The Lives We Lead

Who can tell the difference between reality and Hollywood fantasy anymore? Like the vague separation between the political left and right, I’m not even sure it’s a distinction worth making anymore, certainly not amongst the media saturated urban young, the up and coming indie yuppies whose narcissism is only surpassed by their shallowness, aimlessness, and lack of purpose. In dating, MTV and meet-cute fantasy have already won:

“Guys all say they’re looking for the same woman. They’re looking for this whimsical, beautiful girl who’s really a geek inside,” said Ms. Serota. “They’re all looking for Natalie Portman’s character in Garden State, or at least that’s what they write. They’re looking for the quirky girl who’s going to save them from themselves. They’re looking for these girls that are, like, manic-depressive without the depressive.” (In Ms. Serota’s estimation, this syndrome is endemic to “basically anyone in an urban area who doesn’t dress like they work at Blockbuster Video.”)

Women, it seems, are conditioned to seeing vacuous, self-promoting “slabs of metrosexual meat,” while a generation of Maxim males that grew up Abercrombie are content with tuning in to the prettiest purveyor of the city girl squawk so long as they still have their designer duds and freewheeling lifestyles.

Even if you make it past the virtual meat market of online dating you still have to barrel through the wedding gauntlet, which we now view either as an extreme challenge game show—a sort of bridal “Double Dare” (careful not to get slimed)—or an ostentatious celebration of personal wealth. We’re all young, rich and beautiful now, and there’s nothing more romantic (or expensive, anyway) than televised self promotion.

It doesn’t change much from there on out: The screen-dream fantasy won’t be Garden State, but you’ll still be dressing like your college aged nieces and nephews. You probably won’t have kids, but if you do, you’ll raise them as accessories while spending all your time bitching about them on anonymous internet message boards, always status conscious, always inferior. And then someday, you’ll forget about them entirely as they sneak away to their own impossible, secretly depressing glamour fantasy in the neon sprawl of the city, hoping one day to star in a reality show of their own, and maybe date a Gen-Y yuppie who reminds them of someone from a movie.