2000’s Trends: The Terrible 2000’s - Celebutante Culture, Rash of Reality TV, Juicy Couture, Uggs, Ghastly Gossip

So the 2000s or Early Aughts was a super defining time period - personal cell phones, texting, the internet - all were blowing up in the early Aughts - Friendster was at the beginning of the decade- Myspace was in the mid part and Facebook at the end - and fashion and trends were even more riveting.

What is interesting to note is that the trends of the early 2000s are coming back for the younger generations and Gen Z is embracing this millennium - as comfort watching of old 2000 shows has been trending the likes of the OC, Gossip Girl, and Hannah Montana and being watched more than ever. Because of that - the kids are crushing on the fashion trends in those shows - That’s right Juicy Couture, Uggs, low rise jeans and even trucker hats are seen trending again as nostalgia continues to influence.

Cult of Celebutantes

2000 saw a huge, I might say, obsession for the Celebutante. The celebutante is essentially a celebrity who is just "famous for being famous" or often a " trust fund baby. ": Young and in their twenties, fashionable, and notorious party girls who are members of "high-class" society due to family fortunes. These females fall into the realm of 'celebrity-for-the-sake-of-celebrity" or "socialite-heiress-turned-celebrity". They are America’s princesses - with massive fortune’s behind them. So we are talking about Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, the Kardashians....then there are some Celebutantes that had some talent and were actresses or pop stars like Lindsay Lohan and Britany most notoriously. And what is most interesting is the amount of power they had to define trends and the American consumer behavior as well as lifestyles because of the sheer amount of press that came out about them. Often not for great things- Paris rose to mass popularity in 2003 after the release of her sex tape. Lohan for her antics. People loved them and loved to hate them. They had lavish lifestyles and partied constantly - the drama, the excitement and then the reality tv shows all fueled the demand.

Rise and Rash of Reality

Now the idea of reality television did not *begin* in the 2000s...we can all remember The Real World and Road Rules from MTV in the 90s...as well as all kinds of other spin offs that were less successful. The televised OJ Simpson trial (and all of the other media around it) could arguably be considered the first time “reality television” was being created for the masses....well not the FIRST.

In the 1970s, PBS sort of launched the idea of ‘Reality Television’ with a show called An American Family.

• The show, or more specifically the twelve-hour documentary series, followed the lives of the Loud family of Santa Barbara, California for the span of seven months.
• Over the span of this twelve part series “viewers watched dramatic life events unfold, including Pat asking for a separation from her husband Bill, and the bohemian New York lifestyle of their gay son, Lance”
• The Loud family quickly captivated the hearts of America because it showed them a version of their own reality.

The Splash of Survivor

So by 2000, television producers saw that there was an appetite for reality shows. After all The Real World was still bringing in viewers, Cops and all the related “crime” shows were very popular, and game shows, when you think about it are also reality shows, and people loved those. And thus Survivor was born.

Survivor was wildly successful. And it sort of legitimized this idea of reality television as mainstream, major network programming. Previously reality programming was reserved for cable (or PBS). But networks saw that millions of people would watch these shows. And they were so much cheaper to make than a regular scripted show! For example, a single episode of Lost (a major hit of the aughts) cost $14 million to make. Reality shows were significantly cheaper.

From here entire cable networks grew based on reality TV: The Learning Channel became TLC, it spun off lots of other channels. VH1 and MTV shifted from you know, music videos, to reality shows all the time!

How Reality Launched Celebrity

Obviously we have to start with the queens of the celebutantes, Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie, who became household names and fashion icons with their MTV reality show The Simple Life, which ran for five years.

• The BFFs holed up in small-town America, working a series of average-Joe jobs for five seasons. The key “comedy” of the show was watching these two spoiled rich girls doing a variety of extremely un-socialite-like tasks, from milking cows to working drive-thrus—it also birthed their iconic catchphrases “that’s hot” and Loves it.”
• Paris Hilton came from an extreme amount of generational wealth (as did Nicole Ritchie) so it’s hard to say what her life would have been like without The Sim...