Beautiful, popular, loved, yet fragile, prey to panic attacks: this is how showgirl Belen Rodriguez appeared during an interview with Vanity Fair which was interrupted due to her obvious difficulty answering questions. And it was Belen herself who then explained what had happened. To keep a strong panic attack at bay, he had taken an excessive dose of anxiolytics the night before, which made her confused and disoriented. An imprudence also dictated by anxiety, that of not shying away from the commitment, so as not to disappoint either the journalists or the fans.
Belen’s psychological difficulty seems to be that of many characters in the show: on the one hand because they probably hide it less, in the wake of a general malaise that affects a growing number of people and of which we are learning not to be ashamed, the social stigma towards mental distress having been partly overcome. On the other hand, however, the world of entertainment is increasingly pressing, where it is necessary to guarantee one’s presence always and everywhere because if you don’t appear you actually disappear, just as the changes in the record market impose marathons of concerts and hosting events that risk crushing those who, although more or less endowed with talent and wealth, still remain people with their physical and emotional limitations.
Belen is certainly not an isolated case. In recent years, numerous entertainment personalities have had to deal with panic and depression, who have often spoken publicly about their difficulties. From Noemi to Emma, from Fedez to Michele Zarrillo, from Giulia de Lellis to Giorgia, from Carlo Verdone to Giovanni Allevi. A phenomenon from which not even young people are free, who often find themselves catapulted into a meat grinder and have to forfeit: it happened to Angelina Mango after her victory in Sanremo at just 20 years old, to Sangiovanni, who retired from the stage at 19 for over a year to take care of herself, to Victoria dei Maneskin.
Even sacred monsters of the entertainment world, such as Vittorio Gassman and Ornella Vanoni herself, who recently passed away, have learned to live with depression in the past. Just as the use of hard drugs, so common in the world of certain rockers, has often had to do with an attempt to anesthetize discomfort. But what happens today both to the so-called VIPs and to a growing number of young people and beyond, it seems like a different phenomenon, which has more to do with the social pressure of a perpetually connected reality, without pauses, without space for silence, and in fact against the very nature of man, where image counts more than talent, where performance seems to be the measure of value as a person, where you are not at your best then you are worth nothing, where you are always replaceable by those who are eager to conquer their space as a celebrity by any means necessary.
The psychologist and psychotherapist Matteo Lancini, an expert on youth distress, traces this widespread “panic”, this anxiety that devours us, to the reflection of a lack of meaning, so what counts is what you show on the outside, how others see you, their applause, their recognition, but inside you you only find emptiness, and the vertigo you feel looking out over an abyss. Yet, those who are prey to psychological illnesses, even in the world of entertainment, are not always superficial people, devoid of ideals, culture, awareness, authentic relationships, those that often save us. But you have to run, in a tour de force between signings and concerts, interviews and TV programmes, live social media and forays into multiple artistic outfits, also slaloming between insults, resentment amplified by social media, and the sudden denial of the same fans who know how to be ruthless if they feel betrayed and disappointed in some form. And we are all a little complicit in this mechanism if, even behind a lucky, beautiful, loved young woman like Belen, just as, in other areas of our daily lives, friends, colleagues, children, we do not always remind ourselves that we are in front of a person and not just the image that she herself or those around her want to give us. With a magnificent word with an ancient flavor, if we do not show mercy.
