Nickelodeon Star Jennette McCurdy Doesn't Want To Be A 'Role Model'

by Chelsea ReganJuly 26, 2014, 12:00 amNews >

Jennette McCurdy, best known for playing Sam Puckett on Nickelodeon series iCarly and Sam & Cat, took to Reddit to explain why she doesn’t want to be – nor feels qualified to be – a role model.

Jennette McCurdy On Being A 'Role Model'

McCurdy, 22, has made a lot of headlines over the last six months. First, she revealed that her ex-boyfriend, NBA player Andrew Drummond’s bad kissing skills were the reason their romance was so short-lived. Then, some racy pictures of her surfaced on the Internet, which she claims must have been leaked by Drummond. McCurdy then failed to show up at the Kids Choice Awards, explaining on Twitter that she was taking a stand against Nickelodeon, and perhaps against their potential preferential treatment of her Sam & Cat costar and R&B powerhouse Ariana Grande.

Now, McCurdy is making more headlines by distancing herself from the idea that by virtue of her celebrity, she should endeavor to be a role model to her young fans. Plainly, McCurdy rejects the idea of being a role model on its face, but there was a time when she aspired to inhabit the position she was corralled into taking on.

“There was a time when I tried to live up to the aggrandizing title, that pedestal of a thing. Maybe it wasn't so much that I was trying to live up to it. Perhaps I thought I could and I thought I was supposed to, so I gave it my best shot,” McCurdy wrote. “It's fine, I can admit it. Back in my adolescence, I was more amiable, bubbly, and on lightly humid days, maybe even flouncy. I was role model material and then some.”

Through growing up in the limelight, being both a witness to and a victim of being built up only to be taken down, McCurdy is now content to assert that being a role model isn’t something she desires.

“This world is one seemingly most keen on judgment and negativity, despite all the hearts and smiley emoticons,” she wrote. “To remove myself from the role model battle, the falsified standard set by the bubblegum industry, is – in my eyes – to remove myself from the counterintuitive battle of attempting to be something perfect while being glaringly aware of my imperfections.”

McCurdy went on to state that fame is a poor barometer for deciding who's suitable to be a role model. After all, according to the Nick star, if you don’t know what a celebrity does in their daily life, you don’t know what you’re really looking up to.

“Calling a celebrity a role model is like calling a stranger a role model,” McCurdy wrote. “The knowledge you have of a celebrity is no more than a caricature drawn by media tastemakers specializing in selling you an image you’re dying to buy. It’s good to have heroes, but you have to look for them in the right places. They say don’t look for true love in a bar, well I say, don’t look for role models on screens.”