Word: sweetnesses
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...ability to hold two contradictory thoughts simultaneously. The question raised by The Notorious Bettie Page is whether that aperçu also applies to hearts. For Page, who in real life gained a dubious fame by posing for risibly risqué pictures back in the 1950s, is portrayed as both a sweet-souled religious fundamentalist and a genial exhibitionist. She seems to feel that the good Lord gave her an attractive body for the excellent reason that it pleasured men to ogle it in various states of undress...
Actually, $15,000 is a lowball estimate, since that would barely cover the event-space rental tab for the kind of lavish spectacles that have become prime-time fare on MTV's highly rated My Super Sweet 16. The show documents the excesses of privileged youths commemorating the mighty achievement of making it through their 16th year. Shell-shocked parents--always uttering the mantra "It was worth it"--typically peel off checks for upwards of $200,000. We learn that from the Sun Belt to Erie, Pa., the lack of taste knows no ethnic, religious or cultural bounds. You give...
...coming-of-age rituals. A child is inducted into the adult realm through a transformative experience, whether it's becoming more steeped in religion or killing a deer or having a vision. It's true that I would be happy to send any of the children of My Super Sweet 16 into the desert by themselves for a while. Their blingy flings are not celebrations of accomplishment; they're celebrations of self. What used to mark the end of childhood now seems only an excuse to prolong the whiny, self-centered greediness that gives infantile a bad name. Far from...
...series is like an infomercial for class war, and should the revolution come, an episode guide will provide a handy, illustrated list of who should go up against the wall. My Super Sweet 16 had its third-season premiere last week, building up to the broadcast with a drumroll of conspicuous consumption: four two-hour blocks of episodes drawn from the show's previous seasons. To witness such unself-conscious acquisitiveness in one sitting is like eating an entire normal-kid birthday-party sheet cake, wax decorative candles and all. There's the same queasy sense of monochromatic excess because...
...That "imperceptible change" is exactly the sweet spot the Queen is trying to hit, says a senior adviser. Moving glacially, of course, can accentuate the sense that she is out of date. But by background as well as policy, that's the way she wants it. Her "Uncle David," King Edward VIII, loved making waves before he abdicated in 1936, and spooked his successors about playing the reformer too overtly. "No gimmicks!" the Queen has told aides. "I am not an actress!" She wants the monarchy to be a focus for continuity and enduring patriotic values, which make instinctive sense...