Poor Little Rich Girl: The Tragic Life Of Barbara Hutton
Barbara Hutton’s life is a warning of what happens when you love the wrong people and live in a gilded cage.
I often joke about being brought up in a gilded cage society. My hometown in New Jersey was notoriously all-white, hyper-preppy, and pricey. It was the type of place where people ask, “So…which beach club do you go to?”
Oh, and they did that as a way to determine whether they wanted to talk to you or not. That was the vibe of my childhood. It hasn’t really changed all that much, really.
One of the last friends I had before I left that county was a girl who was a true Gilded Cage Syndrome Sufferer. At 25, she was a virgin. She didn’t know how to drive. She never had a puff of weed. She still lived with her parents.
If you didn’t know any better, you’d think she was maybe 15. She looked young, sounded young, and acted young. I often ended up trying to warn her about people, though she rarely listened to me.
We parted ways, and not in a nice way. She doesn’t seem to have grown that much as a person, crippled by her circumstances. The heiress to a multi-million-dollar fortune, she never had to fend for herself in adulthood.
