The Bling Ring (22 page)

It was interesting how she transposed “we” and “they” and “you” when talking about celebrities, as if part of her already considered herself one of them; and yet she wasn't sure.

“In the news today we're so hooked on celebrities and teen culture,” she said, “and we're not hearing about the real life situations like kids in Idaho that are being abused.” Idaho? “Women that are being abused all over the United States,” she said. “All over the world. We're not hearing about that in the news every day; we're hearing about who's wearing what and who got in an argument with who and who's not friends with who anymore. And what people aren't realizing, 'cause they're getting so caught up in all of this, is that you're setting an example—you're setting an example to those teen mothers everywhere throughout the world.”

“A couple of years ago,” I said, “in two thousand seven, I remember there were a lot of celebrities getting into car crashes and D.U.I.s and caught with drugs . . . Do you remember that?” Two thousand seven was the year Paris Hilton went to jail for probation violation and Lindsay Lohan went to jail (for one day) for misdemeanor cocaine use and D.U.I. Nicole Richie went to jail (for 82 minutes) for D.U.I. as well. Richie was stopped by police after entering the exit ramp of the Ventura Freeway in her Mercedes-Benz SUV. She admitted to smoking marijuana and taking Vicodin before the incident.

“I do [remember],” Alexis said, “and it's still happening today.”

“And do you think that kind of thing has an effect on teenagers, when they see that happening?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said, “I definitely do. I think that . . . everyone's actions have consequences. It's everything from smoking or not smoking to drugs and alcohol and stuff like that; people don't realize they're setting an example. What shoes celebrities wear—everyone wants those same shoes. All of a sudden it's a huge craze. I remember when I was in, like, sixth or seventh grade, girls at my school were getting, like, Louis Vuitton bags, because the celebrities had them and it was like this huge craze and my family, we could never afford stuff like that, and so I was noticing, like, the impact it had. That's when I started getting into, like, fashion and that's when girls at my school were, in sixth grade.”

I suddenly had an image of a tiny Alexis walking into elementary school with a JanSport backpack while all around her little girls were flashing Louis Vuitton bags. I saw her crestfallen face as she looked around at the sea of shiny brown leather riddled with “LV” logos. Later, Nick Prugo would tell me that during the Bloom burglary, Alexis “grabbed a Louis Vuitton bag, like a laptop-size bag, and she was like, rocking it as like a purse. . . .”

“Like, your clothing or your style of car, or just, like, anything that these celebrities do, kids follow,” Alexis said. She seemed to be talking about the very influences that had contributed to her becoming involved in a burglary, while steadfastly maintaining her innocence.

She then told me more about how she had worked hard and scrimped and saved. “I mean I've bought my own car and my own clothes since I was fifteen,” she maintained. Because of her struggles, she said, “I grew a lot more and I realized at the end of the day clothes and materialistic things are not what's gonna get me far.”

22

The filming went on all afternoon. It was interesting how, even amid the unreality of it all, reality would stubbornly peek through. At one point, Andrea and Gabby were doing a scene in the dining room, now dressed in Juicy sweatsuits. They were supposed to be talking about how to deal with Alexis and Tess' wild behavior. Gabby, 15, had been cast as the voice of reason in the family. Andrea was proposing solutions. (The
Pretty Wild
producers didn't seem to mind me watching these performances, I guess because they were so used to the show being scripted.)

Andrea: “They each have a time out, outside the house.”

Gabby: “No! A ‘time out outside the house' is them going out!”

Andrea: “If they are not able to live within the boundaries of these household rules then they should move out for a week at a time.”

Gabby: “And what happened when we did that?”

Andrea: “A lot . . .”

According to multiple sources, the last time Andrea gave Tess and Alexis a “time out,” the Orlando Bloom burglary occurred. But the
Pretty Wild
producers were not aware of this.

Gabby: “A lot of bad things.”

Andrea: “A lot of bad things . . .”

They stared at each other a moment.

Gabby: “So, obviously—”

Andrea: “That did not work, so what are you suggesting?”

Gardiner, the supervising producer, cut in, feeding them lines: “So Gabby, this is great! ‘You need to be a stronger parent, Mom! I shouldn't be the one telling you what to do with them—these girls are out of control, Mom, do something!' ”

Gabby, returning to the scene: “Mom, I don't know what you want me to do. Why should I be the one making the rules? I'm the one who is having to explain to you that the girls are totally wrong in this situation. You're letting them do whatever they want to do, even though every day they mess up like this. Parenting is parenting!”

Andrea: “I'm learning.”

Gabby: “I'm parenting more than you right now!”

Andrea: “I understand, but I'm having a really hard time establishing boundaries.”

Gabby: “Because you want to
be
them—you want to have fun, you see them and you're like, I wanna be doing the same thing!”

Andrea: “I need an opportunity to go out and network.” Network? “It's true I've given them the benefit of the doubt and I actually got to the point where I'm. . . .”

Andrea, at a loss for words, began to laugh.

Gabby, sarcastically: “Oh, finally, Mom, you're parenting. I love you!”

Andrea, sarcastically: “Oh, Gabby.”

Gabby: “Oh, Mommy!”

They hugged, laughing at themselves for engaging in this charade.

Gardiner told the cameraman to stop filming.

23

I was stuck there all day, as if on a bad flight I couldn't get off; but Tess never appeared. I wondered about this, so I asked Alexis what was going on with her. Susan Haber was still hovering nearby. “We go through our up and down moments,” Alexis said mildly. “Right now it's kind of a down moment.”

It would only get more complicated in the months to come. In April 2010, the website The Dirty—which seemed to love tormenting the
Pretty Wild
girls—posted pictures of Tess topless, smoking a bong. After that,
Pretty Wild
reportedly lost at least one advertiser, the dating site eHarmony. By August 2010, TMZ was reporting that “Playboy model Tess Taylor has cut herself off from the family that once took her in . . . which is a problem because the show is based around the family.”

“No matter how many times people can tell you that you are a part of ‘their' family,” Tess was reportedly telling friends, “there is still something that is just different.”

But as of that day in Thousand Oaks, Tess and Alexis were still nominally BFFs. “I feel like she's my other half,” Alexis gushed, “like we read each other's minds. We are
so
close. Being together and being best friends for so long, we know each other inside and out. We're not competitive—we really support each other. When I got the line' ”—meaning the Issa lingerie line, for which several girls actually modeled—“I told them, you have to let my sister model. She's got a great body. She works for Playboy. . . . I'm pretty sure she's gonna be a Playmate.”

But Tess never was. The sexy-girl-next-door image of a
Playboy
centerfold has never allowed for being photographed smoking drugs.

“You know, it's kind of like an honor”—that is, being in
Playboy
, Alexis said. “You're the twelve most gorgeous hottest women of the year.”

24

I'd encountered this attitude in teenage girls before—the idea that being thought hot enough to pose for
Playboy
was some sort of honor, a mark of distinction and accomplishment. In 2000, I did a story on Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner for which I was able to talk to “The Girlfriends” who were living with him at “The Mansion” in Beverly Hills.

There were seven of them—“One for every day of the week,” Hef wisecracked—a few of them teenagers. They told me they'd aspired to be Playmates since they were small, like some little girls dream of becoming doctors or writers.

“I have been dreaming about this since I was six years old,” Regina Lauren, one of The Girlfriends told me. “I found my dad's
Playboy
s under his bed when I was six years old and I have been dreaming about it ever since. I always admired all the girls.”

“I think I was destined to live this particular lifestyle,” said another Girlfriend, Katie Lohmann. “I was always the one in school who was the high fashion, high class, drove a fancy car—and that's just how I wanted to continue my life.”

“The lifestyle” was now attainable through simply taking off one's clothes. Posing nude had become a semi-legitimate means of achieving fame and money. Porn stars have become household names. Jenna Jameson took her notoriety as the “Queen of Porn” (she appeared in 161 adult films) and translated it into success as a
New York Times
best-selling author (
How to Make Love Like a Porn Star
, 2004) and favorite talk show guest (the
Howard Stern Show, Oprah
). Kendra Wilkinson, another one of Hefner's Girlfriends, became a star of E!'s hugely popular reality series
The Girls Next Door
(2005–2011), about Hefner's Girlfriends, and got her own spinoff reality series,
Kendra
(2009–2011).

The proliferation of porn on the Internet over the last two decades facilitated the mainstreaming of porn stars. The Internet helped turn porn into a multibillion-dollar industry, almost in the same league as Hollywood and professional sports. (By contrast, in 1975 the retail value of all the pornography in the United States was estimated at $5 to $10 million.) Meanwhile, the content of porn has become vastly more hardcore. “Particularly on the Internet, where much of pornography today is consumed, the type of sexuality depicted often has more to do with violent, extreme fetishes, and mutual degradation than with fun, much less with sexual or emotional connection,” wrote journalist Pamela Paul in 2008 in a paper for a conference entitled “The Social Costs of Pornography.”

“It's all mainstream now!” exults Seth Rogan's character Zack in
Zack and Mimi Make a Porno
(2008). But not without costs. “There is evidence of a massive rise in Internet porn addictions,”
The Guardian
reported in 2013. “Women are reporting more relationship problems caused by their partners' porn habits and the number of indecent images involving children is escalating.”

Kids now see porn on a regular basis—each year more than 40 percent of teens and tweens visit sexually explicit sites, either deliberately or accidentally. Among 16- and 17-year-old boys, 38 percent have been found to seek out porn deliberately. Studies have found that boys who view porn have a more degrading view of girls—more often they see girls as sexual “playthings.” Exposure to porn has also been linked to the early onset of sexual behavior and the frequency of sexually risky behavior.

Teenage boys I interviewed for a story in
New York
as far back as 1997 (“Sex and the High School Girl”) told me they'd been looking at Internet porn as early as fourth grade, around age nine. Their respect for girls didn't seem improved by the exposure. They delighted in recounting sexually charged stories about girls they referred to as “chickenheads” and “hos.” Boys who had sex were “players,” while girls who had sex were “sluts.” They would clandestinely tape record and videotape themselves having sex with girls and play these recordings for other kids. Today, with YouTube, Facebook, and cell phone cameras, they'd no doubt be putting this stuff on the Internet. The new Scarlet Letter for high school girls is this type of “slut shaming,” replete with cruelly mocking comments from their peers.

But many of the girls I interviewed for “Sex and the High School Girl” played right into the boys' negative expectations, often with deep regrets. One spoke mournfully about having had sex with “this one and that one and that one”—“I called myself a whore”—and another one confessed to participating in orgies, at 16. “For a girl to be accepted, she has to be down and dirty,” said one girl. Some of these same girls were acting out through stealing; they took me on a shoplifting trip through a pharmacy. Many girls said they felt like the sexual landscape offered them no refuge. “I'm a virgin,” one said, “and that still gets me trashed.”

Girls wonder why being hypersexual feels so self-undermining when so many famous women are being rewarded for their hypersexuality. The line between star and porn star has blurred. Celebrities who appear nude or semi-nude often experience a career boost, rarely a negative reaction. Madonna posed naked for her 1992 coffee table book
Sex
, and, at the time, she was the most famous woman in the world, as well as a successful music mogul who “lived the lifestyle” like a queen. Britney Spears, taking a page out of Madonna's playbook, and dialing down the age of the willing sex object by several years, made a splash with her provocative video for “Hit Me Baby One More Time” (1998), a kind of soft-core-porn schoolgirl fantasy.

The Bling Ring girls were eight and nine years old when that Spears video appeared—just at the age when American children typically begin consuming more adult media. Spears' 1999
Rolling Stone
cover, shot when she was 18, in bra and polka-dot panties, was a watershed moment in making images of (nearly) naked teenage girls acceptable for mass consumption. Today, it's no longer considered shocking to see female entertainers posing nude or barely clad. Female pop stars perform in a style previously reserved for the
Solid Gold
dancers.
¹⁴
Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Rihanna, and Britney herself all bust provocative moves, not to mention The Pussycat Dolls, who actually are burlesque dancers. The blatant sexuality is all the more striking when you compare it with, for example, the more soulful style of popular female recording artists of the 1970s—Aretha Franklin, Joni Mitchell, Gladys Knight, Carole King, Patti Smith. Or when you compare the lyrics of Franklin's “Respect,” from 1967 (
“R-E-S-P-E-C-T/Find out what it means to me”
), with Katy Perry's “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.),” from 2011 (
“There's a stranger in my bed. . .I smell like a minibar”
).