Hollywood celebrity couples are always looking for ways to get free publicity, but nothing gets bigger and better coverage in the mainstream media news reports than break up or divorce news. Has Chaz Bono taken a cue from Kim Kardashian and confirmed his split with Jennifer Elia as a sad former DWTS competitor publicity stunt this holiday season?
What’s with the holiday break-ups lately? Chaz Bono and former fiancee Jennifer Elia are no more. Chaz himself tweeted a confirmation that the couple had split but they retained respect and affection for one another. A publicist confirmed the sentiment as well and said nothing further would be discussed about the break-up. He asked that their privacy be respected. But the timing of the announcement the LGBT celebrity couple split seems suspiciously like an announcements made just before Halloween by Kim Kardashian and by Eli Canalis just before Thanksgiving. Now, it is almost Christmas and the DWTS romantic curse plaguing competitors has hit the show’s first transgendered competitor?
Read More: Chaz Bono and girlfriend break up before Christmas
Between Chaz Bono and Kim Kardashian, one starts to wonder if the there is a rash of holiday themed publicity stunt break-ups going on with former Dancing With The Stars competitors. Chas, Kim K, and even Elisabetta Canalis recently split. While on the surface it may appear as if each star was simply too competitive to be a supportive team member in a romantic relationship, it may be the breakups were timed not only to beat their romantic partners to the punch but to win them the maximum amount of public support and free press using the holiday spirit to make people feel more forgiving and to give an artificial key word bump to their tales of woe in the press.
Why share bad news about a breakup over the holidays if you are rich and famous?
Because the last we really saw of Chaz Bono was on Dancing with the Stars last season. Back when he started the process, he put in a fair amount of effort. Suffering some physical injury in the dance practice process, he performed respectably thoughout his appearance. Ultimately earning 7th place with partner Lacey Schwimmer, he was a remarkably present and forthcoming activist for gender identity issues. But negative rumor mills reports swirled about his appearance on the show. Critics claimed having a transgendered person dance and talk about LGBT issues was inappropriate for a family show. There was a big hype over a possible appearance by Bono’s star celeb mother, Cher (as folks wondered whether she would emotionally support her son the same way she had her daughter). The proposal to Jennifer Elia was touching and got him lots of positive gay marriage press. It seemed like Bono was standing up and testifying to a world of possibilities under even the most trying of circumstances. And at the end, he would walk away full of pride, with a beautiful wife. But then disaster struck. People stopped talking about him. Now, after 6 years of dating, the celebrity couple is no more. One would think he could have waited until father time closed the December 31st 2011 door. But, as holiday headlines trump celebrity news bylines, we’re all reading about the reality TV star once more.
Former DWTS competitor Kim Kardashian also saw her fame start to slip a bit following all the reality television hyped marriage to NBA basketball player Kris Humphries. Once the star celebs started Honeymoon travel, her name fell off the top tiers of the Maxim magazine’s hot 100 list faster than bricks out of a 10 story walk up in NYC where she was busy filming Kim And Kourtney Take New York. Granted, these two were only married 72 days before the most famous of the Kardashian sisters tweeted out a pic of herself dressed in green looking like the Batman movie character Poison Ivy then confirmed she filed for a divorce, but still… all the bikini bathing suit photo spreads in the world were not getting enough free publicity for the famous philanthropist to satisfy her socialite urge. She got her name in headlines about the break up report just in time for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and to help keep her name trending in the entertainment news headlines throughout the Christmas holiday season. Coincidentally, the holiday themes gossip was surging just in time to improve ratings on her new show.
Hopefully, the Chaz Bono girlfriend split and Kim Kardashian – Kris Humphries break-ups weren’t staged so self-aggrandizing stars could prolong having their names featured in rumor mills headlines at the expense of their partner. We don’t think Eli Canalis breaking up with Mehcad Brooks was to get free press as word is the two had an extremely public argument before she walked out the door. Maybe the star celebs really were not happy romantically with the people they were with and decided to part before the holidays simply so they would be surrounded by friends and family members to help them through it. Maybe stress from the holidays got the better of them all.
Read More: Eli Canalis involved in domestic dispute with True Blood actor Mehcad Brooks
Celebrities, like the rest of us, are humans who may also make bad choices throughout the year. The rush of success and fame and fortune has a tendency to carry even the best of us along with it, into situations we’d probably have thought twice about getting into if we’d had the chance. Chaz’s girlfriend might have liked being with a famous lesbian and changed her mind about dating a man. Kim Kardashian made a mint for getting married again — and poor Kris Humphries was just dumb enough to let Kris Jenner suck him in to the family drama last season (helping their ratings while they make him look like an idiot this season). When he got down on one knee and proposed to Kim K, most of America knew he was not destined to last long.
But also (like the rest of us) spending holidays with a romantic partner you don’t enjoy being with can be tough. Faking that everything is all fine and dandy while attending holiday functions together is always rough, and it simply has to be harder on the partner who is less famous (in these cases) because they tend to get less support than the people who have loyal fan bases. Not having people love you unconditionally because you are a star — yet splitting up with a famous face who has oodles of love and support for being the pretty one, richest one, or whatever fame quality they have that you don’t — has got to suck.
Read More: Big list of Star Celebs Winning in 2011 (the Good, The Bad and the Ugly)
To that end, we do wish Chaz Bono’s girlfriend and Kim Kardashian’s ex the best. Their stories are the more tragic ones as rumors are swirling Chaz dumped Jennifer because she allegedly is an alcoholic and Kris is being painted as a party-boy misogynistic cheater. Happy Holidays in spite of disappointments caused by your respective lifemate celebs. It is too bad couples therapy did not seem to work out for either sets. We’d much rather be reporting happier news — like celebrity couples volunteer at charity benefits together on date night or they make a big donation to their favorite non-profit organizations as a couple to get their names in the press.