EFFIE BATEMAN | BRISBANE |CONTACT
Becky Nates is not a little girl anymore.
Well, she doesn’t think she is anyway.
The fourteen-year old Betoota Grove student has embarked on her first modern teenage rite of passage – a morbid obsession with a glamorous Hollywood star who died before her time.
Her brother Nate, had just experienced his own rite of passage only one year before her, having rigorously watched Fight Club and American Psycho multiple times before becoming a fully-fledged Tarantino fan.
Or really anything that had a narcissist megalomaniac with violent tendencies as a leading character.
That, and the slightly dog-eared second-hand copy of The Game by Neil Strauss he kept on his bedroom table and Nate has almost completed the pop culture-inspired dark triad – which hopefully he’ll grow out of once he stops feeling so angry at the world.
Comparatively, Becky’s latest obsession is a lot less unsettling than her brother’s though it does centre on a one-dimensional archetype of what a person of her gender should be like – Marilyn Monroe.
Becky first stumbled upon the beloved 50s icon when she created a Pinterest account for outfit inspiration, which of course, she’ll likely never use again.
Copy and pasting some quote about ‘if you don’t love me at my worst you don’t deserve me at my best’ – which according to a small survey done by Facebook is used by 90% of Deception Bay’s residents as a profile bio – Becky begins phase one of her descent into womanhood.
“Everyone thought she was dumb but she was actually really smart”, explains Becky.
“Marilyn just wanted to be loved, she didn’t want to be known for her appearance or as some sex icon.”
“She knew she had talent and she just wished everyone could see that part of her instead of some ditzy blonde.”
“Sometimes I like to think that if I’d been there, I could have saved her.”
It’s later learned that Becky quickly discarded her Marilyn obsession when she stumbled across the ‘27 club’ – because there’s nothing more romantic to a teenage girl than beautiful people dying as a result of their own hedonism.
It’s not yet known whether Becky will try her hand at learning the guitar in an effort to be the next Janis Joplin but the tub of manic panic hair dye shoved away in her bottom drawer means she’s likely pinballing between Hollywood glamour and whatever the fuck’s cool on Tik Tok now.
More to come.
