According to the Today programme this morning, in the US there is a new TV reality show about the lengths parents will go to big up their child’s coming-of-age birthday party called My Super Sweet Sixteen. For some reason, calling the show “Pimp My Teenager” was deemed inappropriate, it would seem.
I saw some of that when I was in the US one time.
It was really scary. Basically they followed around two very rich girls and filmed them trying to get big name performers to perform at their party and ended up with some heavy rock band they’d never heard of before.
It was amusing in the ‘it makes you cringe’ way I suppose… and rather like watching a train wreck in slow motion…
It’s really, really infuriating to watch (they had a marathon of it playing over the holidays when I was in the US). The girls Tristan mentions had got their parents to hire out the entire Hard Rock Café for the party, and spent thousands each on their dresses for the night. After kids at school started scalping the tickets and making counterfeit ones, they spent a great chunk of the party hunting for freshmen who’d sneaked in and siccing security on them. One of the girls ended up getting punched in the jaw when she was sucked into the mosh pit (!), which was a really heartwrenching moment for the viewer.
Another girl (schoolmate of the two above) was gifted with a personal shopper ($10k/day) by her mother (a veterinarian who seemed to be overcompensating for her single motherhood) to pick out a dress for her party. But her mother was unreasonable enough to ask to see her daughter in one of the dresses, so the daughter threw a huge strop and refused to buy anything that day – though not after telling her mother to shut up and that “Your job is to pay for the dress, not to open your big mouth”. The girl also threw a shitfit when her grandparents (who said they’d buy her a car for her birthday) mentioned that there were some nice four-year-old cars at the local lot. She pouted and whinged as they looked at the used SUVs, but of course all was well (for a few minutes) when they went into the dealership and a new BMW with a big red bow on it was waiting for her.
It’s trainwreck TV of the sort that just might piss you off enough to change the channel.