Fun & Famous
an inside look at the lives of the park avenue princesses
When Amayzine first came about, I borrowed May-Britt’s book called Bergdorf Blondes. In short: a hilarious story filled with anecdotes about the richest girls in the Upper East Side in New York. Think Gossip Girl but wittier and smarter. I can’t even recall how many times I’ve read the thing and I still use some of their quotes as life lessons. If you haven’t yet, I would advise all of you to read it.
It just so happens that yesterday I came across another book based on the same area in the Big Apple. It’s called Primates of Park Avenue and it was written by Wednesday Martin. Whereas Bergdorf Blondes is all fiction, everything you read in Primates of Park Avenue is completely non-fictional. Wednesday is an anthropologist who married a banker that lived in the most expensive part of New York – so suddenly she was a member of the neighborhood too. It took some time adjusting because she was suddenly surrounded by pearl necklaces, cars with tinted windows and snobby children.
“And all their misfortune gets covered up by trips to Vegas or Paris in private jets.”
So Wednesday decided to make use of her anthropological background to figure out all there is to know about the crazy world known as Park Avenue. The desperate desires for Hèrmes bags can apparently be explained by certain biological needs that go hand in hand with being dominant in specific group processes, mothers protecting their own kin – and they do this buy sending their kids off to school in the most expensive cars with private drivers. Apparently we don’t differ too much from the animal kingdom after all…
Kids are sent to the most bizarre courses and classes, the women spend an average of 85.000 euros a year on their appearance, every pill that gets thrown in the market gets tried and tested and all their misfortune gets covered up by trips to Vegas or Paris in private jets. And, it gets juicier. Some of the women secretly kept a fair share of the money which was meant for the household for themselves and some of the men give their wives an ‘end of the year bonus’ if they were capable of getting their kids enrolled into the city’s best schools.
Complete madness as you can see. And that is exactly why you’re going to want to read this book if you haven’t already. At least that’s why I want to. And May-Britt, so do you. I just know it.
