Men and their Money

So as I was browsing through the endless archive of trash that is CW programming (and remember this is the network that dishes out our weekly dose of Top Model, that pioneered Girlfriends and continues to perpetrate Gossip Girl) I came across a snotty little segment on Gossip Girls fashion. Remember that this show is the later brainchild of the OC masterminds. Whatever that says for it.

Well, Gossip Girls - the series - targets an audience of middle school, high school and young college-age women. The characters - high schoolers - love fashion. They have the bohemian joie de vivre of people with trust funds and too many magazine subscriptions. In the segment above, a well-meaning stylist instructs average girls on how to copy the sexy styles onscreen, complete with a well-orchestrated nod to Victoria's Secret.

I recently read another article in the WSJ that mentioned that young women were less likely than young men to have significant stock market investments, or even to save at all.
They can work for twenty years and have nothing to show for it. Which is ironic, because young women now surpass men as wage earners in many urban markets. (Although not nationally...)

The point is, when a 15-year-old girl drops $60 of Daddy's plastic on this (the bra you can wear 100 ways, none of which would be 'under clothes') is anyone surprised that she's terminally broke ten years down the road?

Not to say I haven't hit up that sale section a few too many times. But then, I've been through the fire.