This often comes at the expense of any meaningful contribution to society or culture. Socialites go to parties, gather media attention, and essentially ‘work’ at being popular. “Someone who has money and doesn’t work, instead devoting his/her life to being ‘socially active’. Must be in active contact with the media and other rich and unemployed people.

“Socialite: a person who is rich and unemployed. Here again, we have some colourful, less expletive, ‘nuggets’ framed by regular people: Quite dispiriting for those who brag about being a socialite? Well, we must not dispense with defining the Socialite without some contributions from the patently irreverent Urban dictionary. Socialites are media lovers, so they need to be in the spotlight as much as they can.” That means that they don’t have a normal job, or earn their money in a certain way, they just attend social events, smile, and get rich. magnate, magnifico, mogul, gentlefolk…”Īlux.com’s take is both instructive and unapologetic: “Socialites are those famous people who are paid to… socialise. A socialite gets invited to all the best parties and says yes to all of them… A socialite is a person who loves being social, especially in circles that are in the public eye.” And pontificates: “Synonyms and Near Synonyms of Socialite: Aristocrat, blue blood, gentle, noble, patrician. First is from : “A socialite is someone who spends a lot of time in fashionable social circles. Two definitions capture the ambivalence of the Socialite quite well one appears pejorative, and the other attempts to gentrify the root of the word. A socialite spends a significant amount of time attending various fashionable social gatherings.” The octopal Wikipedia is more urbane: it describes a socialite as “a person (usually from a privileged, wealthy, or aristocratic background) who plays a prominent role in high society.

“The word socialite implies frivolity: frequent collocates include wealthy and well-bred but also spoiled, pampered, snooty and vapid.” The Macmillan dictionary is even less so: Google is uncharitably brief: “Socialite – /ˈsəʊʃəlʌɪt/ – noun – a person who is well known in fashionable society and is fond of social activities and entertainment.” We believe that irrespective of an individual’s desires to hug fame and be relevant, if he or she does not acquire the privilege of accomplishments and the mindset of a proper celebrity, he or she is merely a Socialite.Īs it was at the beginning, let us tread around the world, with the help of few disparate “definitions” of the Socialite, a word which came into parlance as far back as the 1920s. On many levels, the socialite is seen from the mindset of a wannabe celeb. Today, as we trudge towards what can be described as the greying end of a four-part treatise on authentic celebrity status in an African continuum, we shall focus attention on the elements that delineate the relevance, or otherwise, of the Socialite, as well as the contra-distinctions to the Celebrity, properly so-called. Recall that our operative desire, in this ongoing tetralogy, was fuelled by a realisation that my class of post-graduate students have had to be challenged and engaged using robust debates, assignations, definitions, connotations and anecdotes, in appreciating and exercising editorial decisions on people who should be lionized as leading lights of their society.

Socialite meaning