Look-alike competitions are a desperate attempt from fans to garner attention by looking and acting like a celebrity—it’s long overdue that fans start seeing celebrities as people.
In October, a Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest was hosted in Lower Manhattan, New York City, which, much to fans’ delight, Chalamet himself crashed. Since then, celebrity look-alike contests have been all the rage. There’s been a Paul Mescal look-alike competition in Dublin, a Jeremy Allen White look-alike competition in Chicago, a Zendaya look-alike competition in California, a Harry Styles event in London, and many, many more. Every event has attracted large crowds and gained endless views online, leaving some wondering what inspired these events and why they’re so popular.
Maybe it’s the perfect opportunity for people to meet a new boo who looks like their celebrity crush. But I don’t think that’s the full story—fandoms are going too far.
The new phenomenon of look-alike competitions involves fans dressing up, not only as celebrities, but also as specific characters the stars play. For example, the winner of the Jeremy Allen White look-alike costume dressed up as Carmy from White’s role in The Bear. This costume convention speaks to the way society judges celebrities for the roles they play, instead of viewing them as dynamic people.
The fans aren’t admiring celebrities, but are instead treating them like trophies to win or characters to emulate. Boiling celebrities’ personalities down to simply the characters they play carries odd ethical implications as celebrities are being dehumanized. Simultaneously the look-alike contests have a strange undertone, as fans are attempting to feel connected to celebrities by looking like them, feeding into the toxicity of parasocial relationships.
It seems that the essence of the celebrity look-alike competitions is to entice the celebrities themselves to show up. That’s why most of the look-alike contests are hosted in the city that the respective celebrity lives in, like Chalamet in New York City. To be fair, it’s a hilarious and golden public relations opportunity for the celebrity to show face and attempt to blend into the sea of fans.
There was an immense positive reaction to Chalamet’s surprise appearance, even outside of the screaming joyous fans at the contest, with overwhelmingly positive fan reactions online. Fans reacted saying things like “he had the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever and HE DID IT.”
Despite the look-alike contests’ humourous nature, they toe the line of being weird and creepy. You can almost feel the desperation wafting off the fans as they scan every face in the crowd, anxiously hoping for the celebrity to show up. The cosplaying is beginning to feel eerily like obsession.
Watching all the fans packed together, dressing up and reenacting their chosen celebrity, it reminded me of Paige Niemann, an influencer who went viral on TikTok in 2019 for impersonating Ariana Grande. She continues to make videos cosplaying Grande, including mimicking her voice and different style eras, even dying her hair blonde when Grande did in late 2022 for her role as Glinda in Wicked.
Success in all spheres of life like careers, online life, and relationships, should be built from talent and uniqueness, not simply pretending to be someone else.
Internet reactions to Niemann were negative, as her online platform and persona revolves completely around imitating Grande. The celebrity look-alike contests feel like a convention of publicized versions of Niemann’s obsession with Grande. The goal of the look-alike competition is to recreate celebrity outfits and mannerisms in hopes of gaining clout through imitating a different person who ultimately isn’t you.
Dressing like your favourite celebrity is exacerbating the parasocial relationship between stans and celebs. Your favourite celebrity is a human being just like you or me, and treating them like a character to cosplay seems strange.
Within intense fandoms, fans can lose sight of who they are outside of their obsession with a certain celebrity or band—letting that celebrity define how they see themselves.
There’s an undertone of toxic culture surrounding appearances. Not only do fans want to be celebrities, but now they want to look like them too. The look-alike competitions prioritize and monetize superficiality within fandoms.
Look-alike contests go a step further than simply defending a celebrity or making liking a celebrity a personality trait. These contests encourage fans to try and dress up and be mistaken for their favorite celebrity. Not only is the fan’s personality wrapped up in their identity as a fan of someone, but now, they’re literally trying to look and act like the celebrity of their choice.
The contests, continuing to gain momentum, makes me wonder how much further fandom culture will go.
Tags
celebrity, Fandom, fans, Lookalike contest, Timothee Chalamet
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Olivia Escobar
Great post — concise, useful, and well-presented. Thank you!