I have the most unhinged idea… Walk with me.
It all started with my teenage discovery of filmmaker Sofia Coppola. I lived for her aesthetic before I ever knew what that word meant.
Of course I’d seen Marie Antionette and The Virgin Suicides and loved those films, and if I’m being really honest, this all actually starts with my teenage crush on with Josh Hartnett, not Sofia Coppola.
He was my heartthrob of choice circa 2002, which led to me renting and watching The Virgin Suicides and therefore introduced me to director Sofia Coppola and the term “debutante.”
Ok actually, funny side-story incoming.
During this time in my life, probably like summer of 7th grade, I hung around the college campus where my single-mother-of-two mom was enrolled as a sort of later, nontraditional student. She was very involved in the psychology department as she was getting her degree and my little brother attended the preschool right down the hall. When my mom wasn’t in class, she worked in the psych department for the professors there and maintained a great relationship with them for years.
So in the summer, when campus was quieter than usual, I occasionally got to tag along for the day and roam the library or get on the internet in the empty computer lab… I even once got to hang out in the personal office of one of my mom’s favorite professors all by myself. Which, later became a full circle moment for me when this same woman became one of MY beloved professors while I was getting my psych degree 10 years later at a different college.
Anyway — I would get on the computer and go to the Josh Hartnett fan page website. I suddenly don’t know why I’m disclosing this information now in the name of humor. But this fan website had music on it that would automatically play and I remember it vividly: Magic Man by Joan Jett. So on one of these days, I was in the back of empty computer lab creeping on this site with Magic Man blasting through the headphones, and noticed bunch of people had walked in.
There was a class starting!
People started filling in the seats around me and I tried to play it cool while I gathered my stuff and tried to shut down the computer in a hurry. But this was the early 2000s and shit was slow to close lol. So in my panic I yank out the headphones or do something or another that causes Magic Man to now start blasting through the computer speaker while I’m frantically trying to close this Josh Hartnett fan page that’s like, frozen onscreen… I don’t really remember how I got out of there and maybe I blacked it out but I guess it all turned out ok.
Except for me being MORTIFIED FOREVER, obviously… since I’m talking about it twenty years later.
Which brings me back to the Sofia Coppola thing. All of that was to say, little teenage Kacie with her impressionable mind and developing personality thought that the debutante ball I saw in Coppola’s film was super cool.
To be fair, I thought everything from the film was cool. The story itself is morbid, yes, but at the time I was more interested in the hairstyles and clothes and music — which, with the film being set and styled in the 1970s, seemed so different and exotic and vintage and well, cool.
Which is also probably why I’ve carried an affinity for Air’s Playground Love ever since… A sentiment which seems to be shared with virtually no one else besides other Sofia Coppola enthusiasts lolol.
Gosh how I spent LITERAL YEARS as a teenager trying to find the name of this song and how to listen to it. So now it’s crazy to just go grab it from Spotify, but that’s not what this blog post is about. Well kind of, but not yet.
At the time I think I also just liked the word “debutante” in the same way I liked the words “couture” and “avant garde.” I sort of discovered these terms all around the same time and tried to find ways to insert them into my life.
But if you’re not familiar with the debutante term, it basically means a young woman who is making her debut to high society, usually with a debutante ball or other event. It originates from the French word débutante (meaning “female beginner” or “starting out”). It kind of reminds me how other cultures have bah mitzvahs and quinceañeras, and I guess the modern American equivalent would be the high school prom.
I mean, of course I loved the idea of a glamorous teenage debut and party — I was in seventh grade.
Which brings me close to my ACTUAL POINT: the concept of a modern debut.
In a recent blog post, I wrote about how I’d recently scaled down the amount of photos of my daughter on this blog and my social media. Basically, I’m trying to limit public access to her identifying information and just… her in general. So, the idea would be that I don’t show her face on this blog or any public social media, and when she reaches a certain age (16? 18?) she can decide if she wants to use social media and how.
Lofty ideals, I know. And a lot about the social media landscape could change by then.
Which is why this is more of a concept… an aesthetic. And ok, maybe I also wanted to talk about this Sofia Coppola aesthetic that’s making a resurgence right now. Alright I’ll quit saying the word aesthetic.
Anyway. That is the premise of a digital debutante. A young lady whose identity has been kept mostly private until her coming of age, at which point she’ll make her digitally social debut.
And maybe have a party too.
So yeah… I’ll tell you when the invites are sent. 😉
