My Super Sweet Guilty Pleasure

I remember my 16th birthday party. I didn't want a birthday party, but I did want a party. My birthday was close to 8-8-88 so I decided to have a Crazy 8 party. We had it my grandparents' basement and invitees were asked to dress as their favourite crazy person. The entertainment was records played on my plastic high-tech Fisher Price Stereo.

Exactly four people came to this party – my best friend, two other girls from school, and the boy who would five months later become my first boyfriend. I dressed as Lizzie Borden. The boy was from the Other Side of Town so he had to wait for his mother to collect him. Whether by accident or design, she didn't arrive until about an hour after everyone else left the party. This gave us a lot of time to sit in the basement way too close and flirt way too much.

Despite the low attendance, low tech, and low cost nature of my party, it was still good for me. Given this background, it blows my mind to watch the brats on My Super Sweet 16. In case you haven't seen it, I will boil down the plot of each episode into simple bullet points.

• Spoiled Rich Girl (hereafter called SRG) is introduced.


• SRG plans the “best party evah,” sometimes with help from a party planner, sometimes on her own. The party will always have an elaborate theme.


• SRG encounters some sort of adversity during the planning or organizing process. Tears and tantrums ensue.
• 
  
• Party happens. Everyone gushes how it's the “best party evah” and SRG is given some over-the-top present from her parents. Usually a car. Or two.

The planning and cash that goes into these parties is mind-boggling. Weddings are planned with less stress and money. One episode I saw had a girl and her mother fighting over the table centrepieces. Makes me wonder what they'll have left to argue about when they do eventually plan her wedding.

The attitude of entitlement and privilege these kids have is just stunning. It makes me wonder what they will think of themselves when they watch the show ten or twenty years later. Will they feel embarrassed by their demanding and whining or will they still be holding a grudge because they didn't get the centrepieces they wanted or their grand entrance was marred by a gate crasher?

One girl wanted a sports car for her birthday, but her dad didn't feel that was safe so he helped her pick out an SUV. At the party, the SUV is given to her and her response is “Oh, yeah, I already got that car. Is this my only present?” It wasn't. Her dad also got her the freaking sports car.

It's with equal parts jealousy and revulsion that I watch the show. And I can't keep myself from watching. I have, so far, kept myself from buying episodes on I-Tunes. A minor victory in self-control over a vicious guilty pleasure.