"No Post Code Envy"

When I was in the tenth grade, my big aspiration was to be a Laker Girl like Paula Abdul. I know, another embarrassing trivia about myself that chips away at my ability to keep readers. What can I say? I was a cheerleader studying Abdul’s moves from Straight Up videos on MTV. I thought it was totally awesome that she went from Laker Girl, to choreographer for Janet Jackson, to Cold-Hearted Snake. I bet if most of you go back to your tenth grade memories, you have some interesting characters that you wanted to emulate. As cheesy and sometimes inappropriate as Paula Abdul was in the early 90’s, my daughters have much scarier images bombarding them on a daily basis from pop culture celebrities today. And before they release a new album or movie, there tends to be some sort of attention-getting stunt (ehem, twerking?) to remind the public that they exist. A meat dress, a shaved head, rehab, whatever it takes. As my daughter Solee says, “ridic.” It’s all about the costume-lived life. And now, our teenagers experience a much more publicly exposed life thanks to social media. They can all be mini-famers. What a challenge it is to grow up in this day and age, as well as to parent in it! That’s why I kind of appreciate a new song that my girls have been hitting repeat on lately. It’s an indie-single from a young New Zealander. In her song Royals, Lorde paints a poetic picture of the costume of fame, the lure and expectation of this generation:

But every song's like gold teeth, grey goose, trippin' in the bathroom

Blood stains, ball gowns, trashin' the hotel room,

We don't care, we're driving Cadillacs in our dreams.

But everybody's like Cristal, Maybach, diamonds on your time piece.

Jet planes, islands, tigers on a gold leash.

We don't care, we aren't caught up in your love affair.

Lorde’s song is anti-fame, rejecting the ostentatious life that is sold to teens. With all of the buzz about modesty, I think this song discerns a major problem with the immodest culture that teens are immersed in. They regularly see exhibition of a gaudy kind. And in the culture of fame, the self is never glorified enough. Lorde protests that this isn’t the life of a regular person:

And we'll never be royals (royals).

It don't run in our blood,

That kind of luxe just ain't for us.

We crave a different kind of buzz.

Her video showcases her actual painfully ordinary friends, pimples, freckles, and all. While the song is kind of catchy, they are just doing the blah, stupid things that kids do when they hang out. You see an old box TV in the background stuck on the “white noise” screen. Yet Lorde claims that her friends and her have “cracked the code.” Most of what the media is selling us isn’t life at all. There’s only one part that I would change: One day many of us will be royals. As a matter of fact, although we live our painfully ordinary lives now, there is coming a day when we will be given an extravagant inheritance as the bride of the King. No, we don’t have “post code envy” for all those who may have “come from money” and flaunt their eccentric lifestyle, as if we should want it too. We are awaiting a glorious place, where everything is holy unto the Lord. Our inheritance puts all the fame of this world in perspective. On that great day when our King comes for us, all knees will bow to the only One worthy of glory. For that, I join Lorde in her response to vainglory, “we aren’t caught up in your love affair.”