The White Party

In an effort to try something new I attended my first White Party 2 weeks ago. I was invited by a friend of my mother's from work. Her boyfriend was a part of an alumni group from his college fraternity and every summer they have a White Party to honor the handful of students they award scholarships to. I agreed to go thinking I would be able to find a simple white dress to wear as I don't own anything completely white because I love color and because I am deathly afraid of spilling something on it. I ordered what looked online to be a cute dress but when I got it the day before the party and tried it on I found that it looked atrocious on me. I started to panic and actually tried to get out of going all together. Angie the woman I was going to the party with said that she had already bought a dress that morning at the mall and we had previously paid for our tickets so it would have been really sucky of me not to go. I went out to Macy's and surprisingly found a simple and cute Calvin Klein dress pictured above. It was only on sale for 20% off so I paid more than I would have liked to but I was stepping out of my comfort zone to try something new so I figured it was worth it.

The party started at 7pm but in an effort to be fashionably late Angie and I agreed to show up at 9pm. I'm glad we did because the party consisted of a room full of 100 people sitting and listening to an R&B cover band for 3 hours followed by listening to a horrible DJ for the next 2 hours. It was exciting to be starting my night at 9pm because I am usually already in bed with my chic nerd glasses on watching whatever movie I found to be remotely interesting from my weekly trip to Redbox. Everyone was dressed to the nines in their all-white ensembles sitting at various tables chatting and nibbling on hors d'oeuvres. Angie knew practically everyone there but since I knew no one else I stayed pretty close to her the entire night. She introduced me to a few people including her boyfriend who served as the mcee for the evening. The only person I care to remember was a very fine specimen by the name of Marcus. He had on an all-white suit coupled with a very bored expression on his face. He had been there since 7pm and was ready to go home. He was nice to me though and engaged me in a brief casual conversation. He sat next to me on and off during the evening and I of course clammed up and didn't get any details on his relationship status or try to flirt with him fearing rejection. Angie got up and danced a few times as she was asked to dance by many of the most attractive guys there. I must mention that Angie was looking much hotter than I was in a strapless number with sky high heels and long beautiful earrings. Anyways, I am glad that I went because I got to meet some new people but I didn't take advantage of the situation as well as I should have.

In an unrealted incident, I went to a dollshow yesterday with my mom. She has been collecting Barbie and fashion dolls for about 15 years and I will ocassionally go to dollshows with her to give her some company. On our latest adventure we found a fabulous retro Barbie with a chic black & white stripped swimsuit and cute heels. They had both a Caucasian and African-American version of the doll and they were identical but the white doll cost $58 and the black doll cost $54. This $4 difference really hit me. I know the amount is small but I couldn't help but wonder why this was. My guess is that the white doll is in higher demand so they priced it higher but I feel there is some symbolism there for me because I've always felt like less when compared to my caucasian counterparts. I grew up going to a private Christian school which only had roughly 5% minorities and I can't even count the number of times I was passed over for a date by one of the other girls in my class. I have since been able to identify how much that has effected my self esteem over time but it's still something I struggle with. The thing is there should be no comparison within or outside of a race because we are all different and beauty is in the eye of the beholder but in our society it still happens. Who is the thinnest? Who is the richest? Who is the happiest? Who is the most beautiful person? All of these questions when answered would make the majority of the human race feel like less than and that's terrible. Does this anger anyone else?