Leonardo DiCaprio Fan: Growing Up Tween

Posted on January 29, 2010
Filed Under Culture, Media | By Amy T

Like most tweens in 1997, I saw Titanic for the first time, and that was enough to turn me into somewhat of a Leonardo DiCaprio fan — you know, making my dad subscribe me to a Leonardo DiCaprio merchandise magazine so that I could make him buy me Leonardo DiCaprio coffee mugs, mouse pads, calendars and key chains, discreetly ripping fold-out posters from the pages of Tiger Beat and Teen Bop in the aisles of CVS, and insisting my mom tell me why Jack Dawson had to die whilst sobbing for literally an hour and half straight in the car after seeing Titanic in the movie theater — for the third time. “Why is life so cruel?” I pleaded to her. “WHY?” And for a woman who had always been nothing but supportive and understanding of my out-of-control celebrity crushes, even she looked at me in that moment like I had completely lost it.

That same year, I remember watching a show similar to 20/20, and no joke, one of the segments was actually about a scientist who studied Leonardo DiCaprio. He showed a close-up diagram of his face and revealed that it is in fact perfectly symmetrical — the technical epitome of beautiful. I looked at my mom and angrily said, “SEE. I told you.” It’s called “issues,” okay?

Leonardo DiCaprio is my generation’s version of Robert Pattinson, the difference is that Leonardo DiCaprio can act, (snap!) and even after decades doing it, he’s still making good movies. What began as an obsession with Jack Dawson the character became an obsession with Leonardo DiCaprio the actor, as I went so deep into his catalog that I rented a movie called Total Eclipse, where he plays a gay French poet, snuck down into my basement and embarked on a very confusing-yet-enlightening hour and a half to say the least. I even bought a ticket and sat through The Man in the Iron Mask, and if that’s not love, I don’t know what is. But what I liked most, and have always liked most about him, was that he was beautiful, and he knew was beautiful, and he hated that he was beautiful — and the attention and the screaming girls — and so he hated people like ME, and call me masochistic, but that only made this thirteen year-old love him more. While he cared about “the craft,” “the environment,” and stupid things like “charity work,” I knew what was most important in life, and that was rewinding the pool scene in Romeo and Juliet one more time.




As I got older, however, I knew it was time to move on, and just as Rose had to let go of Jack (even though she NEVER LETS GO) I had to let go of Leonardo. I scrounged up the courage, boxed up my Leonardo DiCaprio mugs and mouse pads and slowly tore his posters from my bedroom walls. They looked so naked without him. It was a bittersweet day in 1999, but I had finally matured into a woman free of dependence on an actor whom I knew I’d never be with. Plus, ‘N Sync just came out and Justin Timberlake was like, so hot.

This post appears courtesy of Ology Media

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