I don't buy it

The premise of MTV's show "Rich Girls" is simple: Ally Hilfiger and Jaime Gleicher hire cameras to follow them all day through expensive restaurants, boutiques and their sumptuous homes to demonstrate to the world that they are just ordinary teenage girls … who happen to have truckloads of money at their disposal. Hilarity and cringing ensue. \n"Rich Girls" feels more like a strange documentary on the Discovery Channel than a portrait of normal American life. Rather than learning about, say, the cattle culture of the Nuer in Ethiopia, we see a strange, foreign world where the indigenous people pass their days buying trendy clothing and having various body parts plucked, waxed, arranged and tinted in spotless beauty salons. They speak a language that resembles English but is riddled with bizarre phrases like, "So, can regular people shop here?" Certainly that sentence must be a tribal idiom with some ironic, hidden meaning. No sensible person would ever say it seriously… right? Please?\nThe theme song purrs, "This town is our town,/ It is so glamorous./ Bet you'd live here if you could and be one of us." Ugh. Already, the show seems smug, patronizing and even a bit creepy. It makes me imagine Ally Hilfiger looking like a zombie from a 1950s horror film, chasing me down the street trying to eat my brains. "Beeeee one of us, Stephanie."\nThe two girls cavort through New York, racking up $9,000 credit card bills on spa treatments and clothing that we rarely ever see them wear. At one point, Jaime (a.k.a. Rich Girl #2) has a revelation about the dual nature of cargo pants. While they are a fashion statement in the city, "people in the Midwest" wear them because all the pockets come in handy when "they work out in the field." Now, I realize that I am but a poor, simple student of Indiana University, but I don't recall ever wearing my cargo pants anyplace except to class. \nAnother gem: "You know what I find weird? That people pay money for clothes. Shouldn't it be a free necessity like water?" Hey, wait! If water is free, then what lowlife jerk has been cashing those checks my family sends to the water company? Although it is easy to make fun of them, these girls are still presented as glamorous, enviable creatures that exist above our mundane, "normal" sphere of existence. \nThis is all harmless fun, though, right? These girls don't seem any more naïve than the average 18-year-old fresh out of high school. What bugs me is the value system that these girls peddle, whether they know it or not. "Rich Girls", MTV's "Cribs", even the old "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" episodes all celebrate having megabucks and spending them on whatever your heart desires. \nThis ideal has become deeply ingrained in our culture -- many people seem to think that products can help them meet some invisible, arbitrary standard of worthiness. \nThanks to good marketing, a Jaguar equals power. A Louis Vuitton handbag equals success. Cheap sneakers from Wal-mart equal failure.\nAlthough their financial choices are often outrageous, it's hard to feel spite toward these goofy girls who are simply living life as they always have. Okay, maybe a little spite — come on, clothes should be free like water? Still, life is much easier when you can be content with what you have. People choose whether or not to buy into that mindset (no pun intended). Champagne wishes and caviar dreams? If it means I need to hang out with materialistic whiners like you and your pals, I say thanks, but no thanks, zombie-Ally. Heck, give me a Vanilla Coke and a jar of Nutella, and I'll feel like the Queen of England.