One time when I was sick, my boyfriend came over to cheer me up with MTV’s “Laguna Beach” series.
“What the hell is that?” I asked him.
“That show you’re always watching,” he said.
“I do not watch that show,” I lied, embarrassed.
“Fine! I’ll return it.”
“No,” I said. “It’s okay…”
When he left, dejected and confused at my unhappy acceptance of his gift, I commenced to watch all four discs of “Laguna Beach.” Pleasantly wavering between mockery and jealousy, I inhaled every episode with a kind of disgusted glee. I could not get enough of Lauren “LC” Conrad.
This sick fascination carried me, along with the rest of tweenage America, from “Laguna Beach” to “The Hills.”
“The Hills” became a weekly ritual where Conrad was queen of a shiny world where little happened except lunch dates, mind-numbing repetition of the interjection “like” and backstabbing between besties.
I watched to get my fill of beautiful people and to peek into their glamorous lifestyles, but I also tuned in every week so I could mock the trivialities these self-important snobs rotated their lives around.
Naturally, when I heard about Conrad’s latest endeavor, “L.A. Candy,” a novel about a girl who moves to Hollywood and becomes a reality TV star, I was certain that her stupid flag would fly high, and I could have the final laugh at her and her very shiny hair.
But as I read her shoddy prose, I realized something. While she may not be Shakespeare, I couldn’t deny that Lauren Conrad is one crafty mini-mogul.
By no means a work of literary merit, Conrad’s novel does manage to avoid the mind-numbing boredom, self-importance and shallowness of the MTV shows that made her famous. While following the story that has come to define her during the last three years of “The Hills” (two girls, one big city, add boys and cute clothes… OMG!), Conrad uses her imagination and intellect to create characters with depth and heart — two things that were conspicuously lacking from her MTV hits.
While I prepared to scowl at misused diction and vapid storylines, Conrad out-maneuvered me: She wrote a decent book.
Jane and Scarlett, Conrad’s pleasant protagonists, are effective, accessible and refreshingly un-stereotypical. The two young women read, communicate in complete sentences and are able to discuss issues without crying all the time like the perpetually teary-eyed Hills stars. But the book retains the Conrad draw of gossip, hot boys and “really cute” outfits.
The seventeen year old “LC” we met on Laguna Beach is all grown up and knows how to get the most out of the image MTV made for her. But what is impressive is that Conrad has also learned how to infuse more of her own mind and heart into said image.
“L.A. Candy” proves that, while she may lack literary talent, Lauren Conrad is by no means the idiot we all expected.
