In case you hadn’t heard, Anne Hathaway is cool again. So is Zooey Deschanel. And Taylor Swift. In the gladiator ring of pop culture, predicting who’ll get the metaphorical thumbs up or the thumbs down is an increasingly bewildering task. Step back and watch the process for long enough, and the seemingly random fluctuations of who is in and who is out may leave you with whiplash. In the latest reshuffling, it appears we have decided to bestow our favour on a few familiar faces. Specifically, faces that were once deemed to be too sweet, too eager, too open. Most significantly: too earnest.
Our sudden acceptance of the earnest celebrity isn’t merely a fluke – it’s a symptom of a much larger cultural shift. As a new generation comes of age, new values, priorities and perspectives are also taking hold. A millennial preference for irony, edge and sarcasm has been phased out. Earnestness is in, as are the stars that have most famously embodied it.
