Sheep following a Shepherd in Pimped Ride.

When I was 11 I began calling all those annoying little girls that never traveled in groups of less than four and for some reason looked creepily alike "pod-people". They were foreign to me. A seperate entity. Then, as I watched the girl I babysat coo over Bratz dolls (which I still find disturbing), I asked her what she thought was an attractive outfit. Within seconds I got back, "A shirt that shows your stomach." She was seven at the time, consequently holding a doll whose skirt was wider than it was long and a shirt that probably wouldn't have passed as a bathing suit top. That startled me into the realization that we are not only driven to emulate what we see, but we start incredibly young. Fast forwarding to a few months ago, my young friend told me she was frustrated with the fact that her parents wouldn't buy her different clothes. Her's weren't emo enough for her. It was like she wanted to display bodily what her favorite band, Tokio Hotel, liked to display in an effort to claim kinship with them and their style. I looked at her, at her white jogging suit with pink stripes, perfectly combed hair cut short, and black nailpolish spread messily over her nails (her only defiance) and told her "Just be yourself, people will be more than willing to categorize you in high school. You can love something without having to change everything about your appearance to suit it." I wondered why she would want to place herself into a preset mold when she could make her own. I already knew the answer to that question, but I asked myself anyway, like I never was faced with it. Kids aren't kids anymore. They're very small 25 year olds. It's the natural inquisitiveness and cruelty of a child with all the impertinence and body consciousness of a "teenager". Greenfield caught that strange combination in every photograph. One in particualr, of a young girl named Ashleigh, actually made me laugh a little when I saw it because she looked like a 45 year old woman trying to look like a 20 year old woman who is trying to look like a mature woman of status. She should have tried harder to look like a little girl named Ashleigh. Not that I don't think it's wonderful for kids to grow up in a financially well off home, but sometimes I think it gets out of hand and promotes the idea of getting adult things and dressing like what you're exposed to. I just wanted to feed sweets to that poor young girl on the scale, I truly did. But I digress. My point is that the pressure to emulate what we see in the media and mature quicker than is natural is almost too great to feel. It surrounds us so much, we don't even notice it anymore, myself included. So yes, I do own a pair of slouchy boots. And yes, I'm pretty sure someone somewhere decided they were cool and it rubbed off on me. But the truth is, seeing those young girls like that pains me. Seeing those young men thinking only of wealth because apparently that's the only thing that is important makes me want to weep a bit. It all brings me back to the painfully shy, eager to please young girl who called those other girls "pod-people" in flared jeans.

I'd Keep Cross on my Bookshelf too.

I loved this reading. Partially because I wasn't being told much of anything, and partly because it was in the form of a story. I was left wondering what became of the main girl and Cross, whether her tears ever dried because he was sitting in front of her again. Whether years later she still fit perfectly within the curve of his arm or if she thought of him sometimes while she changed her earrings. The only thing that truly made her different from the girls around her was the lack of silver spoon leaving its metallic taint across her tongue. Or more specifically, hers and others knowledge of the fact. Perhaps that's part of why she came to adore the first female prefect so much: she was the same as our girl and she'd made it. She'd not only survived the halls of the prep school, but she traversed them with an ease and grace learned only through practice. This social divide, however, doesn't seem nearly as easy to conquer as she'd made it seem. Lee isn't a target of theft. Why? Because the thief wouldn't steal from the poor. Lee was easy to spot, and easy to overwhelm. Even today money dictates your station in life. Prime example of someone without the talent but with the money to make it look like their contributing something useful to society: Paris Hilton. What would I, or Lee, be standing next to her? Poor. No other qualities are going to pervade for quite a while, because first and foremost, I couldn't afford the beaded strap on one of her shoes. Yet the reader can look at Lee and think her the heroine of the piece, even if she is rather weak at times. She hasn't actually done anything, but Lee looks better for all her faults because she is a drop of quiet, poor talent within a sea of rich kids. I truly do hope that she gets to feel Cross's thumb strumming the sensitive spot behind her ear, or come to understand the act of not acting upon or declaring anything. I hope she continues to pity Dede for her shallowness, yet understand her startling innocence beneath her normal unpleasantness. But most of all, I hope she leaves that place, educated and feeling comfortable with the roots that make her feel so much below her peers.