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Sweet Sixteen Parties? More like Sour
Sixteen, if you Watch MTV’s Reality Show
It’s so great
to boss people around.”
“It was awesome having cameras follow me…I’m awesome and I deserve it.”
“This is how it should be every time I enter a room.” [teen as she is
carried in on a litter]
“I had to show people how rich I am.”
Do these comments make you want to throw up? Of course, and what’s worse,
they’re real! These bratty statements are actual quotes from the latest
MTV reality stars: girls and boys whose super-rich and apparently
super-tactless parents give the little darlings anything they desire for
their sweet sixteen parties. Throwing elaborate televised bashes that cost
upwards of $200,000 and indulging every whim of their prince or princess,
the parents show who rules the household (the kids) and what really
matters (getting your fifteen minutes however you can, in this case, by
buying it). What a great life lesson: If you’ve got it, flaunt it, and
it’s okay to trash people in your quest for pseudo-fame. These kids make
Paris Hilton and Omarosa look like beacons of etiquette and
accomplishment.
Sure, MTV’s newest reality show, My Super Sweet Sixteen, which premiered
last January, is designed to be over the top and outrageous. That’s the
whole point. It’s the reality TV equivalent of a bloody train wreck: You
are appalled, but you just can’t avert your eyes. The kids are so
obnoxious and so clueless as to how awful they sound, that you stay glued
to your tube just to see what horrifyingly selfish thing they’ll say or do
next.
Never seen the show? It centers around a spoiled teen or two, trailing
them as they plan their sweet sixteen party, make outrageous, selfish
demands, shed tears, throw tantrums, and torture their peers with lines
like, “You’re not important enough to be invited.” Oh, and then there’s
footage of the actual party, where the guest of honor may enter riding on
a litter, behind the wheel of a luxury car, pulled by horses, or shuttled
in a helicopter. The featured entertainment might be Kanye West, Ciara,
Rihanna, or Diddy, the king of nouveau rich tasteless excess himself, to
name a few. At the end of the night, the kids are presented with sweet
sixteen gifts such as luxury vehicles (some get two!), jewelry and even
homes. Their overindulgent, self-satisfied parents, portrayed to be every
bit as awful as their kids—the truth, or the result of careful editing we
don’t know—gloat in the background. I guess money can’t buy happiness, but
it sure can by popularity.
Before you get too jealous of these pampered kids, consider how tough they
have it, with their every whim catered to, their every foot-stamping
demand met. As one teen put it, “Being rich is hard work!” Indeed.
The materialism and extravagance of MTV’s show is a far cry from what the
average teen can expect. Thank goodness, or we’d have a nation of brats,
which couldn’t be farther from the truth. (TIME magazine’s Anne Marie Cox
wrote of MTV’s teens in a recent article, “Their blingy flings are not
celebrations of accomplishment; they’re celebrations of self.”) Even
debutantes, those clichéd well-to-do southern belles, hold a coming out
ball ostensibly not to show off, but to be formally introduced to polite
society. What’s more, these debutante balls are often charity occasions,
“in which the parents of the young ladies, as well as all attending, must
contribute a certain sum of money to the cause at hand,” according to
Wikipedia.
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