Column: My super sweet article
March 1, 2005
There is a new show on MTV that I am addicted to, and it’s not like me and that little-known show Laguna Beach last semester. Although it was my deepest, darkest secret, I loved Laguna Beach. Some called it a poor man’s O.C. I call it genius. One of the characters, Kristin, hasn’t graduated yet so in my heart of all hearts I know there will be a second season.
This new show is called My Super Sweet Sixteen. I completely hate it yet feel compelled to watch it every time I see it on. I don’t even know what day new episodes premiere because, like all their shows, MTV plays each episode ad nauseum. Here’s the whole premise for those of you who have been lucky to evade its hypnotizing gaze – each week another person turning 16 has an obscenely expensive party.
There hasn’t been one person on the show that is what you would call likeable, and not in the funny Seinfeld way. The first two girls, Jacqueline and Lauren, decided to go halvsies on their party at the Hard Rock Cafe. I know what you are thinking – The Hard Rock Cafe? Big whoop. First of all, don’t say big whoop ever again, even in your head. Secondly, this isn’t like the Hard Rock Cafe where you lame it up with your parents – it’s the one in L.A. and it looks just like a club.
Jacqueline and Lauren find out that people are scalping their party invitations for $50, and they seem somewhat proud of it. Lauren exclaims, “I don’t know anyone here!” On the one hand that means some dumbass kid is willing to pay $50 to go to your party, but on the other hand the cool kids that you invited would rather have $50 than show up … and they are all loaded anyway so they don’t need the money. Happy birthday Lauren and Jacqueline, you don’t have any friends!
In one episode the girl’s whole purpose in having her blowout party is to become popular. Natalie, who is new in town, claims it was very hard for her to make friends in her old hometown, Roswell, N.M., because she is so pretty. Here’s a clue Nat, it’s less because you’re pretty and more because you are the most stuck-up girl ever! She flies in two old friends from Roswell and never once mentions being happy to see them. Natalie does, however, state on several occasions that she can’t wait for them to tell all her enemies in Roswell how great her life is.
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She revels in being able to tell people they can’t come to her party. Then when one of her new horse-faced-rich-girl friends makes fun of Sara from Roswell for buying her jewelry at Target instead of Tiffany’s, she doesn’t tell her to shut the f up. It’s true, diamonds are forever, but so is that girl’s bone structure. Yikes! No one who came actually knew who Natalie was before her party. At the end of the episode some random girl says, “she bought me as a friend!”
If I was one of the popular girls at Natalie’s school and she pulled off her caper at infiltrating my clique, I’d be pissed. When I heard her on TV admitting that she blew tons of money to buy popularity, I would remind everyone that only the most desperate of losers would admit to doing that. Then I would take her Swarovski-encrusted phone, set it on the floor and kick it over to the hopeless wannabe section of the cafeteria. There, Natalie would have to face the very people she scathingly said were not allowed to come to her party. Karma’s a bitch Natalie, but I’m the biggest bitch of all.