Liza Dubrow

English 313H

12.16.09

You Belong with Me, but Do I Even Know You?

Selfish, unrequited love is nothing new in mainstream society. Books have been written and songs have been sung about it. Everyone has loved someone for the wrong reasons, whether it be social standing, money, looks or just plain immaturity. Humans fall in love without thinking it through all the time. But if you never knew the person to begin with, is it truly love? Can you fall in love from afar? It is most likely a fantasy that Hollywood reinforces in the wrong way. In the 1980’s novel, The Rules of Attraction, Ellis examines unrequited love in a self-serving way. Due to the political philosophy and emergence of MTV, his characters are driven by hunger to fill voids in their souls that were made by lives of excess fueled with sex.

Centered in the 1980’s, “the decade of greed and glitz,” Americans are falling into the economic trend of the Reagan era (West 1). Reagan’s laissez faire ideas set the stage for parents to give their children liberties they’d never had before. The young adults of Camden reflect the lives of decadence and luxury around them. The Reagan years were “a spiritual impoverishment in which the dominant conception of the good life consist[ed] of gaining access to power, pleasure and property” (West 2). The kids of Camden College only knew how to live by overindulging, and due to the fact that college provided exploration, they chose to partake in an obscene amount of drugs and sex just to stay afloat. With MTV gaining steam and Madonna rolling around in a wedding dress, the 80’s encouraged young people to yearn for what they wanted, not what they needed. Sex was immediate and parents were into the laissez faire mentality, especially the elite parents featured in Ellis’ novel. If the parents did not hear about it, they did not have to deal with their children’s indiscretions. The adults did not enforce consequences, resulting in voids in their children’s souls for stability and love in all the wrong places and ways. In present day society, the same phenomenon still exists. Wealth triggers ultimate independence which provides many objects but not necessarily unconditional, real love.

In Ellis’ novel, all of the relationships are one sided due to the fact that no one truly gets to know the person they want to be involved with. Each character fantasizes about their “love” without ever sharing true honest feelings. They build the other person up to be what that character needs at that moment. Ellis presents the fantasies as completely self-serving. This group of young adults lives lives of excess that create voids in their souls. For example, instead of pursuing healthy relationships, the men and women of Camden create what they desire in another person. Sean idealizes Lauren to be the perfect girl for him, angelic and flawless. However, the truth is that she never was an angel to begin with. Lauren fantasizes about every moment with Victor due to the fact that he is away and she needs comfort and stability while her young life unravels in front of her. Victor was never the perfect boyfriend, but because Lauren needs an anchor, her memories of him seem to provide support. Paul builds up his relationship with Sean as a spontaneous hook up that turns into a full fledged affair with two unlikely people that are destined to be together. It is never clear how Sean feels, but once can assume his mind does not fleet to fairy-tale land the way Paul’s does. What happens with all the relationships is, of course, nothing. No one gets who they want because they never knew who that was in the first place. Ellis presents each person as simply a body that the other clothes in his or her desires and yearnings for a potential lover. He portrays love as immature and selfish, yet all too real, relateable and vivid for the readers of his novel.

Society reinforces self-serving, unrequited love in pop culture on a daily basis. Taylor Swift, one of the most popular singer/songwriters of the moment, had a recent hit song titled “You Belong With Me.” She sings about a popular boy who she is “dreaming bout the day when [he’ll] wake up and find, that what [he’s] looking for has been here the whole time” (Swift 1). Now, teenage girls across the country will believe that if they write a song about a guy not noticing them, not only will he fall for them, but they can be hit songwriters too. The music video does not help the matter, with the popular boy telling a geeky looking Taylor Swift that he loves her at the school dance. She also wears a cliche Cinderella gown to seal the deal. Just like in Ellis’ novel, the two characters barely know one another, but in this case, Taylor fantasizes about a guy and wins his heart. America’s youth eats up a story like this. Taylor wants the handsome guy to fall for her and he actually picks her instead of the popular cheerleader. Does that ever happen? No. Why? Because the cool football player never gets to know the geeky girl, and thus a fantasy comes alive in Hollywood that would never occur in real life. Ask a fifteen year old in Indiana who reads Anime comic books and has coke bottle glasses if the quarterback on the football team even knows she is alive and the answer will definitely be no. Everyone has been to high school; the big man on campus falling for the dorky girl would definitely be monumental to a seventeen year old. Social status rises and the duck turns into the swan. Does she even know him? No. The fact remains that knowing the lead character in one’s fantasy does not matter because that person is just a character in a made up version of real life. With that being said, the immature take on unrequited love still happens in front of lockers, football fields, and Camden-like college campuses across America every day.

I hate to admit it, but I have blasted “You Belong With Me” in the car and screamed the lyrics to my high school crush, who barely knew I existed. I have loved a guy from afar for over five years. I was semi-popular in high school, yet there was always a guy that I could not have and therefore spent my entire high school existence (and the years following) fantasizing about what might have been. I have imagined him as the perfect gentleman, the ultimate boyfriend, basically the “real” Edward Cullen. He could be mean, unfaithful, ill-mannered, or even rude, but of course my fantasies do not include those foolish ideas. Just like the characters in The Rules of Attraction or Taylor Swift’s song, fantasies do not have real aspects of a relationship like fights, tears break-ups, or even the occasional ups and downs. In my unrealistic world, he will never do anything wrong, will know me by heart, and will only love me , never break my heart. The sad part is, I barely know him yet I have created exactly who he is in my head. I know what I am doing is wrong, but every time I see him, my mind wanders and I cannot help creating a Lifetime movie in my girly brain. I have imagined him to be everything I want and think I need, basically perfection. I have done exactly what the characters in The Rules of Attraction did to each other. He will always be untouchable to me. I will never forget when he touched my hair or showed up at one of my shows to hear me sing. I will always remember the feeling I got when he walked into class, sat behind me, casually said, “hi”, and I could barely speak. All of the feelings I am describing is exactly how Ellis and Taylor Swift wrote them. He will probably never know how I feel, just like I will most likely never know who he truly is. The fun part will always be the fantasies, the stories created so at least for a minute the perfect guy might actually exist and, like Taylor Swift, pick me.

The MTV generation was born in the 1980’s around the time that the kids in Ellis’ novel went to college, but the effect is still rampant today. Now, young adults want everything with the click of a mouse or the button on a remote. Sex garnered massive media attention never seen quite like this before when on September 14, 1984 when, at the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards, Madonna put on a wedding dress and gyrated on the floor to her hit song, “Like a Virgin” (USA Today). Wealthy parents, such as Mrs. Denton, were using a hands off approach, and pop culture was encouraging hands on! Madonna presented a young woman completely comfortable embracing her sexual desires and young boys around the country were not complaining. After that performance, girls imitated Madonna’s wedding outfit and a new level of teenage sexuality crept in the mind of America’s young women. Due to Madonna, a wedding dress will never be just a sign of virginity again. She took the mold and smashed it. The timing of it all was perfect; parents were sitting on the sidelines and kids like the ones in Ellis’ novel were loving the emergence of music and sex paired together. Ellis intertwines music in the novel multiple times which also shows the effect music had on America’s youth.

Just recently, another show stopping performance on television took sex in music to a new level. On November 22, 2009, Adam Lambert made his national television debut of his new single on the American Music Awards. If people in the 80’s thought Madonna pushed the envelope, then Adam ripped it in half. Openly gay, Adam does not suppress his sexuality but apparently America was not ready for him to grasp “the head of a submissive-styled male backup dancer and [pull] him into an uncomfortable round of simulated oral sex” (Slezak 1). People were outraged, not just because of the sexual innuendos but because the innuendos were homosexually based. Sex will always sell and teenagers will always buy it. Paul, in The Rules of Attraction, would have loved Adam Lambert. In my opinion, Paul probably would have fantasized about Adam even more than he did about Paul. Whether parents are ready for it or not, kids will explore sexual boundaries that include unrealistic sexual fantasies. Pop culture will always encourage sex, and now teenagers have excess gay or straight. Parents in this decade might be more hands on then Mrs. Denton in the 1980’s, but wealth always triggers independence and kids today still use that to their advantage.

For example, on the television show, Gossip Girl, the teenagers on the show are incredibly wealthy and run rampant through New York City. They get served alcohol at the hippest bars, slide under the velvet rope at Burlesque shows, and even have hotel suites to themselves. It does not have to be the Reagan era, for wealthy parents to let their kids run wild. Do the teens take advantage of their wealth and freedom? Of course. Are most of the high school characters sexually active with partners they do not know like the college kids at Camden? Oh yes. The funny thing is, even with all their access, each character has still had a bout with selfish unrequited love like the teens in The Rules of Attraction. The series started with Dan, the unpopular outcast falling in love with Serena, the rich “it” girl from afar. Of course, due to the fact that it’s television, they bumped into each other and ended up in a beautiful relationship where Dan thanks his lucky stars Serena actually picked him. Unrealistic? Yes. But the fact is, Dan fell in love with Serena without knowing her, just watching her. Was it real love? Who knows when it takes place on television. It seems in most cases, the only thing these rich kids are missing is real love which is why they search for it in the wrong places. If your parents are not keeping tabs on you and telling you that they love you all the time, will you search for someone who will? Wealth might buy sex, but it never does buy true love.

Incredibly spoiled and over privileged kids are bound to look for love in all the wrong places. These kids obsess over what they cannot have because they have acquired everything else in life so easily. Just like Taylor Swift, and other love sick teenage girls across the country, they want to be noticed and loved. Unfortunately for them, love is too mature for the quest they seek. Love is not about a chase but rather a real life relationship between two people who (shockingly) actually know each other. Until the youth of America realize this, “You Belong With Me” will continue to be sung by lovesick girls (including me) with their hairbrush microphones, fantasizing about that guy who, at best, knows their name.

Works Cited

Clark, Cindy, Jayme Deerwester, Taryn Hartman, Korina Lopez, Whitney Mattheson, and Alison Maxwell. "Moments of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll." USAToday.com. 27 July 2006. Web. 12 Oct. 2009. <http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-07-27-mtv-cover_x.htm>.

Slezak, Michael. “Music Mix: Adam Lambert at the AMAs.” EW.com. 23 Nov. 2009. Web. 11 Dec. 2009. <http://music-mix.ew.com/2009/11/23/adam-lambert-amas-simulated-fellatio/>.

Swift, Taylor. “You Belong With Me.” Fearless. Big Machine, 2008. CD.

West, Cornel. "The 80's." Newsweek 3 Jan. 1984. Web. 12 Oct. 2009. <http://www.newsweek.com/id/111587>.