How Rich Youth are portrayed on TV

When television shows depict many teenagers, it is in a fashion that the following adjectives come to mind for the audience: wild, emotional, dramatic, rebellious, fun loving, substance abusing, and angst-driven. If producers are to successfully portray teenagers in this manner, they will have created an undoubtedly fascinating story that provokes a desire to follow the ups and downs in the lives of what may or may not be realistically portrayed characters.

Upper class youth represented in the medium of various television shows have much more in common than not. Looking at three shows that thoroughly present the most common image of “rich kids”, a trend appears notwithstanding the span of twenty years between the first and third. Beverly Hills 90210 ran from 1990-2000 (ten seasons), The O.C. from 2003-2007 (four seasons), and finally Gossip Girl, a show that aired in 2007. The trend includes reckless behaviour, lavish living, ridiculous spending, a taste for glamour, and most of all, a sense of being able to get away with much more than the average citizen could, due to family wealth.

The representation of upper class on television seems to mostly include the struggle of an individual; one who realizes that material riches are overrated and resists conforming to what society expects of that social status.

The Path to leave a Comfort Zone includes stares

Life is full of mundane choices. Or, choices that are at least fairly ordinary, leading to something desired because it is safe. Much more often than anyone realizes, we have opportunities to take unconventional paths that don’t follow the status quo. But day after day, restless individuals don’t notice the chances presented before them and go about their ordinary lives making the safer choices. Knowing from personal experience that riskier choices are sought more by college students than most other demographics for the purpose of adding colour to one’s life, the idea of themed parties made perfect sense. One of these very parties was a chance I took to live unconventionally for its few-hours duration, however brief that was. It was an ABC (anything but clothes) party.

What an ABC party entails is that all participants take the risk of actually going out in public without clothing, although not naked. How is this possible? Guests, getting to stimulate their creativity, use non-clothing objects to “wear” or cover themselves with to how they see fit. Upon getting invited to the ABC party and accepting, I was excited but nervous on more than one level. “What would I choose to wear? How would I assemble it and what would hold it together to guarantee it doesn’t fall off? Damn I would die if it fell off!” As these thoughts occupied my mind I suck it up, reminding myself that I’d wanted to go to an ABC party since freshman year. A little careful planning and safe selection would help me, so all in all I looked forward to seeing the creativity of many other unclothed people donning their outfits and taking pictures.

Fast forward to the ABC party night. Having spent a good half hour at least on the aesthetics of my outfit, I was ready. Six large leaves from the tree in my neighbor’s front yard covered me, along with blue suede boots and a jacket I wore for how bitterly cold the outside was. I felt tentative upon seeing that my friend picking me up and her ride were wearing clothes and not participating in the dress code. This was when they amusedly informed me that most people on the guest list were complaining about having to create an outfit, so the hostess sent out an email saying the dress code was now optional. An email that I’d failed to see. “Uh oh,” I thought getting into the car. But surely, there must be other people like me at the party who participated in the original idea.

At the party there were three other people who were also following the original dress code- a guy in a trash bag who was wearing clothes underneath and two girls in towels. None were as exposed as I was, however. As soon as I walked into that party, getting lots of stares and usually positive comments, my face turned pink and I at first rethought my choice to take the slightly dangerous path of attire for the night. Clothes are a great thing and the best way to make sure their wearers are not exposed, literally and figuratively naked. They are one of the most simple yet pertinent of the “safe” choices we make everyday and necessarily so. Yet through my embarrassment at my lone exposure, there was something enthralling about wearing those leaves laced up with brown woven string that were covering me up. If it’s possible to feel embarrassed yet strangely confident at the same time, I did that night. And not just because it lead to the most male attention I’d ever gotten in a single night at Flagler. The thrill of having taken an unconventional path, however small it was in the long run, rang through my head. Life had presented me a challenge, dared me to take it, and I did. And taking that little dare with so much exposure will probably help me make even more daring decisions in life, like when choosing careers or my next place of residence. So when someone tells me he or she is feeling the urge to mix up his daily life and step out of his comfort zone, I’d give him the recommendation of throwing an ABC party.

Word Count: 708

The Mad Hatter Ponders "To Be Or Not To Be?"

I have always been an avid fan of Alice in Wonderland, having read it along with its sequel, Through the Looking Glass over and over as a child. So to celebrate Tim Burton’s new take on the classic story, I uncovered this emulation of Hamlet’s “To Be or Not To Be” speech that I wrote in high school AP English for the Mad Hatter. Enjoy!

To drink, or not to drink: that is the riddle indeed!

Whether one should suffer of boredom

Wasting 364 perfectly good days on ONE birthday party per year?!

Or take matters into his own gloves

And have UNbirthday parties! To sleep

Like the dormouse, ending

His dread as

The cheshire cat’s prey

Having wished to dwell within the teapot. To sleep, to dream

(But of a complex wonderland) where life may come

When you have left your

State of Alice (into a state of mercury)

Must make you ponder. There’s the respect

For the Queen that makes the playing cards tremble;

For who else would designate the death sentences of time?

The Jabberwock’s oppression is wrong,

The Queen despises love

(Upsetting the law).

Alice the unworthy

Might make herself shy

With a bare hedgehog to the croquet, who Aces bare

Under the rule of hearts in a dark life.

But there is the dread of what comes after the execution,

The undiscovered Wonderland, more and even more curiouser,

From where neither they nor Alice will ever return. It puzzles her

And encourages us all to bear what madness we possess,

Rather than to fly with the civilized flamingos we do not know.

The forest path of conscience makes us desperate,

And thus the blue waters of the dodo

Are overturned in a weak storm cast with curious thoughts,

Intoxicating biscuits and a moment

Where the ocean’s currents turn away.

Then you will have lost your course for following the white rabbit down his hole.

Come join the tea party now! The Alice of logic, sweet in your dreams,

May our lack of all reason be remembered.

The Wrath of the Mona Lisa Postcards

Hanging out with one of my closest friends in college always inspires me. I have known her since the beginning of freshman year, and when we’re in a comfortable environment especially, our discussions might as well belong in a philosophy or psychology class. Our political views are at opposite ends of the spectrum, our lives before college and outside it are quite different, and she is very religious whereas I identify more with spirituality. But our hours-long discussions frequently lead to some sort of revelation about society, the media, the world or even the universe.

Last week we were in her dorm and had just watched New York, I Love You. We started discussing different types of insecurities based on characters in the movie, and how perpetuating those insecurities through the media could be detrimental to a greater collective.

To illustrate what my friend thought of as a personal attack, she took out the February 2010 edition of “Cosmopolitan” magazine. At first I was skeptical, aware that many magazines have taken a hit by media critics, or anyone really, for being too superficial and/or of low quality. “Cosmopolitan” is no exception to criticism, and sometimes it’s warranted in my opinion. But I mostly disagree with these critics as “Cosmo” is my favourite magazine, and one I find to be interesting as well as the least shallow among a slew of publications featuring wardrobes that cost thousands of dollars and models with toothpick silhouettes. In my opinion, “Cosmopolitan” is above all of that.

But when my friend turned to the offending pages, I read and found myself becoming one of my favourite magazine’s critics. My friend is very beautiful inside and out, but since she was a little girl she’s been insecure about her nose. The article on pages 86 and 88 seemed innocent at first glance, being all about makeup tricks women can use to enhance and reduce the appearance of certain facial features. The headlines for each segment read “You want:” followed by the words “Bigger, sexier eyes,” “Plush, pillow-y lips,” “Perfect looking skin,” “Killer cheekbones,” “Uniform brows” (what did that mean, anyway?), “A tinier forehead,” and “A slimmer nose.” Each of these headlines preceded makeup tricks to aid “Cosmo” readers with their desired facial appearance, which apparently involved features of these descriptions.

Whether “Cosmo” realized it or not, they published an article which may insult many women who have an issue with these facial features. Critics frequently point out that unhealthy body images are the standard for almost all magazines today, but what about facial features? Promoting the image of a specific face that everyone wants not only casts the beauty of diversity aside, it is a scary notion. It conjures images of the clones under totalitarian rule in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

A face is the physical manifestation of identity, inspiring such quotes as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s. He said, “A man finds room in the few square inches of his face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.” Sir Thomas Browne said, “There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read A, B, C may read our natures.” Both quotes imply that the face (and body for that matter) that someone was born with is beautiful because it is uniquely his or hers. And it saddens me to see that in today’s plastic surgery-crazed world, people are losing sight of this. Thinking of plastic surgery actually angers and disgusts me more than saddens me. Sure, people should have the freedom to do what they want to their bodies, but how could anyone not be simply incredulous to the multiple procedures that take away someone’s physical identity? My reasoning can be explained with an analogy.

Of all the paintings in the whole world, the Mona Lisa may be the most famous. It is popular, everyone from anywhere wants to see it, and it is arguably the star of the Louvre in Paris. Surely many replicas of it have been made, and in Paris you can find post cards with the Mona Lisa on them. The front of one such postcard boasts the appearance of a famous work of art, but it’s not a work of art itself. It is a copy, simply printed and reprinted over and over with thousands of other postcards that are exactly the same. The postcard has been made in an image of beauty, but this cannot make it art. A completely different painting however, is true art in its diversity and individuality. No one would ever go to a museum to look at walls filled with nothing but Mona Lisa postcards. The idea is absurd. Original works of art are always different from each other and evoke different thoughts and feelings, but this is precisely what makes them art. As humans we are works of art too. We have depth of emotion and sharpness of thought; our behaviour is in different shades and our personality takes different shapes. Why would we want to wash the paint from our canvas and try to print on the Mona Lisa instead of wearing our true colours?

Word Count: 874

Works Cited:

“Cosmopolitan.” February 2010 ed. Pgs. 86 and 88.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Conduct of Life,” 1860.

Browne, Sir Thomas. 1605-1682.