Being the daughter of someone famous doesn’t always necessarily make you famous (see: Lucie Arnaz). It does, in fact, require a certain amount of joie de vivre–an enthusiasm for life and its material trappings. Peaches Geldof, one of the few great British socialites and daughter of Bod Geldof (lead singer of The Boomtown Rats, but, more importantly, the man who brought you Live Aid), was just such a person.
Her as of yet unexplained death at age 25 is not only, to use a cliche word, tragic, but also utterly unprecedented by any other major socialite in recent memory except Edie Sedgwick. Granted, youth with disposable income is always reckless, but not in such a way as to actually destroy the body.
Geldof was an active participant in pop culture, contributing to such publications as ELLE Girl for her own column and writing weekly political commentary for The Daily Telegraph. Later, she would become a model for Ultimo underwear, adding to her repertoire as a woman who emphasized mind and body.
The death of Geldof’s mother, Paula Yates, from a drug overdose seemed to hover over her as a constant dark cloud. Perhaps fearing a similar fate would befall her, Geldof insisted “I’m not Amy Winehouse. I never have been. I wasn’t a crackhead.” However, no good socialite goes through existence without at least dabbling a bit in the drug scene. Whether or not this was a result of Geldof’s untimely demise remains to be seen. But it would be all too uncanny if she had ended up following in the footsteps of her mother.
