Shia LeBeouf and Justin Bieber: Baby-Faced Boys Behaving Badly

We're just one week into summer 2011 and already, Hollywood's pint-sized studs are behaving like tools! Just this week, the twitchy pocket-sized "Romeo",  Shia LeBeouf, took a break from promoting his "Transformers 3" flick to talk about an on-set tryst with his former co-star, Megan Fox while Ms. Fox was dating former teen heart-throb Brian Austin Green. And Justin Bieber, after a busy spring of publicly groping Disney princess, Selena Gomez, decided that it was time for the whole world to know that in addition to a hot babe, he also has a potty mouth, which he unleashed on a member of the BET network's security team, calling the man a "d*bag" - Baby, baby!!??

The man-child is a specialty of Hollywood, where men with little-boy faces play out a kind of Dorian Gray existence, straddling the worlds of innocent child and knowing adult. Every generation has known man-boys like LeBeouf and the Bieb. For my grandmother's generation, they had Mickey Rooney, a man whose baby face and diminutive frame made him ageless, well, at least for a while. I grew up in the Tiger Beat generation, and so it was Ralph Macchio, Gary Coleman, and Emmanuel Lewis who laid claim to the man-child mantle. It's a bit incongruous, these seeming little boys  rocketing into stardom while they're still waiting for puberty. The biggest shock of my life so far is not that Doogie Howser is gay, but that he's got gray hair and well-defined pecks!

The man-child moniker can be a double-edged sword, especially when it's time to grow up. There was a recent "Vanity Fair" interview with Jaleel White - the annoying "Steve Urkel" of ABC's "Family Matters" sitcom - where the actor spoke of the travails of maintaining his character's sexual innocence while going through the struggles of puberty:

"I knew physically I had made certain sacrifices to keep that property alive that just couldn't be made anymore. I wasn't changing my hair; I was staying out of the gym. To be honest, I was retarding my own growth as a man in order to maintain the authenticity to what I thought that character should be."

The man-child mystic is quite a curiosity, and for some people, this disjointed combination of little boy looks and manly desires is irresistible. My older sister, for instance, was in desperate love with Michael Jackson starting from his Jackson 5 days all the way up to "Thriller". While I loved his music, he was never an object of physical desire or adoration for me. Same for Ralph Macchio, Emmanuel Lewis, Gary Coleman, Urkel, and Doogie Howser.

For Shia LeBeouf and Justin Bieber, their man-child duality may get them the girl(s) in the short-run, as their little-boy looks, and massive paychecks will allow the ladies to take their seeming innocence at face value. And maybe they'll have a longer run at this. Heck, it's no mere coincidence that Bieber's mentor is the once baby-faced Lothario, Usher, who's had a checkered past with the ladies. At some point, though, having the face of an angel won't erase the wrong that they do. And while the portrait of the character Dorian Gray which wore the stain of his sins across its canvas only exists in fiction, in this digital age of Twitter and Facebook, the seed-sewing activities of these millionaire tykes won't go unnoticed. I'm just saying:)

Justin Bieber and the Agony of Defeat

Justin Bieber has had a tough few days - his much-hyped movie was beaten out of the top spot in its opening weekend by a movie whose romantic leads have a combined age of 80-something! He walked the Grammy red carpet with his fly unzipped, was forced to share the stage in his Grammy performance with Will Smith's obnoxious son and a huffing and puffing Usher, and walked away empty-handed. The headlines screamed "Grammy Upset" next to stills of Bieber, while talking heads and entertainment media, in the role of esteemed sage, tried to put it all in perspective with comments like, "well, he's only 16, this won't be the last we hear from him." To top it all off, an outbreak of Bieber Fever caused his fans to send out violent tweets against Esperanza Spaulding, the woman who beat the Bieb, taking home the Best New Artist Grammy; oh, and he had to work on Valentine's Day, including an awkward interview with Conan O'Brien, where he was forced to answer, yet again, the Question of the Day: "Are you disappointed that you didn't win the Grammy?"

Ouch!

That's a heck of a lot for any adult to deal with, so imagine what must be going on in the head of this 16 year old. It's not like losing the election for student body president. Bieber is an industry and a product, supporting hundreds of people from concert promoters to the guys hawking t-shirts, to the ticket agents, the roadies, bus companies, managers, musicians, dancers, technicians, etc. A Grammy loss, a lackluster live performance, or a dip in box office - these singular incidents ripple through Bieber World and can cause a panic. If Bieber were a stock, then he's taken a definite hit.

It may sound premature to ponder the demise of a pop idol, but at some point, the fever pitch begins to subside and you'll be forced to make some decisions about who you want to be and what you want to do with your life and your talent. Other pop stars have been through this, but the survivability rates are variable. Michael Jackson enjoyed critical success as well as mass appeal as a performer and writer, but his personal life was fraught. Britney Spears eschewed the critical acclaim, choosing to remain a pop princess, but with a host of personal demons. Miley Cyrus is in the midst of the transition to adult artist, expanding, with limited success, into film actress and clothing designer, and weathering some embarrassing extracurricular activities.

Bieber is a talented kid, and the hope is that as he finds his way, he'll remember that the talent that brought him to this place will see him through this temporary set-back. President Richard M. Nixon once said, "You've got to learn to survive a defeat. That's when you develop character." And if that doesn't help, well then the Bieb can console himself with a cat nap on a bed made out of stacks of $100 bills, or line the cat's litter box with fifties, or to quote another famous person who climbed out of hard times, comic Dave Chappelle, "I'm rich B*tch!" I'm just saying!