009 - 3:19 pm 10. Tito:How many women die of cervical cancer each year? How many strangers shed tears for them? I’m kind of with 50sdad on this one: the expressed grief is exaggerated at best. I’m more inclined to believe that it’s 21st century narcissism, expressing unfelt emotion over the death of a very minor foreign celebrity while someone next door suffers without even garnering a sympathetic thought from her neighbor.
Mar 31, 2009 - 5:44 pm 11. Marie Claude:I vote for 50sdad too
it’s a “gratuitous” manipulation of the emotions that leads herds to slaughtering houses.
Mar 31, 2009 - 9:17 pm 12. Valerie:Oh, come on. It’s natural to identify with the people who are in the public eye. If michelle obama had died of cancer, people would be writing books about her, calloing her a saint and whatnot. Just because Jade was a reality-show celeb, doesn’t mean that she didn’t interest the public who followed her expolits. And it doesn’t mean that her death at such a young age can’t be shocking.
Apr 1, 2009 - 2:45 am 13. Tony R:“Goody was a British reality television star who first came to prominence in 2002 when she won the UK version of Big Brother”
Goody actually only finished 4th in that years Big Brother but she was the only one who was memorable because she was so jaw-droppingly stupid. The British media love their “losers” so they shoved this poor dumb kid and everything she did down everybodies throats day in day out to “make her a star”.
She was just the vile British tabloid media’s puppet and don’t let anyone tell you that these vultures didn’t love the column inches and future “opportunities” this poor girls dying and death will get them. The whole lot of them need to be taken down some dark alleyway and shot.
Apr 1, 2009 - 1:42 pm