Overheard
Two college girls chatting at Celebrity Bakery (that's really what it's called).
First girl: "So when is your birthday again?"
Second girl: "Four days from now."
First: "Twenty-one!"
Second (picking idly at cranberry-orange muffin): "Yeah, finally."
First: "What're you getting from Momzo?"
Second: "Botox treatments."
First: "Coo-uhl. You're so lucky."
Second: "It's what she gave me last year though. So, like, blah blah whatever. I'd rather get a nice watch."
posted by writer @ 2:32 PM
27 Comments:
Wow.
Yeah, that's all.
Whoa.
Excuse me, I have to go let my brain explode now.
Tapper
I am a young twenty-something living in a rich Dallas suburb. I feel for the young moms up here because it often feels like Stepford. It takes plastic surgery, nannies, and expensive clothes to keep up with the Jones'.
This entry makes me feel for the young women at universities like SMU. (I'm a 2004 grad.) It is difficult to be happy with who you are when you are surrounded by people who have the money to force their bodies perfect. It is no surprise why eating disorders are so common among young coeds. It takes tough measures like bulimia, anorexia, and botox to keep up with unnatural perfection.
I wonder when beauty will be unique and not unnatural.
omigod. Those girls should have been taken taken from those parents and raised by humans. How horrible.
Anonymous,
Why does your body have to be "perfect?" Even if it is, it won't be in ten years. None of us have perfect bodies (or minds). We have what we have.
What an amazingly shallow waste of money.
All I can think about is that movie "Death Becomes Her" where Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn both try to achieve eternal youth via some kind of secretive potion, but eventually they end up using spackle and glue to keep their bodies together. Mediocre movie; hilarious makeup.
If plastic surgery was useful or served a measurable purpose, I might be game. But why drop thousands of dollars just so my face will have a permanent expression of startledness?
I work with someone who's had her boobs done, and when she hugs me it's painful. Her jugs feel like hand grenades.
Aside from reconstructive surgeries intended for accident victims and those with tumourous diseases... I'm at a loss with this whole vanity-based surgery business.
Smile to superholmie above. :-)
And sob to the girls in the entry. :*(
Yeah, if I had a say I'd get her a nice watch.
I remember that movie. I watched it when I was 10 and thought it was totally awesome.
What does a 21 year old need botox for?
o_O Some things I just don't understand! I don't know if its because I am young and stupid or if maybe the world around me is.
This reminds me of college. I went to another southern school, similar to SMU, (which happens to be in a city that was recently destroyed by a hurricane that rhymes with Natrina...). I had a single room that shared a bathroom with another single room in which a very stuck up, rich, not that smart, sorority girl lived. I was a scholarship student and in NO WAY worthy of a WORD from this girl. She literally would NOT speak to me, which didn't really bother me, but left me a bit perplexed. I mean how weird is it to say something and get a response of complete silence?? Especially when our toothbrushes lived in harmony on the same countertop?
At any rate, one night I heard her SOBBING on the phone and to this day I can remember exactly what she said...
"Mommy, you HAVE to get me that surgery! I am like SOOO FAT.... PLEASE PLEASE get me the surgery... and I NEED the pills... talk to Daddy's doctor... please..."
I don't think you could pay me enough to live such an unhappy life. I really don't.
god...
prof, i am a high school student thinking of applying to a boarding school in the south (about between alabama and birmingham). its next to a small college and in a small town....should i or should i not? any thoughts on that? i'm from cali, born and raised, and ethnically very un-white (not race wise, just ethically and culturally). yes? no? maybe? gracias!
oh, and keep up the great writings, chica!
See, I'm just laughing at her because at 23, I have yet to see even the beginnings of a single wrinkle. She must either be spectacularly unlucky in the skin lottery, be already leathery from fake tan, or just be monumentally stupid. Possibly all three.
I wonder what would happen if I tried to convince her to find bulging cans and eat the food inside, because "that's Botox too"?
I kind of think that the botox is a mother/daughter procedure.,.. Mom probably sees it as a combination of bonding exercise and camoflage...
The logic goes as follows: "if my beautiful daughter gets botox, I won't be getting it because I think I'm a failing beauty queen with no education and a husband who has finally figured out how stupid I am... he only noticed now because he married me for my looks and we had this beautiful girl."
I am a young thirtysomething mom living in a rich Dallas suburb. I worked my ass off getting an engineering degree at a public university in Texas(only red headed white chick in the class). You only have to keep up with the Joneses until his drug habit interferes with his 6 figure job, he gets fired, and she divorces him and takes the kids back home to her parents. Then find new Joneses.
It's a whole lot easier being educated and satisfied with your own self shopping at Target,the Gap, and driving a Toyota.
A question for anonymous above: is it as much fun?
Hahahaha
Botox is ALWAYS funny. It doesn't even need to be an innapropriate and unsolicited gift from a parent.
To the anonymous high schooler above:
You want to leave California and go to Alabama? Are you KIDDING? The worst school in your state is better than the best school in Alabama.
That's my opinion. You asked.
"If it weren't for my horse, I never would've spent that year in college."
- Lewis Black
Hello Professor, :)
I noticed that you used dialog in this post, but avoided the use of "he said", or "she said".
I have a question, if I may, on the use of punctuation around quotation marks.
During my half remembered English lessons from school, I recall being told that it was expected behaviour to put a full stop both inside and outside quotation marks.
i.e.
He said, "That looks tricky.".
I do not know if that is just a convention, but it is what I recall being taught in school in the UK.
On the question of commas within quotes, I have the following sentence:
"I think,", he said, "therefore I am."
Do you know if that is correct?
I apologise if this is basic punctuation 101, but I have searched online for an answer, and have been unable to find one.
Thanks in advance for your time in reading this,
One who listens.
I'm in the US. The way its supposed to be done here atleast is "I think," he said, "therefore I am."
You don't need the extra comma. Its redundant.
Aw, see. I'm not a complete failure in the English langauge. I honestly hate my english class. Oy!
To the kid who's thinking of going to school in Alabama - if you do go there (and haven't spent a significant amount of time in the South), be prepared for a major dose of culture shock. Even if you're in an urban area, a significant majority of the people around you are likely to belong to very different sub-cultures than the ones you are used to, and they'll hold different beliefs and assumptions. It's not necessarily bad that they do, but it can come as a real surprise to outworlders, and not all people adjust well to it. Maybe the school you're looking at will be isolated from that, or maybe it's something you'll embrace. If you've read this, I hope it helps.
And please don't do what a lot of Northerners who come to my university in the South do - choose a place here for the weather and its distance from parental authority. They're not much to hold on to when your a/c's broken and you can't understand why the people around you insist on acting the way they do.
You can't deny it...the botox story is absolutely ridiculous. But don't you think it is a little easy? I get it, SMU has snobby rich kids. I know, I went there.
I appreciate the fact that you post stories about the other "smart" "non-sorority girls" but don't you think it is kind of reductive to put everybody in those little boxes? A new angle might make for some deeper, more interesting writing. Just a thought.
At some level though, these cosmetic surgeries for college girls is an investment in their future. If a father can invest in a great set of fake boobs for his little girl and that makes her more attractive and means that she marries into a wealthy family...it's a pretty good investment from both an economical and Darwinian viewpoint.
prof and one of the anon's...
thanks for answering about my boarding school question...i guess i am doing it to get away from my parents...urg...
yeah, i sort of knew it was a bad idea, but guess i had to hear it bluntly from a third person...
thanks.
To answer the punctuation question above: NEVER put the period both inside AND outside the quotation marks. Only inside.
Hope this helps.
Post a Comment
<< Home