There\u2019s nothing unique about hating high school, but most people who vow never to return to their hometowns probably don\u2019t hail from New York City. I grew up primarily on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, attending private school (first a WASPy all-girls\u2019 prep school; then a competitive, elite-college-obsessed co-ed school) and resenting the experience in only the way a clueless privileged kid can.<\/p>\n
When I left New York for a small liberal arts college in Ohio, I didn\u2019t think I\u2019d never go back (I did want to visit my parents and hit up Xi\u2019an Famous Foods on holiday breaks), but I promised myself I would never again become invested in the New York drama that had so enthralled, and alienated, me as a teenager. I hadn\u2019t exactly thrived in my rarefied prep-school environment, earning poor grades in everything but English class and failing to connect with most of my classmates. But once I was happily ensconced in my college\u2019s social scene, I told myself my adolescent misery had been New York\u2019s fault. Of course I\u2019d flopped in what I saw as a shallow, cliquish, status-obsessed environment where your parents\u2019 income determined your worth.<\/p>\n
Now in my mid-30s, I live in Los Angeles, visit friends and family in New York as often as I can, and have even patched things up via Instagram DM with many of my prep-school opps. (As it turns out, sometimes yesterday\u2019s mean girl is today\u2019s extremely kind pediatric neurosurgeon!) Still, I\u2019m a little shocked to find myself as drawn as I am to the antics of the rich, ridiculous, occasionally lovable nepo babies of Next Gen NYC.<\/p>\n
The Bravo series, which is currently in its second season, follows Gen-Z influencers including model Emira D\u2019Spain; Ava Dash, daughter of record executive Damon Dash; Brooks Marks, son of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Meredith Marks; and Gia Giudice, daughter of Real Housewives of New Jersey antihero Teresa Giudice and watching its cast members frolic down the Jersey shore, attend galas at the Frick, and gather for Halloween at House of Yes is weirdly cathartic. No, these aren\u2019t the kids I grew up with (most of them aren\u2019t actually born-and-raised New Yorkers, for a start, and many of them made their own money beginning in childhood), but they\u2019re certainly of a similar mold.<\/p>\n
Watching Next Gen NYC leaves me with a lot of questions (for one: what on earth was the nature of Charlie Zakkour\u2019s involvement with the SoHo crypto torture house<\/a> that everyone keeps referencing but nobody will describe in detail?), but it also reminds me on a deep, almost cellular level of another Bravo series from almost 20 years ago: NYC Prep<\/a>. That short-lived, Gossip Girl-lite reality show centered on five rich, New York private-school kids\u2014and, gasp, a brainy student from one of the city\u2019s (impossible-to-buy-yourself-into) specialized public high schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s nothing unique about hating high school, but most people who vow never to return to their hometowns…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":963527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,1269,25668,223187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,1940],"class_list":["post-963526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-opinion","tag-textabovecenterfullbleed","tag-tv-movies","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-web"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116994760201919706","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=963526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/963527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=963526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=963526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=963526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}