My super sweet 16

"But I told daddy I wanted a band like 6 months ago!" whined a 15 year old in anticipation and planning of her sweet sixteen birthday party somewhere in the vicinity of Beverly Hills California.

Her sweet sixteen unfolds with Daddy’s roll of 100’s. Cars, male models, painted pink poodles, multiple party outfit changes including trips to Paris for dress fittings; these are but some of the episode’s content. Household name bands are hired to perform. Invitations worth more than my last 16 birthday gifts combined are hand delivered to the birthday girl’s select few hundred guests.

I sit mouth breathing pointing at the TV willing the commercials to end so I can continue on with my new infatuation. A little part of me is waiting for the bottom of this spoiled princess’ fairytale birthday party to fall out or at least one teen could find a run in her panty hose with no back up pair in her purse.

My emotions shift and with the curve of my now up-toured lip. I find myself gunning for the spoiled brat as she launches herself from a helicopter landing on the tarmac below to make a grand entrance into her "Super Sweet Sixteen" party. "Everyone is going to know who I am and be so jealous" she squeals.

I have no idea what has come over me but I am addicted to MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen. Every Wednesday I set the timer on the TV and get ready to hunker down for two back to back episodes of train wreck.

I do have better things to do, I agree. But I can’t help myself. The collision of spoiled hormonal teens has me enthralled. So for the sake of this blog I will try to justify my obsession and theorize on why I have let myself get sucked in.

There is no one on this earth more repulsive than the 16 year old girl. I recall my own sweet sixteen. It was anything but "super".

I thought I was so grown up and mature for my age. I spent a lot of time back talking my mother, eyeball rolling was as mainstay and testing my boundaries was my new found pastime. As mature as those actions might have seemed, after a few only a few episodes of My Super Sweet Sixteen I see it is par for the course. I was female and I was 15.

As my 16^th birthday approached I asked my parents if I could host a mixed party. My parents who generally thought little of the crowd I hung with had to be convinced to have my posse in their beautiful new home. I hung out with an eclectic group of friends, most of them were a year or two my senior, they all came from dysfunctional homes with very little parental involvement or supervision. Hooligans let loose in the unfinished basement of the new subdivision house-farm model home while the parents were one floor above might get a little out of control. (Please note the 16 year old’s sarcasm in the last sentence.) But it was MY sweet sixteen and I was their eldest – so how could they say no?

I was allowed 16 friends. One for each year I was on this great earth. I was stoked! Okay back then I would have said; "Ohmigawd so excited!" I hoped all the people I had invited would come even though my parents were going to be home to supervise.

Don’t you remember being at the age where admitting you had parents was more embarrassing than it would be to show up wearing granny panties under nude panty hose without a skirt to work today?

I awoke on the day of my sweet sixteen – feeling like a bag of smashed assholes.

This was my big day and I was sick! I spent the day in bed determined to feel better. By mid afternoon after begging my mother not to call my "whopping" guest list and cancel my party I emerged from my bedroom to begin the ritual of showering and primping for my big night. No stylists arrived, no makeup artist, I didn’t screech for "Daddy to get me my Gucci’s from Mummy’s shoe closet" – I was alone. Likely in too pissy a 16 year old mood to be joined by anyone I was related to.

When the steam cleared the mirror after one of my notoriously scorching showers I stared hard into the face of the "Birthday Girl" to see what miraculous change 16 brought about. I didn’t feel any different than when I was 15 but I sure as hell looked different! There staring back at me were two of the most uninvited, unsightly guests any girl on her sweet sixteen could have ever had a night terror over.

Two HUGE boils graced my face. Un hunh, fever blisters. Each boil about one centimeter in diameter staring back at me in the mirror from the right side of my cheek. Not only was I was mortified but I had yet to meet my best friend, the keeper of bad skin secrets known only as M.A.C cosmetics. ( I only met M..A.C after adult Acne joined me after my 26^th Birthday). Vainly, I styled my hair to the side a la Veronica Lake in hopes I could hide the party crashers. I only hoped my mother would not notice there were now 18 guests at my party.

My super sweet sixteen was okay – my younger sister and father decorated the basement in balloons and paper streamers, the friends arrived, I received a magazine with Carre’ Otis on the cover which I coveted for years after. My parents gave me a synthetic leather football, paid for half my Driver’s Ed. classes, and gave me a pair of orange tab Levi’s when red tabs were the "in" thing. I was not gifted with a sports car or a luxury SUV, like the parents dole out on my new favorite TV series.

My party likely cost my folks a hundred dollars in food, party decorations and a gift, as opposed to the lavish one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand dollar parties thrown by the parents of the kids on My Super Sweet 16.

There is no comparison to the two parties, but, there is a similarity to the coming of age story. No matter where a gal comes from or where she is going, how rich or working class her folks are; there is a universal hype given over to a young woman’s coming of age. I will justify my obsession with watching this series as research therapy to get over the deep rooted guilt I have been harboring for being the most rotten mid teen to grace earth.

Over the past few weeks I have come to realize that teen girls are all pretty much the same. They are trying to exercise independence from the folks, while still so obviously attached to their parent’s umbilical cords and purse strings. Sixteen-year-old girls are just that -girls. They are ridiculously worried about what others might think, they are dying to fit in, they make no move to stand out unless it’s for having or owning the best or newest material good, they are rude, uneducated, unappreciative of their parents efforts - no matter what class, status or education. The only real thing a sweet sixteen wants is to be accepted by peers. My anxiety over my teen years subsides with this realization. The other big discovery is this: A girl does not come of age at 16! Well at least she hasn’t since the 50’s.

So in my opinion – the real emphasis on a girl becoming a woman – the real coming of age should be somewhere after the mid 20’s. Say, celebrate 26 as the new sweet sixteen. Mid to late 20’s is when the reality check sets in on who we are, where we are going hopefully the enlightened will have gained an appreciation for how hard our parents worked to give us what we have to help us grow into the women we are today. Our 20’s are an age when we can actually accept and appreciated our roots and with this acknowledgement move forward into "womanhood." But it is definitely not an age that would make for fantastic reality TV!

Each week as I watch the different birthday parties unfold on TV, each one more lavish and ridiculous than the next - I see a common thread that is the universal language of "sweet sixteen." My satisfaction lies in knowing I was not the only horrid mid teen. I am eternally grateful my sixteenth birthday came before the birth of reality television when only Molly Ringwald movies and Judy Blume books revealed the true essence of sixteen ... at least I can look back on my own sweet sixteen and believe it, too, was a work of fiction.

 

Ship Shape Productions was established in March 2005. Ship Shape Productions is full service Production Company specializing in comedic, dramatic and lifestyle series television.

Although a new production company in the Toronto production scene it is owned and operated by Michelle Shipley who is a well known television producer having made her name over the past 10 years in Canadian television.

In 2005 Ship Shape Productions created and Co Produced; Girls Will Be GirlsTV a 13 X 30 minute female driven hidden camera series which went to air in October 2005 and is currently airing on The Comedy Network in Canada. www.gwbg.tv. It is currently airing on TheComedy Network Tuesdays at 10:30PM an Saturdays @11:30 PM.