Different Strokes for Different Folks? The Disparate Treatment of Young Actors and Young Pro Athletes

We often hear, with great derision and perhaps jealously, that young athletes shouldn't be paid so much money. For whatever reason(s), there appears to be a widespread intuition that athletes, and particularly young athletes, simply don't "deserve" their earnings (even though we are the ones responsible for their high salaries, but that's another story). We also sometimes hear admonitions that young athletes shouldn't skip college to sign million-dollar contracts, or that they are somehow ill-prepared for life as pro athletes (but not, interestingly enough, ill-prepared for life as soldiers risking their lives in Iraq, or life as McDonald's employees making the minimum wage).

"Why don't they want to stay in school and get an education?" "Why don't they want to mature under the learned hands of coaches like Joe Paterno and Fisher Berry?" "Why can't they just pay their dues and make a lot of money for colleges and universities like, you know, other athletes before them?" "What is wrong with them?"

Well, Forbes Magzine has complied a list of some of the world's best-paid young celebrities. Here are the names from the list with age/profession/2005 earnings:

Amanda Bynes
19-years old, actress, $1.5 million -- pictured above with Kevin Garnett

Hillary Duff
18-years old, actress/musician, $15 million -- I guess people didn't read those reviews for Cheaper By the Dozen 2 and Agent Cody Banks

Paris Hilton
24-years old, "personality," $6.5 million

Lebron James
20-years old, NBA player, $22.9 million -- doesn't seem overpaid compared to others on this list

Adriana Lima
24-years old, model, $4.5 million

Lindsay Lohan
19-years old, actress/musician, $11 million -- I don't think her recent interview in Vanity Fair will help her earnings in 2006

Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen
19-years old, actresses/NYU sophomores, $21 million -- pretty good part-time work for being full-time college students (although, to be fair, Mary-Kate did drop out of NYU in October 2005)

Frankie Muniz
20-years old, actor, $8 million -- his latest film, Agent Cody Banks II, generated this review from the New York Post's Lou Lumenick: "As family entertainment, it constitutes child abuse."

Ashlee Simpson
21-years old, singer/sister, $5.3 million -- all the pieces, pieces, pieces of her good fortune

Maria Sharapova
18-years old, tennis player, $18.2 million -- lucky her name isn't "Lebron James" or people might begin to worry about her earnings at such a young and impressionable age

Serena Williams
24-years old, tennis player, $12.7 million

Isn't it interesting that we seldom hear complaints about young actors and actresses earning millions for their work, even their lousy work, while young athletes--and especially young African-American male athletes--often draw the ire of society? What makes these two groups so different? Why is one presumed overpaid, while the other enjoys some peculiar benefit of the doubt, even when their work stinks?

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