Superficial Superstar
This story may make sense only to a few people know have known me since childhood. *COUGH* Chan *COUGH* This is a story about my childhood, but I didn't really know about it at the time, so I guess this is really a story about the OC lifestyle.
When I was growing up in preschool I hung out a lot with a girl named Farrah Teacher. We had some great times. Once I even broke her brother's collar bone when my brother and I were playing with her and her brother by pushing the guy down some stairs. Great times! We stopped hanging out but I was too young to really understand the whole 'why' bit. I didn't have a car so I was at the mercy of my parents for 'play dates'. We never fought or lost interest in hanging out.
I still saw her at school while we were both still at the same school, but I didn't see much, if any, of her through elementary or middle school. We attended the same high school and ran into each other a few times, but by that time it had been too long and we never hung out again. While the whole collar bone thing my be suspect at this time as to why we stopped hanging out, I don't think it's the cause. Over dinner tonight, my mother told me a rather strange story...
We were on the topic of self-image and what-not and I recalled a rather saucy photo of Farrah in our high school yearbook. She had gotten into modeling and her parents appeared to have paid to have a few of the photos of her put on a full color page in the yearbook. Several proud and apparently bored parents would do this. Most were glamor shots of them in nice suits and dresses side-by-side with embarrassing baby pictures. Only hers was a professional, portfolio-quality shot of her in a very small, loosely draping gold scrap of a top and a matching gold bikini bottom with her pulling the thong strap to one side. It was seriously close to soft-core porn and her parents put this in her high school yearbook?!
When I mentioned the whole yearbook thing to my mom, she in turn recalled a rather strange conversation she had with Farrah's mother, while we were still in the phase of requiring parents to facilitate play dates. While this is a story recalled after years of retrospect, apparently Carol, Farrah's mother, once asked young Farrah who her best friend was. Farrah replied it was me, but her mother told her, no, it's Lindsy (some random chick I can barely recall). Carol basically stopped arranging play dates for her daughter with her best friend. Did Carol try to control her daughter to the point where she actually told her daughter not to choose her own friends? Did she seriously tell the person I was closest to at the time to no longer associate with me?
What the fuck? Who does that to their daughter?!
Now, those who've heard me when I get too emo or drunk or both, know that as a kid I was put on Ritalin which made me extremely introverted and consequently made it hard for me to make friends. Boo-hoo, yeah I know, but it still blew serious chunks while growing up. I've always been an advocate of kicking OC in it's superficial ass and people wonder why I'm not a typical 'OC girl'. Well there you have it! I was denied my superficial bastard upbringing that I by rights of living in the OC should have had!
Don't get me wrong, when I ran into Farrah the few times that I did in high school, she'd do the little wave and smile that always happens when you see faces out of the past come back into your life and she seemed like she was still a nice person. We never had the same classes since most of mine were the advanced classes, my parents wanting me to focus on getting smarter in school, while Farrah's parents, or at least her mother, wanted her to focus on being pretty. Story goes that she even got a boob job for her 16th birthday.
I guess the OC is a very Andy Warhol/Hotel California society these days. Warhol coined the term 'Superstar' and helped create the very icon-centered, visual society we live in today. "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave."
When I was growing up in preschool I hung out a lot with a girl named Farrah Teacher. We had some great times. Once I even broke her brother's collar bone when my brother and I were playing with her and her brother by pushing the guy down some stairs. Great times! We stopped hanging out but I was too young to really understand the whole 'why' bit. I didn't have a car so I was at the mercy of my parents for 'play dates'. We never fought or lost interest in hanging out.
I still saw her at school while we were both still at the same school, but I didn't see much, if any, of her through elementary or middle school. We attended the same high school and ran into each other a few times, but by that time it had been too long and we never hung out again. While the whole collar bone thing my be suspect at this time as to why we stopped hanging out, I don't think it's the cause. Over dinner tonight, my mother told me a rather strange story...
We were on the topic of self-image and what-not and I recalled a rather saucy photo of Farrah in our high school yearbook. She had gotten into modeling and her parents appeared to have paid to have a few of the photos of her put on a full color page in the yearbook. Several proud and apparently bored parents would do this. Most were glamor shots of them in nice suits and dresses side-by-side with embarrassing baby pictures. Only hers was a professional, portfolio-quality shot of her in a very small, loosely draping gold scrap of a top and a matching gold bikini bottom with her pulling the thong strap to one side. It was seriously close to soft-core porn and her parents put this in her high school yearbook?!
When I mentioned the whole yearbook thing to my mom, she in turn recalled a rather strange conversation she had with Farrah's mother, while we were still in the phase of requiring parents to facilitate play dates. While this is a story recalled after years of retrospect, apparently Carol, Farrah's mother, once asked young Farrah who her best friend was. Farrah replied it was me, but her mother told her, no, it's Lindsy (some random chick I can barely recall). Carol basically stopped arranging play dates for her daughter with her best friend. Did Carol try to control her daughter to the point where she actually told her daughter not to choose her own friends? Did she seriously tell the person I was closest to at the time to no longer associate with me?
What the fuck? Who does that to their daughter?!
Now, those who've heard me when I get too emo or drunk or both, know that as a kid I was put on Ritalin which made me extremely introverted and consequently made it hard for me to make friends. Boo-hoo, yeah I know, but it still blew serious chunks while growing up. I've always been an advocate of kicking OC in it's superficial ass and people wonder why I'm not a typical 'OC girl'. Well there you have it! I was denied my superficial bastard upbringing that I by rights of living in the OC should have had!
Don't get me wrong, when I ran into Farrah the few times that I did in high school, she'd do the little wave and smile that always happens when you see faces out of the past come back into your life and she seemed like she was still a nice person. We never had the same classes since most of mine were the advanced classes, my parents wanting me to focus on getting smarter in school, while Farrah's parents, or at least her mother, wanted her to focus on being pretty. Story goes that she even got a boob job for her 16th birthday.
I guess the OC is a very Andy Warhol/Hotel California society these days. Warhol coined the term 'Superstar' and helped create the very icon-centered, visual society we live in today. "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave."