ADMISSIONS SCANDAL REVEALS ‘STATUS ANXIETY’ RUN AMOK
Before her parents were busted in connection with the college-admissions mega-scandal, I had never heard of Olivia Jade Giannulli. That’s probably because I am not a teenager.
Young and female is the 19-year-old’s core demographic in the cyber-marketing world where she has almost 2 million subscribers on YouTube and more than 1 million on Instagram as Olivia Jade, a leading social media “influencer,” or tastemaker of fashion trends.
Or at least she was. That was before last Tuesday, when federal prosecutors charged
50 people, including her mother, “Full House” star Lori Loughlin, and her dad, fashion designer Mossimo
Giannulli. Loughlin and Giannulli were charged for allegedly agreeing to pay $500,000 in bribes to help Olivia Jade and her sister, Isabella Rose Giannulli, get into the University of Southern California.
Suddenly people who, like me, had never heard of those two sisters were hearing a lot about how they may have benefited from a college admissions system that not only unfairly favors the wealthy, which we all sort of knew, but also appears to favor cheating by the wealthy.
In a related mystery, Felicity Huffman of “Desperate Housewives” fame was indicted, but not her husband, “Shameless” star William H. Macy, who was mentioned only as “SPOUSE” in his wife’s indictment. The feds apparently lacked enough evidence to charge Macy.
Huffman was charged in connection with a recording of her voice, but not Macy’s, allegedly arranging to pay $15,000 for a ringer to take the SAT exam in the name of their older daughter. In the annals of parents embarrassing their children in public, this one deserves a prize.
If the charges stick, it raises serious questions not only about how but why wealthy and well-connected parents would risk their freedom, their fortunes and their reputations just to grease the college admissions process for their beloved offspring.
I have several theories:
One. Parenting makes you crazy. In today’s era of “helicopter parenting” and hyper-competition even to get into the right preschool, it is inevitable that some parents will take their obsessions over their kids’ success too far.
Two: The commodification of education. College has become an important commodity in modern life, even for those who, like Olivia Jade, have not sounded all that sure of why they want to enroll.
Olivia Jade admitted last year in a video that she didn’t “really care about school” but wanted to attend college for the “experience” of “partying” and “game days.”
TMZ reported Thursday the girls are dropping out of USC due to fear of being bullied. Olivia Jade and her mother already lost lucrative endorsement deals, now that her parents’ next big wardrobe change theoretically could be to orange jumpsuits.
Three: FOLO. Like FOMO, the dreaded “fear of missing out,” FOLO is the creeping fear of “losing out” in life’s great race up the ladder of success. FOLO is a lot like “status anxiety,” which philosopher Alain de Botton’s 2004 book by that name, “Status Anxiety,” defines as the fear of being perceived as unsuccessful in materialistic pursuits.
Ironically, meritocracy, the belief that upward mobility naturally results from talent, effort and achievement — not race, gender or wealth — actually leads to more anxiety about one’s status, since it leaves no one but oneself to blame for slipping back.
“What about those who want to achieve,” de Botton asks, “but lack the opportunities to do so?”
Yeah, what about them? We hear a lot of debate about a lot of poor and minority students who have been left out of college opportunities. It’s time to take a closer look at how some parents help their kids cheat to get in.
The Chicago Tribune