The Golden Age of Me, Me, Me

I’m not sure when this country slipped into the depths of plasticity, but the worship of all things fake and shallow has gotten completely out of control. From my knowledge of history, I can tell you that at the turn of the 1900s there were a few big socialite families, like the Rockefellers, who ruled the society pages, but never to the extent that we see now. It seems as though our country has become increasing focused on those who are shallow and self-centered.

Although our culture was obsessed with an unrealistic beauty ideal coupled with the pursuit of all things material prior to the rise of Paris Hilton, it was this bitch that really drove home the belief that if you do nothing, think nothing, and contribute nothing to society, you can still be worshipped by millions. At first I was opened-minded when it came to her, and I watched The Simple Life thinking that maybe she would be one of those naturally funny people with a radiant personality, which would justify all of the hoopla surrounding her. By the second episode, I realized that she was pretty much a waste of skin. Nicole, pre-anorexia, did all of the work, contributed all of the wit, and had the personality, Paris just seemed to be there like wallpaper; skinny, Mystic tanned wallpaper.

Unfortunately, the “Paris attitude” seems to have gripped the youth of this country like one of her over-priced, bejeweled chokers. I see young teenage girls walking around the mall sporting $500 handbags. They must get the money for their pricy schwag from their parents, because the other Paris doctrine that seems to have taken hold is that working is for the lower class. As a mommy, I can assure you now that my daughter will have some sort of job, and there’s no way in hell she’s carrying around a purse more expensive than mine while she lives under my roof. Hopefully, I’ll raise her right and she won’t buy into this idolatry of uselessness.

It would be one thing if the “Paris attitude” was exclusively reserved for naïve kids, but one of the cable channels featured a new show called Real Housewives of Orange County. This program features five of the most self-centered, shallow, useless, middle-aged cunts you could ever come across. One of them was throwing an “Orange County style” party for her daughter’s graduation. All the woman did was talk about her kid’s celebration in terms of herself. A few minutes after her “me fest” commentary, you learn that she ditched her first husband, because he didn’t make enough money to provide the kind of lifestyle she wanted, and that she was looking forward to sending her daughter to college, so that they could now be more like “friends” instead of mother and daughter.

The rest of the show, which I couldn’t even watch much of, were the five women going on and on about themselves. In fact, one of the women who worked as an event planner opted out of own her son’s graduation, because she had a big event that had “been on the books for a year.” I do events, and nothing would ever come between me and my daughter’s graduation, then again, I’m actually in this life for someone more than me.

I made my husband watch a little of this show, because he grew up in Orange County, and he was completely perplexed by it. He said that vacuous, socialite attitude was mainly a Beverly Hills thing when he was growing up in The O.C., and by the way, when he grew up there, they didn’t call it The O.C. that was an Aaron Spelling invention.

Maybe it wasn’t Paris, but the generation that came after us Gen Xers that began this ridiculous trend of plastic worship. We had the movie Singles, they had the fashionista melodrama, Clueless. We had Nirvana and L7 to keep us centered and down to earth, and they had Sugar Ray and Ace of Base. How could they not have arrived in this sorry lost state, after all, you can’t possibly come up with anything relevant with Mariah Carey wailing in your ear.

For those of us who are used to looking at the bigger picture, and don’t like what we see most of the time, this shallowness is annoying and a big part of the problem. However, there is a light at the end of this vacuous tunnel; all of this obsession with “what’s hot” and “what’s not” means that trends don’t stick around that long. Perhaps the glorious day will come when Paris is no longer posh, being clueless is considered absurd, and horrible pop music is banned from even the corporate media. Then again, that’s the kind of naïve wishful thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.