My Celebrity Crush Was A Creep

Aside from keeping up with the odd Kardashian, I don’t care about celebrities, but younger me was constantly keeping up with celebrity gossip. I read the magazines in the grocery store and even kept up with some celebrities online. At the time, I had a crush on Joel Madden of Good Charlotte, and I spent a lot of my time learning about him online. I even created a fan site for Good Charlotte where I talked with other fans. One day I was at the grocery store, and I glanced over at the gossip magazines, only to see something that bothered me for all the wrong reasons. Joel Madden wasn’t the type of celebrity that usually graced the covers of gossip magazines, but there he was posing with a sixteen-year-old Hilary Duff.

At the time, I remember being disgusted at Hilary Duff (as were many other girls who had a crush on Joel Madden). She must have pursued him, because there was no way he’d like a girl who wasn’t a ‘riot girl’, or at least that’s what the other girls on the Good Charlotte fan sites believed. For whatever reason, Hilary Duff was the opposite of who we wanted to be. We made fun of her, commented on her relationship, and some girls even went as far as to comment on her looks and her hair. There’s even an infamous fan fiction that makes mention of the pairing. I don’t remember joining in with the cruel jokes, but I do remember cringing whenever I saw pictures of the pair together. I stopped updating my website, and soon I stopped liking the band altogether.

Did I believe that I had a chance with him? No, probably not, but I was immature and didn’t like seeing him in a relationship. The pairing of the two was also strange since they seemed like opposites. Even if I didn’t want to be with Joel, I also wanted to believe he’d at least like a girl like me. My feelings were echoed by many other fans. We felt lied to and mislead by his lyrics, which seemed to point towards him preferring the company of a more emo/rocker girl. Joel was my last celebrity crush. I rarely even know the names of actors or band members now, and I think I prefer it that way.

A few years later, I was watching a show called ‘Younger’ that featured Hilary Duff and I remembered my dislike for her. I didn’t remember why, because I had long forgotten about Joel Madden and his pop-punk band. I enjoyed watching her in the show and thought of her character as a grown-up Lizzie McGuire (the character she is best known for). As I continued to enjoy the show, I couldn’t help wondering why I disliked Duff. I stumbled upon the reason one day on TikTok. A TokTiker was exposing age gaps in celebrity relationships, and among them was Duff and my former celebrity crush.

Joel Madden was 24 at the time he began dating 16-year-old Hilary Duff. I instantly felt a pang of remorse. Why had I disliked Duff so much when this relationship was illegal? As an adult, I can see that it’s because women are always pitted against each other. Most of the young fans wanted what Duff had, a boyfriend that we found desirable at the time.

While my line of thinking was wrong at the time, I can’t help but wonder why none of the magazines that featured the relationship decided to call them out? The relationship was illegal, but I was able to find quotes from magazines of the couple explaining their age gap away, using the reasoning that Duff was mature for her age and Madden was immature. They also go out of their way to downplay the physical aspect of their relationship.

The couple says they have the same maturity level — Duff says Madden sometimes acts like a teenager and Joel says Hilary is wise beyond her years. "We're on the same level, even though he's so much older," Hilary told the magazine.

But they certainly don't have the same level of experience, which is why they're taking it slow. "Joel is the most respectful boyfriend I've ever had," she said. "We had five or six dates before we even kissed."

"This is the slowest relationship, physically, that I've had," Madden said. "It's grown at the right pace, organically and naturally."

The above quote was taken from Teen Vogue, where Madden also said:

Still, Madden let it slip that if he had a daughter Hil's age, he wouldn't let her date a guy his age. "I wouldn't let it happen," he said.

While it’s clear that Madden knew this relationship was illegal, he still chose to give interviews about the relationship and allowed the media to photograph the pair together. None of the magazines interviewing them made any mention of the word illegal, instead, young girls are given the idea that this type of relationship was fine if the younger party in the relationship was mature. Showcasing this relationship and others like it is harmful to young girls in general.

Also, upon researching this article, I found that Madden was the one who pursued Duff. She originally claimed to be afraid of him. None of the interviewers seemed to have an issue with that fact either.