I love My Super Sweet Sixteen. Have you seen this show? It's tremendous. This show plays to two of my favorite weaknesses; I get to watch bratty girls who think they deserve everything break down, and it makes me feel old. Not old in a I'm-an-adult way, old in a You-damn-kids get-off-my-lawn way. I saw it for the first time a few years ago when I was housesitting for some friends. Episodes start with some kid, usually a girl, from a rich family telling America that their parents give me them whatever they want, and that their coming-of-age party is going to be an outlandishly expensive affair done their way. It may be a quinceanera, a true sweet sixteen (some guys don't think they're girly,) a graduation party, or a debutante ball. Invitations are given to hand-selected classmates who make my high school days look as sophisticated as Tony Bennett.
We're shown some of the party planning, dress and location shopping and whatnot. It starts to get good her because the spoiled fifteen-year-olds often can't find a dress they want, even if they fly to Paris to go shopping. You get to hear things like, "Dior is closed... for August, like every other stupid store." When the girls finally find a dress they like, they come out of the dressing room looking like four-thousand-dollar-an-hour call girls and call their moms bitches because they won't buy it. Four thousand dollars an hour is premium pricing, but you're still a hooker.
Then the crying starts. It's beautiful. Complications set in and as the party begins to seem like it won't come together, the girls start throwing tantrums. They beg their parents for luxury cars and implode when they demur. The girls, all sugar and spice, threaten never to speak to their parents again. The musicians they want at the party can't be booked. Mom is drunk. The cake was knocked over. The go-go dancers are late; watch the guests when they finally show up. Their hair isn't right, their friends aren't right, the world isn't what they thought it would be. Their anguish is like ambrosia. Cry, spoiled whore, cry. Your tears sustain me. Ideally the show would stop there, with all of the kids at some other party scheduled for the same time and the girl sobbing in a corner wondering why no one loves her, but with five minutes to fill everything comes together, the girl gets a custom Mercedes and walks around looking like she just had the greatest orgasm ev-ar. It's a disappointing cap to an otherwise great show.
Ava cries at her dinner while her parents casually look over the menu. She had snuck off to Santa Barbara after her mother told her she couldn't go. When mama canceled the credit cards, Ava stopped talking to her and moved in with her dad. Katie makes her boyfriend compete with someone else to escort her and then picks the other guy. She asks her dad if the six-figure diamond watch he gave is waterproof - luckily, before she took it in the shower. She also wants bullet-proof windows on her six-door Hummer because she lives in Memphis. Of course a rich girl with a stretched street-legal tank is going to drive through gang neighborhoods frequently. Amanda, who gets happy "looking at herself," is praised for taking the break-down of her limo so well; she's in the back seat on the phone saying, "This is fucking bullshit, I have to show up at my party in an Acura." She also pocketed half the money she was supposed to give to her friend at her birthday party. Amanda wore a maid costume to the party to draw all the attention; again, her friend's party. Sophie slips into a hi-goddamn-larious valley girl accent when she fights with one of her friends. Stephanie exclaims that she's "going to France, motherfuckers" standing eight inches in front of her mom, an example of what passes for polite language to the show's featured youths.
And Yashika, the perfect closer for the season. She domineers her inner circle by judging their dresses; they must look good but not better than her. Naturally. She meets her younger sister's planned dress with "What the hell are you wearing?" because it looks too attractive; mainly it makes her breasts look better than Yashika's. The sister responds by flipping Yashika off. At the party her friends disappear into the crowd because it's more fun than being with her.
Having a half-million dollar birthday party at sixteen means you've peaked. That's going to be the highlight of your life and you'll be trading on that experience for the next sixteen years. When you're thirty-five and between husbands numbers three and four, you'll go to clubs giving blowjobs in the parking lot to any guy who puts up with your shit for ten minutes, or be in the bathroom searching the stalls to see if the working girls missed any coke on the toilet seat because those are your only skills. You're basically a vacuum cleaner with tits, your looks failing; charm nonexistant; desperate to find a man to support you who doesn't mind that you taste like Pall Malls, Jagermeister, and some other dude's junk. When you can't manage to find Prince Charming, you'll move into your parents' pool house and take a job at Hooters to pay the bills, or your dealer. You won't be one of the girls they put on the calendars, no, that glamour will have long since left you. You'll serve wings for a stare and a tip from some truck driver that hasn't seen a dentist in ten years who's killing time until the strip clubs open. On your frequent cigarette breaks, as you mix vodka into your water bottle, you'll watch teenagers complain that their cars aren't expensive enough, that their clothes aren't scandalous, that the world would be their oyster if you would just give them whatever they want.
Tsk, kids these days.
We're shown some of the party planning, dress and location shopping and whatnot. It starts to get good her because the spoiled fifteen-year-olds often can't find a dress they want, even if they fly to Paris to go shopping. You get to hear things like, "Dior is closed... for August, like every other stupid store." When the girls finally find a dress they like, they come out of the dressing room looking like four-thousand-dollar-an-hour call girls and call their moms bitches because they won't buy it. Four thousand dollars an hour is premium pricing, but you're still a hooker.Then the crying starts. It's beautiful. Complications set in and as the party begins to seem like it won't come together, the girls start throwing tantrums. They beg their parents for luxury cars and implode when they demur. The girls, all sugar and spice, threaten never to speak to their parents again. The musicians they want at the party can't be booked. Mom is drunk. The cake was knocked over. The go-go dancers are late; watch the guests when they finally show up. Their hair isn't right, their friends aren't right, the world isn't what they thought it would be. Their anguish is like ambrosia. Cry, spoiled whore, cry. Your tears sustain me. Ideally the show would stop there, with all of the kids at some other party scheduled for the same time and the girl sobbing in a corner wondering why no one loves her, but with five minutes to fill everything comes together, the girl gets a custom Mercedes and walks around looking like she just had the greatest orgasm ev-ar. It's a disappointing cap to an otherwise great show.
Ava cries at her dinner while her parents casually look over the menu. She had snuck off to Santa Barbara after her mother told her she couldn't go. When mama canceled the credit cards, Ava stopped talking to her and moved in with her dad. Katie makes her boyfriend compete with someone else to escort her and then picks the other guy. She asks her dad if the six-figure diamond watch he gave is waterproof - luckily, before she took it in the shower. She also wants bullet-proof windows on her six-door Hummer because she lives in Memphis. Of course a rich girl with a stretched street-legal tank is going to drive through gang neighborhoods frequently. Amanda, who gets happy "looking at herself," is praised for taking the break-down of her limo so well; she's in the back seat on the phone saying, "This is fucking bullshit, I have to show up at my party in an Acura." She also pocketed half the money she was supposed to give to her friend at her birthday party. Amanda wore a maid costume to the party to draw all the attention; again, her friend's party. Sophie slips into a hi-goddamn-larious valley girl accent when she fights with one of her friends. Stephanie exclaims that she's "going to France, motherfuckers" standing eight inches in front of her mom, an example of what passes for polite language to the show's featured youths.
And Yashika, the perfect closer for the season. She domineers her inner circle by judging their dresses; they must look good but not better than her. Naturally. She meets her younger sister's planned dress with "What the hell are you wearing?" because it looks too attractive; mainly it makes her breasts look better than Yashika's. The sister responds by flipping Yashika off. At the party her friends disappear into the crowd because it's more fun than being with her.Having a half-million dollar birthday party at sixteen means you've peaked. That's going to be the highlight of your life and you'll be trading on that experience for the next sixteen years. When you're thirty-five and between husbands numbers three and four, you'll go to clubs giving blowjobs in the parking lot to any guy who puts up with your shit for ten minutes, or be in the bathroom searching the stalls to see if the working girls missed any coke on the toilet seat because those are your only skills. You're basically a vacuum cleaner with tits, your looks failing; charm nonexistant; desperate to find a man to support you who doesn't mind that you taste like Pall Malls, Jagermeister, and some other dude's junk. When you can't manage to find Prince Charming, you'll move into your parents' pool house and take a job at Hooters to pay the bills, or your dealer. You won't be one of the girls they put on the calendars, no, that glamour will have long since left you. You'll serve wings for a stare and a tip from some truck driver that hasn't seen a dentist in ten years who's killing time until the strip clubs open. On your frequent cigarette breaks, as you mix vodka into your water bottle, you'll watch teenagers complain that their cars aren't expensive enough, that their clothes aren't scandalous, that the world would be their oyster if you would just give them whatever they want.
Tsk, kids these days.
1 comment:
LOL, nice post i understand everything you are saying
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