Jade Goody: A Pop Life and a Meaningful Death
On March 22, 27-year-old Jade Goody lost her fight with cervical cancer, leaving behind a husband and two young sons.
“Who was Jade Goody?” you may well ask. Goody was a British reality television star who first came to prominence in 2002 when she won the UK version of Big Brother. Much like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, Goody was famous for nothing more than being famous and pretty much made a career out of her infamy. That is, until she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2008 (on TV during a “celebrity” edition of Big Brother) and decided to use her celebrity to bring the plight of this terrible disease to the forefront of the British nation.
Unlike Hilton or Kardashian, though, Goody was the product of a dysfunctional background in South London. Her mother was a crack addict who lost an arm in a motorcycle accident and her father was a heroin addict who was in and out of prison his entire life, until he died in 2005.
Britain loved Goody, or at least it did in 2002. At 21, Goody took her celebrity status and ran with it. In many ways she achieved the “American Dream,” — poor girl made good. The public loved her rough-around-the-edges attempts to make a better life for herself and her family. A true rags-to-riches story in the celebrity age, Goody had little talent for anything other than self-promotion. In 2007, in the wake of many business disasters, Goody decided to return to Celebrity Big Brother, where she got into a spat with Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty. Within seconds, Goody was booted from the house as a result of her “racist slur.”
Although Goody apologized, she was now hated by the nation that once loved her. In India, people burned effigies of her in the streets, sparking an international incident. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown actually apologized to the people of India. But in 2008, Goody agreed to appear on Big Brother in India, hosted by none other that Shetty. It was while on this show that Goody learned she had cervical cancer and decided to fight the disease publicly, allowing the cameras to film her throughout the course of her illness:
People will say I’m doing this for money. … And they’re right, I am. But not to buy flash cars or big houses — it’s for my sons’ future if I’m not here. I don’t want my kids to have the same miserable, drug-blighted, poverty-stricken childhood I did.
Goody was outspoken. That was part of her charm and part of her downfall. She was a loose cannon. The tabloids and their readers followed Goody, waiting to see what mess she would find herself in next. Goody was the personification of the “human car wreck” — a British Britney Spears if you will. People couldn’t help but rubberneck.
Jade did a lot in her short life. She may have been a ”reality” celeb but she was so authentic that she was a breath of fresh air to UK viewers. She was classier than a lot of what passes for class in the UK these days.
What a shame her kids won’t get to enjoy having her around.
Wasn’t there a story/news blip in the past week or so that the British National Health System won’t cover pap smears until a woman is past a certain age? And the age is far older than it needs to be? I wonder if Jade’s death could be a catalyst for lowering that age.
Jade was too much she opened everybody’s eye around the globe. I appreciate her efforts at given us the opportunity to know that early test is very important in woman’s life (smear test) not necessarily when she is in her late forties because going for the test.
Jade died great. I pray for her children whom she adores so much, they are going to miss her but her spirit will be with them.
Good night Jade!
Get a grip people! Why this mourning for a person you didn’t know? Sure it’s sad,but the emotional out pourings seen on comment sections are pathetic.
She died of cancer,yes very sad,but she made a pact with the devil (the media) and I can’t help but think the whole thing was stage managed from the start of her career,right until the end.
Jane Goody was a racist slag and the world is better off without her
She figured it out and turned her life into something worth remembering. 50′sdad & Frank, get going, there’s still time for you.
50′sdad, you ask, why this mourning? Because the world lost someone who took the remainder of her short life and made a tangible, positive impact with it, on those around her. Maybe it’s time for you to keep your thoughts to yourself.
As for Frank, why don’t you go ahead and tell that to Ms. Goody’s husband and children?
Come on Paris and Kim. Follow suit.
Trouble is they’d have to get cancer and die young, and that’s not something you’d wish on anyone.
One thing I’ll say for the otherwise unremarkable Jade Goody – she said she wanted the money she made from her story to be spent on her sons’ education so they wouldn’t grow up “stupid and ignorant” like her.
Usually people who are stupid and ignorant don’t know it. So maybe, at the end, she wasn’t that stupid or that ignorant.
Frank, 50sdad:
Way to expose yourselves as the insensitive jerks that you are. Insulting a dead cancer victim is a new low. Yes, I’m sure she made a deal with the media to deliberately die of cancer just to make YOU look bad. Wow . . .
How many women die of cervical cancer each year? How many strangers shed tears for them? I’m kind of with 50sdad on this one: the expressed grief is exaggerated at best. I’m more inclined to believe that it’s 21st century narcissism, expressing unfelt emotion over the death of a very minor foreign celebrity while someone next door suffers without even garnering a sympathetic thought from her neighbor.
I vote for 50sdad too
it’s a “gratuitous” manipulation of the emotions that leads herds to slaughtering houses.
Oh, come on. It’s natural to identify with the people who are in the public eye. If michelle obama had died of cancer, people would be writing books about her, calloing her a saint and whatnot. Just because Jade was a reality-show celeb, doesn’t mean that she didn’t interest the public who followed her expolits. And it doesn’t mean that her death at such a young age can’t be shocking.
“Goody was a British reality television star who first came to prominence in 2002 when she won the UK version of Big Brother”
Goody actually only finished 4th in that years Big Brother but she was the only one who was memorable because she was so jaw-droppingly stupid. The British media love their “losers” so they shoved this poor dumb kid and everything she did down everybodies throats day in day out to “make her a star”.
She was just the vile British tabloid media’s puppet and don’t let anyone tell you that these vultures didn’t love the column inches and future “opportunities” this poor girls dying and death will get them. The whole lot of them need to be taken down some dark alleyway and shot.