The American Dream

For as long as I can remember all I wanted to do was write, for a fashion magazine. My love of fashion came at such an early age. When I was 10 or 11 my best friend and I created a fashion magazine. J & S Fashions…we drew all the pictures, and used our Barbie’s clothes as the basis for the clothes we displayed in our magazine. Even though we only did two issues, I’ve always loved magazines. The glossy pages, the smell of the perfume advertisements seeping through every single page, the bright colors of spring fashion versus the darker subdued fall fashions, I can’t decide which season I love the most.

However, after graduating from college with my degree in Journalism, the magazine world was not so eager to hire me. I wasn’t able to do an internship because I had to work all four years, while I was in school, so the opportunity to get my foot in the door never came knocking. I continue to subscribe to all these magazines, but now when I look at them I don’t see hope, I just see my American Dream fading. With the way this economy is going, and all the bull shit on the news I just feel like I’m going further and further away from that dream. As I look at these glossy pages, with the $1,200 shoes and the $6,000 Gucci rings, and all of the other things that I feel like I’m never going to be able to afford it just makes me upset. Upset at this consumerist world and the fact that no matter how bad it gets, the people who can afford all of those things never have to worry. So here I am, at 24, wondering how my life is going to play out and if I am able to obtain all the things that I want in life. And not just the materialistic things either, just the normal things that people get in life, like marriage, buying a house, having children…the American Dream.

I know that I’m still young but my focus and direction have to be somewhere. I’ve never been the type to party every weekend, and just have fun, without a sense of direction or dreams. This American Dream that everyone has, this dream that brings hundreds of thousands of immigrants here each year. A dream that almost guaranteed people a job, a place to live and grow their family; the most simplistic dream, to just be free and live your life happily ever after. Is this dream still possible? More and more people are loosing their homes, and living in apartments, or even out on the streets. My boyfriend/fiancé and I have decided, well we don’t need a wedding, even though I want one, and we can stay in this one bed room apartment for a few more years, and we can wait until we’re in our late 30’s to have children. Our parents didn’t have to go through what we are dealing with today. Both of them had houses by the time they were our ages, or at least about to get a house. They were married and having children. If they knew that their children would be struggling as hard as we are, would they have wanted us to reach for the American Dream. How could they have known that things were going to get worse and not better?

The quality of life is so different too. There are people younger than me, who are rich off their asses, and spending money like crazy, and for what? For having no talent, or for hardly doing work, yet they look beautiful, and people look up to them. Is that the new American Dream? Offer nothing to the American public, and get everything for doing nothing. Some of these people are getting millions of dollars a year, and our country is continuing to struggle. I don’t know if I’m the only one who sees something wrong with this picture. I think if we cut some of these people’s salaries, foot ball players, and baseball players…why do they need to get up to $250 million for playing a sport they supposedly love? It’s the American people who support them, but they could care less if I never reach my dreams and goals in life. If I sound a little angry and bitter, it’s because I am just a little angry and bitter. Now, forget about all those people, and what about the heads of AIG deciding to take all their employees on vacation and spending half a million dollars. How fucked up is that? I would like to go on vacation; the last time I went away was in 2006, and 2003 and 2002. My boyfriend and I have worked our asses off for years, and we can’t even afford to go to New York for the holidays, like we have done every year in the past. He can’t go home to see his family, and we’re lucky if we have the money for anything this holiday season. I couldn’t imagine if we had children, and were unable to provide them with a Christmas.

What I don’t understand is how things changed so much, and how people are still able to afford things? In Los Angeles, homes are still going for over one million, and people are still purchasing these homes. And yet the rest of the country continues to struggle. If you live here, however, you feel so far removed from what they talk about on the news and online. People are happily driving their half a million dollar cars, and smoking their Cubans, and traveling everywhere….who knows what is really going on. Where I work now, its with designers, and although many of them are loosing jobs in the middle class, the upper class continues to thrive…spending over $10,000 for a sofa, and $800 for a fucking pillow. I just don’t get it. I feel like I’m slowly being eliminated, as someone in the lower middle class, taking my yearly salary alone, forget what we make together, just my salary, I might as well be living in my car, which I’ve been thinking about selling to save money.

In the 1990’s, my life was so different, we had a Mercedes Benz, an Alfa Romero, and a third car, a home, and my parents made over $100,000 a year…and now 18 years later, they make the same…minus all of the other amenities, like marriage, and a house and luxury vehicles. I’ve talked to a lot of people who say that they are making the same as they did 20 years ago, and the price of living continues to grow. The house that I grew up in, the one my parents bought in the 80’s for $115,000 is now on the market for $1 million. I don’t think they would be able to afford the house now, since they’re making the same.

As I turn the pages of my new Harper’s Bazaar and Lucky, I guess I’ll continue dreaming, about the simplest things in life, like those Versace shoes, working at a magazine as a writer, having a dream wedding by the beach that we want, that honey moon in Italy, getting a nice home, so our dog can have a back yard, and having two kids someday….just American dreaming.