So one of my favorite forms of writing is the celebrity profile.

If you're listening to this, you've surely read your fair share of them over the years as well.

Now it feels as though pretty much every outlet, online, print, or both, runs a monthly

celebrity profile to accompany magazine cover or a digital cover or just a

lengthy or honestly sometimes not so lengthy deep dive on a celebrity who is promoting anything

from to earlier this movie to a product launch to a brand collaboration things that contractually

tend to include some sort of press obligation they're seemingly everywhere now and they do

genuinely help to promote whatever celebrity wants to promote, even if it's just themselves. They're being exposed to that outlet's audience, which may share some overlap with that star's own following online, but still also includes others who, you know, could be interested in them, but don't follow the every move or don't know exactly what they're up to these days. While helpful, though, they aren't essential to the success of a celebrity or their latest

project or product. If they skip press to promote something, they can still get the word out there

via social media. Before the rise in social media, though, the press was the main way that

celebrities would promote their stuff, and magazines were the most glamorous and sought-after way

to do so.

Who doesn't want to be on the cover of a glossy magazine like GQ or Vogue or Vanity Fair

or Harper's Bazaar? In exchange for the epic photos and the feathering your cap that you get for

snagging a cover, a celebrity had to open up their life to a journalist for a bit, probably

be asked some invasive questions,

and then forego their absolute control over their image as the writer put together a profile on them. Sometimes flattering, sometimes not, sometimes fawning, sometimes snarky. The best celebrity

profiles were a true window into a star's life that showed us unexpected things, uncovered new

details about them that we

previously didn't know, and inserted the writer's voice at opportune times to give the piece

some personality and some insider perspective. But now, the celebrity profile is at once more

abundant and less essential than ever. Because outlets are so desperate for any clicks they can get,

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