We were probably the last people in the country to get a VCR and we didn’t have cable. There wasn’t any admiration of glamour, no, ’I want to look like them or have that lifestyle’, because everyone in my town had the same lifestyle. So I didn’t think, ’Ooh, a movie star’s birthday!’ I just thought, ’What?’

Hendricks contrasts a materially modest, socially uniform upbringing with the media-saturated culture that often produces celebrity aspiration. By noting the late arrival of a VCR and the absence of cable, she frames her childhood as relatively insulated from glamour-driven advertising and entertainment. The key point is not deprivation but perspective: when everyone around you lives similarly, status comparison and celebrity emulation lose their force. Her punchline—reacting to a movie star’s birthday with “What?”—underscores a skepticism toward fame as an object of reverence, suggesting that celebrity culture is learned through exposure rather than innate fascination.