Hear the White Tiger roar

White Tiger by PopCultureParadox featuring Dorothy Perkins

From DVF, Stella McCartney and Manish Arora to Topshop, Forever 21 and Dorothy Perkins...seems like everyone in the fashion world has been looking at their bookshelves for inspiration! Did they all pick up Aravind Adiga's award-winning novel The White Tiger earlier this year?

The white tiger is showing its stripes everywhere this summer - on tanks layered underneath boyfriend blazers or paired with ripped denims and gladiators and accessories such as cuffs, clutches and totes.  

If you're not feeling the wild-side vibe, forget the clothes but pick up the book. Adiga's spine- tinglingly dark and sarcastic narrative style offers a new lens through which to view the perpetual clash between the haves and the have-nots. Add it to your summer reading list. 

You Know You Love Me

In the midst of my young, post-college professional life, I have little time to indulge in guilty pleasures. One time that I allow myself is Monday's at 8pm. One of my bestests (ironically enough, we'll call her S), comes over to my New England apartment while we gorge on junk food and drink overpriced champagne (my current bottle of choice? Veuve Clicquot.) while watching B, S, D, C, Lily, Rufus, and whoever else happens to be on the Gossip Girl that evening. We forget how mortifying high school really was, and kind of miss it. I, a prep school graduate, tend to lean on the side of regret as I realize that I should have fully embraced private high school. Oh how everything is so clear in hindsight.

This weekly tradition, however, has been let down by the CW. First a month-long hiatus (completely skipping over the holidays!). And now what looks like a gap week inbetween episodes. What's a girl to do, left malnourished of trashy, gossipy drama?

My answer? Read the books. I caught onto this bandwagon a bit too late, as I was too busy ignoring my true vein interests and trying to look like an intellect circa 2004 and was buying books like 'A Million Little Pieces' (and okay, I won't lie, all of the 'Confessions of a Shopaholic' series). Plus, prep school was a little too close to the realm of my actual life to fully indulge and enjoy books about prep school. Regardless, now with my stuffy New England prep school years just about five years behind me, I can indulge. And I do. Don't even try to tell yourself that these books are geared towards twelve-year-olds (just hide your face in your Pashmina like I do as you need to head over to the young adult section as your local Borders or Barnes and Noble Booksellers), because the action that Serena, Blair and Nate get in the books is just about comparable to (or sadly, more than) any action that my group of twenty-something's get on a regular basis. Another plus to reading these books in your twenties? You can bust through one a day -- no lie. It's like reading an extended episode of the show, which is wonderful and a curse all at the same time. I'm now just starting the prequel (that just came out in paperback) with the rest of the series read and under my belt. What am I supposed to read next? Any suggestions? Do they write a 'Gossip Girl' for adults that I'm unaware of?

-M

Prep School Antics

"Prep schools have been long criticized for their exclusivity. They educate only the nation's elite. They are too expensive and white. They are bona fide country clubs."

During my lunch break on Thursday afternoon, I couldn't help but nab this from Barnes and Noble in the Prudential Center. As a 2004 graduate from a certain New England prep school, I was immediately interested (and connected) to the book. I think as a prep school student, I didn't ever fully realize what being one meant. I grew up in the world of private schools. I relentlessly broke dress code rules (no shoulders showing, no jeans, no skirts shorter than the length of your arm, etc). I didn't ever see the prestige in the ISL or ESL. I never equated the ongoings of the campus -- which, although tamer (I think), than what Jones and Miley found with Milton's class of 2005 (remember that pesky little sex scandal?) -- with the prestige, wealth, or social standing of the student body.

More interestingly, as I finished reading the book (yes, I stayed in on a Friday night and Saturday to read my trashy social critique of the rise of sexuality in prep school students), I realize that the latest crop of prep school students are vastly different than even I, eight years ago. I look at siblings of friends, going to school with Juicy Couture accessories and Tahari pants and Theory blazers. They use Neiman Marcus credit cards and have only the finest. Unlike before, these students know their social standing. There isn't just a rise in sexuality within prep school students, but in elitism as well. Do we look at The Hills and Gossip Girl as the excuses for this? Books like Restless Virgins? Or has this always been the case, and my eyes are only open to it now so far set apart from the prep school haven I once saw as my second home?
-M