Six lessons I learned from the Teen Choice Awards

It was rather late in the game when I tuned into the hotly-anticipated awards show where over 35 million teenagers weigh in on their favorite everything. Read this: Choice Music Group, Choice Summer Tour, Choice Single by a Group, Choice Love Song — all awards won by (who else?) One Direction. Unlike the Tonys, Oscars and Emmys however, which I make sure to mark on my calendar every year, the Teen Choice Awards is kind of like a TV torrent afterthought — a two-hour pastime in between seasons of my favorite shows when I’m bored at home and being totally unproductive.

Watching this year’s Teen Choice Awards, however, the only place where Logan Lerman of Perks of Being a Wallflower makes for a better actor than Hugh Jackman in Les Miserables and Leonardo di Caprio in The Great Gatsby, I picked up a few learnings that my YA self might have let slip in light of everything else that happens in a 20-something’s life.

1 Don’t make fun of One Direction.

There is a reason why they’re the world’s biggest boy band and why they’re on the cover of Teen Vogue, Glamour, and even British GQ. Multiply Justin Bieber by five (sans his naked photo serenading a granny), color or fabric-coordinate everyone’s outfits, and you end up with the collective object of desire of every teenage girl (and gay) from Kenya to Kentucky. Diehard fans have been known to anchor their existence around these five bros — posters on the wall, stan blogs, fake Twitter accounts, and all. That even if you’re Rebel Wilson, star of Pitch Perfect, and you decide to crack a joke about these untouchables during your acceptance speech, expect to get booed. Bottomline, teenagers are people too. And it’s not as if we didn’t all go through a Britney, Christina, and Justin phase. Don’t hate. Radiate.

2 Even if you’re no longer the hottest item on the menu, keep doing good work and you’ll eventually find yourself back in the big leagues.

For Choice TV Show: Comedy, as Lily Collins and Max Greenfield of New Girl were running through the list of nominees, Glee, now entering its fifth season, hardly elicited any cheers from the audience — well, at least compared to Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory. Its star seemed to have waned since it put Don’t Stop Believin’ back in the zeitgeist via its first season. After two seasons of run-of-the-mill and anticlimactic plotlines and tributes to Britney and GaGa, however, it upped the ante for its fourth season as Rachel Berry and some of the Gleeks graduated and moved to New York and Ryan Murphy rechanneled some of his visionary brilliance in American Horror Story back in the show that put him back on the map after Nip/Tuck. The Gleeks, old and new, got their act together (how about that breakup episode in the fourth season that had everyone talking about the show again?) along with the writers and churned out one of the best, if not the best, season of the show. The result? Four Teen Choice awards, including Choice TV Scene Stealer for Chord Overstreet, Choice TV Breakout Star Blake Jenner and Choice TV Actress: Comedy for my girl Lea Michele.

3 You’ll always get by with a little help from your friends.

Pretty in pink was the story of actress Lea Michele who made her first public appearance for winning Choice TV Actress: Comedy since the death of her onscreen and off-screen romance Cory Monteith a few weeks ago. “I just wanted to be here today to personally thank all of you and tell everyone out there how much all of your love and support has meant to me over the past difficult weeks,” she said, teary-eyed but looking her most gorgeous ever. “I promise that with your love, we’re going to get through this together.” It takes a certain kind of mettle and strength of character to keep your faculties together during a difficult time. I should know. I went through that when my sister left this earth. But letting your friends and family in will spell all the difference between a nervous wreck and a phoenix that can rise back from the ashes.

4 Opportunity looks a lot like hard work.

Well, most of the other things I learned came from the awards’ show were from Ashton Kutcher’s acceptance speech when he was awarded Ultimate Choice. He recalled the story of being 13 once, and working several jobs, including washing dishes at a restaurant and sweeping Cheerio dust off the ground at a factory. “I never had a job in my life that I was better than,” he said. “I was always just lucky to have a job.” So that whole myth of opportunity being exclusive to a select few? Totally. Not. True. The guy whose career has skyrocketed since his time on That ‘70s Show says hard work will always land you the opportunity. You just have to know when it comes a-knocking.

5 Be sexy.

Do this not by having a pity party with yourself while looking in the mirror while TLC’s Unpretty is playing on your stereo; rather, do it by pointing your index finger at your temple, keeping your head up high, and knowing your worth. “The sexiest thing in the entire world is being really smart, and being thoughtful, and being generous,” he says. “Everything else is crap! It’s just crap that people try to sell to you to make you feel less. So don’t buy it. Be smart!”

6 Finally, build a life. Don’t live one.

It’s a lesson, Ashton said, he learned when he was filming the biopic about Apple visionary Steve Jobs. “When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way that it is. And your job is to live your life inside the world and try not to get into too much trouble.” But he says that life can be broader than that if you realize one simple thing — that is, that everything around you that you call life is made by people who are no smarter than you. So build your own life, don’t live in one.