Another day, another headline about a Strictly star in tears. This time, it’s Amber Davies, reportedly “brought to tears” and forced to respond to a wave of criticism. My first thought? Here we go again.
Let’s be real. This is the Strictly Come Dancing playbook. It’s as predictable as the weekly leaderboard. The journey from hopeful contestant to tabloid headline follows a well-worn path: the initial buzz, the first stumble, the “brutal” judges' comments, the social media firestorm, and finally, the emotional breakdown and public response.
Amber’s story is just the latest chapter. She’s talented, she’s working her socks off, and now she’s crying because people—faceless accounts on the internet—have decided she’s not good enough, or trying too hard, or not trying hard enough. The specifics don’t even matter anymore. The cycle is the same.
What gets me is that we, the audience, are complicit. We consume this drama with our morning coffee. We debate the “harshness” of the judges. We retweet the mean comments and then write think-pieces about the toxicity of it all. We have created an ecosystem where a performer’s emotional distress is not a private moment of struggle but a public plot point to be dissected.
Let’s call it what it is: the industrial-scale production of vulnerability. The show gets its drama, the papers get their clicks, and we get our weekly dose of schadenfreude and sympathy. Amber’s tears are part of the product. Her having to “admit” to being hurt and “respond” to the criticism is all part of the script. It’s not a bug; it’s a feature.
But here’s what I think we should remember behind all the noise: These are people. They are dancers, actors, presenters—not gladiators. They signed up to learn a new skill and entertain us, not to have their mental fortitude stress-tested by a million armchair critics. The pressure in that studio is immense enough without the added weight of a digital mob.
So when I see “Amber Davies ‘brought to tears’,” I don’t see a juicy story. I see a symptom of a culture that confuses entertainment with emotional bloodsport. Maybe it’s time we changed the channel on this particular narrative. Let the dancers dance. Let the judges judge. And let’s save our criticism for something that actually matters.
The real test shouldn't be how well a celebrity handles vile comments, but how well we, as an audience, can support the art without demanding a pound of flesh in return.
Just a thought.
