Junior League

Perusing the Sunday paper, cruising through the People section, skimming along past "Out and About" --and there they were, a set of photographs of Junior League's "Ho Ho Hollydays." I try to just flip on by but no, no, I can't. The pull is too powerful, the addiction--once again-confirmed. I turn back and stare at the photographs for a long, long time.

I'm not addicted to Hollydays. I'm not even sure what it is, actually, just that it happens every year in Baton Rouge. I think it has something to do with shopping and fundraising--and lots of thin white women with expensive haircuts in tasteful sheath dresses. They are my addiction--the women in the photos, the Junior Leaguers. They're so completely outside my experience, so utterly foreign, that I find them fascinating. See, I've never met a Junior Leaguer.

Oh dear. I sound like my mother, saying she's never known anyone who is gay.

I suppose, like my mom and gay folks, that over the years I've been introduced to many a Junior Leaguer, and just not realized the JL thing going on. I mean, there must be closeted Junior Leaguers, women who don't usually dress like Jackie Kennedy, women whose hair is a mass of frizz, women who fantasize about chucking their hummus-dipped pita triangles at the tv screenwhenever Glenn Beck comes on. (but don't actually do it because they know they're the ones who will be stuck scraping the hummus off the screen). And then trip on over to Ho-Ho-Hollydays and smile for the camera.

I guess. But I don't know. And that's the source of my fascination--that I don't know. I stare at the photos and I wonder, "Who are you?" They all look like they've just left the set of Mad Men--but it's 2010. I suppose it's the same reason I stare at the Amish. (I know, I know; it's really ignorant and rude and I do try to be discreet. . . but come on, 'fess up, don't you find yourself peering over as well?) Here are these people, from another time, except no, they're here, in our time--and historian that I am, I'm mesmerized.

Besides, I keep wondering, what happens when these women age? Why is there no Senior League?