The Met Gala? More like Meh Gala. It used to be camp. Now it’s content. Old hat and predictable. A phalanx of Kardashians, the one sad celeb whose idea of hitting the theme is a mega train, undies on show through sheer gowns like it’s revolutionary.
The one thing I do enjoy is seeing if that surgeon responsible for making half of Hollywood look like a trampoline with eyes has been working overtime. And this year, I was also looking forward to Lauren Sánchez Bezos’ get-up.
This is a woman who knows how to make a statement. White lace bra for a presidential inauguration, anyone? She rocked that “astronaut” catsuit for last year’s all-female “space mission”. It’s the “Latin, Latin, Latin” figure, she’s said. Plus her self-confessed willingness to dance on a table at lunch. People, we have a funster here.
Pre-gala, Loz did the prep. She and husband Jeff bought co-chair roles for a reported $US10 million ($13.9 million) donation. Lauren did the PR rounds too, including a New York Times profile so personal we learned her coffee mug reads “Woke Up Sexy as Hell Again” and that – at 56 – she’d have another baby “tomorrow”.
Well, Amazon does deliver fast.
And then it was go-time. And Lauren rocked up at the Met Gala in the same body-con silhouette she wears to every event, the “hello boys” cleavage once again deployed, looking ready to officiate at a flashy Toorak second wedding.
One hundred per cent, I loved it. Because it proved what I’ve been theorising for a while: Lauren keeps missing the memo. Worse, she doesn’t seem to believe the memo applies to her.
She doesn’t seem to get that in the court of public opinion, her big achievement is marriage. That marrying the fourth-richest man on Earth gets you visibility, glamour and digital Vogue covers. But money can’t buy you public love.
Thing is, the higher you climb, the harder it is to have real friends. People are suspicious of obvious striving. Especially in women.
Money can buy entry. It can buy visibility. It can buy unbuyable events. But it cannot buy the room leaning forward when you arrive. And that’s what Mrs Bezos seemingly wants.
There’s another blind spot. Via her fella’s fortune, Lauren helps fund environmental causes to the tune of $US10 billion. Admirable.
But she still seems genuinely surprised that those of us being creative with mince in a mortgaged house with no wellness centre struggle to separate her philanthropy from the fact the empire funding her lifestyle was built on shuttling cheap shit around the world.
That contradiction doesn’t dissolve with a cheque. It’s the central hypocrisy no amount of good PR can paper over. And yet she keeps trying, bewildered it isn’t working.
I’m awash with blessings – adorable small feet, a manual car, a dog who neither smells nor barks. It means I recognise how sad it is when someone has a $US230 million compound on an island off Miami, a chopper licence and a pickleball court, and still isn’t satisfied.
Melania Trump is similarly baffled by this equation. She whinged about TV host Jimmy Kimmel’s “hateful rhetoric” after he joked she had the glow of “an expectant widow”. Yep, this from someone whose husband said he was “glad” when former FBI director Robert Mueller died in March and that Rob Reiner, the filmmaker allegedly killed by his own son, “died from Trump Derangement Syndrome.” So it was hard to feel sorry for her.
Both women appear to believe marrying powerful men should confer automatic cultural legitimacy. As though the stonking diamond also comes with universal admiration.
The old society world at least pretended status emerged organically. Lauren attacks it more like a corporate takeover: buy the role, be charming on the press rounds, expect the love.
She told The New York Times that online criticism hurts her so much she has a phone app that stops her checking social media during the day. She just wants to “give everyone flowers”. Earnestness isn’t the same as relatability, and no profile about your coffee mug changes what’s written on the tin.
Maybe that’s the true plot twist of extreme wealth. After the rockets and bling and personal trainers, you still find yourself fighting not to refresh Instagram, desperate for people to decide they like you.
They haven’t. And buying the top seat at the table won’t change that.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
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