I have composed a Spenserian sonnet, using puppets being controlled by puppeteers as an extended metaphor for celebrities and their need to please the public, the puppeteer. The problem introduced in the first quatrain lies in the limited size of the platform or “stage” (line 4) on which celebrities can express themselves. Constantly in the public eye, the chances of celebrities pleasing everyone are slim to none, but the fear of a seemingly worse alternative imprisons celebrities in their positions of subservience to the public, leaving them powerlessly “dangling from the strings” of their puppeteer. Members of the public hold the metaphorical “strings” that control the actions and appearances of the celebrities and therefore, failing to do as they say or “conform” to the predetermined mold could prove to be career threatening. Since filmmakers and record labels generally don’t sign artists whose personal lives would drastically influence their professional work, celebrities have learned to appease the public and “prance across the small stage” they have been assigned to. Additionally, by constantly trailing them, the paparazzi and media deprive celebrities of off-screen lives, making it incredibly difficult for a celebrity to form and sustain a unique and acceptable identity. In the second quatrain, I elaborate on the issue of celebrities and their utter helplessness in the hands of the puppeteer. I extended the puppet metaphor by using the phrase “smiling painted faces” to argue that while smiles always seem to be plastered on the faces of our favorite celebrities, they serve a purely ornamental purpose (as do the smiles literally painted on wooden puppets.) Such theatrics manage only to fool the “young and naïve,” or the members of society who are more than content to observe and glorify passing trends in the celebrity world deemed acceptable by the public. I used the word “fad” because it holds the negative connotation of being ephemeral and inherently meaningless. I personified the fad in order to characterize it as intrusive and easily replaced, thereby emphasizing the idea that because celebrities try so hard to meet the public’s expectations, they lack distinctive identities. The “volta” or turn is introduced by the “but” in the first line of the 3rd quatrain and marks the transition from a description of the current state of the vast majority of celebrities as pawns of the public, to a narration of a unique case in which a celebrity manages to break free of his/her subservience to the public and starts forging his/her own identity. The “sober hands” that grip at the now “weathered strings” refer to the more conservative members of society who condemn radicalism and react to the shockwaves the celebrity has sent through the public by bolstering the diminishing pertinence of traditional standards of “art.” I concede in the last line of the quatrain that the celebrity wouldn’t be “spared the guilt trip,” meaning that he/she would receive an unprecedented share of criticism-- a cost he/she would have to pay for his/her radical acts of self-expression. I resolve the issue at hand by commending the celebrity who has mustered up the courage necessary to break free of the shackles of society’s ideals of normality. In the last line of the poem, I use a quote from the “Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton to encourage the celebrity to continue this method of innocent self- expression. Forging and expressing one’s own identity is innocent in the sense that as children, we didn’t care what other people thought of us, and this ignorance set us free to act on our ambitions without fearing judgment. In telling the puppet to “stay gold,” I advocate remaining true to one’s identity rather than prodding and poking oneself into a form the public would “approve” of. I made a text-to-world connection in the sense that this sonnet was loosely inspired by Miley Cyrus’s performance at the VMAs and her newfound idiosyncratic style and defiance towards the general public. Cyrus embodies the spirit of the puppet in my poem and the media’s vehement disapproval and general disgust towards her performance proved to me how celebrities and their subservience to the public is actually negatively influencing our ability to accept and appreciate diversity.