My Celebrity Boyfriends

This past August I celebrated my fourteenth wedding anniversary—I was a child bride, obviously. So, it has been a loooooonnng time since I have had a “boyfriend” in the traditional since of the that word. Now, celebrity boyfriends…that’s another story.

Celebrity boyfriends are not new—as long as there have been celebrities, there have been guys and girls crushing on them. However, it was the Friends episode 3.05 that first introduced a more formalized version of these crushes—you know, the laminated card. And while this list is known by many terms in the pop culture vernacular (freebie five, the get out of jail free card), I discovered the term celebrity boyfriends while perusing Stephanie Perkins site and liked it best.

Relationships with celebrity boyfriends are, of course, not based in any sort of reality—I’m not crazy (at least not certifiably…yet), and they rarely take into account the actual personality of the human being behind the face. They are more like romantic choose-your-own-adventure storylines where I’m the flawed heroine and he is the perfect supportive hero, who always knows the right thing to say and do (like whisk me away to Aruba for the weekend on his private jet), and we just dally along in love on the beach forever, never actually progressing to the part of a relationship where he’s leaving his underwear on the floor for the 16,000^th time and I become a raving shrew who stops shaving her legs in the winter time.

A celebrity boyfriend list is also nothing if not fluid. I’ve had flings that have lasted a few weeks or months (or until his next movie turns me off him), and long-term relationships that pre-date my husband.  Also, as I’ve, ahem, matured, my tastes have changed, become more refined. I’m more selective on who I’m willing to take on as a celebrity boyfriend—it takes more than just a pretty face to make my list these days (mostly). 

But the obvious beauty of the celebrity boyfriend is that our real life relationship status is never a problem because we will most likely never actually meet, and he can, therefore, never crush the perfect romantic pedestal on which I’ve placed him, and I don't have to shave in the winter if I don't want to.

Also, because I’m greedy, I have two lists these days: one for the current me, and one for the forever frozen in time 25 year old me (because that’s who I still am in my head most of the time):

Present Day Shellee’s List:

1.    Brad Pitt – Um, this should need no explanation. Have you seen him in Moneyball?

2.    Clive Owen – Tall, dark, and perfect

3.    Daniel Craig—but only as 007 in Casino Royale

4.    Christian Bale –on the list since the TNT version of Treasure Island, 1990

5.    Ryan Reynolds – I am not above Scarjo’s sloppy seconds

25 year old Shellee’s List

1.    Brad Pitt – Circa A River Runs Through It, Legends of the Fall

2.    Ryan Gosling – but only if he doesn’t play the ukelele

3.    Alex Pettyfer – like I said, real-life personality is irrelevant when you’re this pretty

4.    John Krasinski – really could go on either list, because I’m not that much older than he, but I totally have a thing for tall, adorkabe guys

5.    Henry Cavil – mmmmmmm, Superman

Who am I missing? Got a celebrity boyfriend, too?