The Chick Flick Effect

“All I ask is a chance to prove that money can’t make me happy” -Spike Milligan

Friendships often don’t echo the penultimate scene in Thelma and Louise, our families are less like the Brady Bunch than ever before and our relationships have big fat ups and downs like anyone else’s. The big bad media monster, glossy mags, makeover shows, even schools and universities are pushing us to improve ourselves; but what happens when we don’t get what we want?

Prince Charming

'Mr Right' is a term that I hate; 'Mr Right Now' I detest even more so. Dating guides and glossy mags love to think that we’re all looking for a perfect guy, a soul mate that will slot into our lives like the missing piece of a puzzle.

Has there ever been such a creature who embodies being masculine, sensitive, intelligent, relaxed, clean and tidy, organised, funny, witty, helpful, consistently cheery, hard working, great in bed, fashionable and dedicated to you whilst all the time maintaining a six pack? If you’re reading this and thinking that your partner embodies all these qualities 24/7 then think again - you can add delusional to the list of your attributes.

Media Machine

We are being force fed the idea of a perfect lifestyle; however it seems that the possibilities extremely outweigh our wishes. Sociologist Nicholas Abercrombie argues that the “media provide large and complex…images and narratives out of which people construct scripts of imagined lives”.

He says “magazines produce recipes which give rise to the imagined perfection of a dinner party; advertisements for holidays generate dreams of sun, sand and the perfect body”, even “television soap opera exemplifies human relationships”. These are means of media “fantasy” which we, at times, want or need to live up to. If we can’t compete with the totty on Hollyoaks, how are we ever going to be as perfect as those orange sticks in The Hills?

Working Class Wonders

Those brought up in working class education, like me, are told throughout school that they have the possibility to do whatever they like with their lives; that their opportunities are equal; the government's Every Child Matters scheme echoes exactly that sentiment.

I was asked in my first year of university to fill out a questionnaire. “These questions are just for statistical purposes,” I was fed. I ticked the box “neither parent has been to university” and thought nothing more.

Some time after a lecturer boldly announced, in front of a theatre of seventy plus students that those who were working class were most likely not to succeed. “Sorry”, he announced, brazen as a prostitute's pants. “That’s just the way it is.” I fumed, blood boiling and sat agog that he’d had the nerve to attempt to quash, albeit in his Queen's English, so many people’s ambitions.

Now with five students to every university place, in reality, educational equality is getting to be a pretty tricky deal.

What happens after the bubble bursts?

If you work hard and know where you want to go in life then that sentiment will get you far. I’m all for taking less notice of the perfection shown on your (42 inch?) plasma - it will do us the world of good. After all, take Katie and Peter for example. Money and fame can buy you silicone and pearls but it won’t buy you happiness.