Word: sweets
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Undergraduates fumbled with Lucchino’s hard breaking stuff as he tossed hats, t-shirts, and autographed baseballs (House Master Tom Conley came away with a Jonathan Papelbon sig) around the stately Kirkland JCR. Ask a question, get a prize. Ask a particularly flattering question, get a sweet prize. And so it was a surprise, really, when members of the Harvard baseball team, which co-sponsored the event, presented the Boston head man with a gift...
...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...
...Super Sweet 16 isn't even the most visible or popular iteration of our democratized just-in-time celebrity culture. Club Libby Lu, a fast-growing chain of mall stores owned by Saks, provides the setting and accessories for elaborate makeover parties for girls as young as 4 at a relatively reasonable $21 a head. They can strut down a catwalk, don mock Madonna headset microphones and pester their parents to buy Role Model perfume or a LOCAL CELEBRITY T shirt. It would be easy to bemoan the trend as the end of childhood or the corruption of innocence...
...irony, of course, is that the easier it is to become famous--whether in a really famous fashion or simply as a queen for a day--the more irrelevant the meaning of celebrity becomes. As a diminutive diva on My Super Sweet 16 guilelessly observes, "We're like celebrities but not famous." Exactly. Autographs, please...