In a juicy profile, New Yorker's Rebecca Mead goes inside the behemoth teen taste-maker Alloy, a sort of sinister junior Clear Channel that's responsible for much of the YA bestseller list, including the multimedia Gossip Girl and Traveling Pants juggernauts and, more lately, The Vampire Diaries. And do we ever see the pink, undead, bratty sausage being made! Here's how Mead describes the efficient hit-factory:

[Alloy] pack-ges about thirty novels a year for publishers, and also generates television shows and a growing number of ideas for featurefilms. In order to do all this, Alloy has developed a process with an industrial level of efficiency. Ideas are typically suggested in weekly development meetings and, if they gain the approval of Morgenstein and Bank, are fleshed out into a short summary by an editor. A writer is asked to create a sample chapter on spec; if Alloy executives are happy with the sample, they put her (or, on occasion, him) on contract. The writer hashes out a plot with Bank, one or two other editors, and Sara Shandler, Alloy's editorial director-an alumnus of Seventeen, who, at the age of nineteen, put together the anthology "Ophelia Speaks".

It's always kind of creepy to see unabashed marketing at work, and especially when it's aimed at an impressionable age-group, however lucrative. Of course, cash-in teen-lit has a long pseudonomynous history, from Nancy Drew to Sweet Valley. And the Alloy execs would just say they're giving kids what they want. One Alloy exec defends it thusly: "Editors and publishers can get hung up on what's good for kids...At Alloy, they always think first about what kids want to read." Which, of course, isn't always - or indeed, ever - an improving tract. And the idea that the body of literature informs and shapes said nascent tastes, paving the way for a lifetime of dutiful buying - well, that's conveniently ignored. Yes, kids want candy and Easy-Mac: because they've seen ads designed to attract them. Not because it's what's best for their development, or some genetic imperative of childhood.

Sure, some of the series sound really interesting (I really want to read the second "Wish" book that they map out in the piece), and the Alloy execs say we're moving away, culturally, from the excess of "brat lit" into Twilit territory because "more serious, angsty literature is where girls are right now. Morbid, dead-girl lit." And some of the book are even of historical interest! Mead mentions a new novel about
"a boy who acquires superhuman powers after being tortured during the Civil War." Then there's the new gilded-age Gossip-Girl-esque series, the cover image of which Mead describes:

The result is a look that no woman in the Gilded Age would have been immodest enough to wear beyond the boudoir or the brothel, though the Alloy team felt that the sartorial anachronism was entirely forgivable (much like the heroine's request for "ciggies"-slang that would take another sixty years to emerge). "Girls today would not relate to the more severe necklines and covered arms and horrible hair styles that girls were wearing at the time," Sara Shandler says. "We tried to do the imaginary-princess version." Or, as one of the publishers competing for the book described the gown, "the ultimate fuck-me prom dress."

And there, of course, is the rub. There's a continuing belief that kids can't relate to anything unlike themselves. Richer versions of themselves, 19th Century versions of themselves, maybe magic versions of themselves - but the feeling seems to be that kids are such incredible narcissists that any truly expanded horizons are more than they can handle. And the problem, of course, is that it's self-fulfilling. The other day I passed a poster at the bus stop bearing a still from the new Where The Wild Things Are movie. "Read," it ordered - seemingly without irony. Alloy would totally agree.

The Gossip Mill [New Yorker]

Anyway, In an interview with Salon Rebecca shares her favorite bridal magazines (InStyle Weddings and the trade publication Vows) and explains that the fundamental problem with the wedding business is not that it isn't feminist — hiring a wedding planner "could totally be construed as a post-feminist act" (!!) but rather, the consumerism of the whole thing:

One of my favorite pieces [in Vows] described how to market to the "nontraditional bride" and warned readers that this kind of woman is dangerously apt to "forget the wedding and prepare for marriage." These articles were often unintentionally hilarious, but also very chilling. People who work in the wedding business often appear to be very warm and sentimental, but they're salespeople, and the successful ones are completely coldblooded about it.

Okay, but why are all our friends so goddamned susceptible to these reptilian salesbots? Doesn't our generation have enough experience with, uh, men to know better?

The Marriage-Industrial Complex [Salon]
Rebecca Mead
Earlier: NY Times Book Reviewer Loves The Big Tacky Weddings!
The Economics Of Weddings Continue To Blow Our Minds

The most surprising aspect of Sunday's NY Times Book Review wasn't the big thumbs up Michael Kinsley gave to Christopher Hitchens' latest assault on organized religion, but Times reporter Jodi Kantor's review of One Perfect Day: The Selling Of The American Wedding, Rebecca Mead's new book on nuptial excess. Kantor all but rejects Mead's major thesis: That there's something obnoxious about the way soon-to-be-married Americans buy into marketers' hard sell of the ever-bigger cakes, the fancier limos, the more heavily-beaded $5,000 gowns. As evidence, Kantor cites her own "tasteful... if I do say so myself" wedding of four years ago, and complains that Mead doesn't seem in nuptials like hers (the horror!).

Mead is so outraged by the gilded picture presented by bridal magazines that she overcorrects and gives us a book full of tawdry, tacky affairs, where the dresses are ill-fitting, the officiant is a hired gun and the couples flushes away more than they can afford. These weddings take place mostly in Las Vegas, at Disney World, on an overcrowded stretch of beach in Aruba or in Gatlinburg, Tenn, home to kitschy wedding chapels and a round-the-clock marry-thon."

Maybe in the cash-rich and self-assured circles Kantor travels in, couples can get happily hitched without undue influence from the salespeople at David's Bridal. But in the rest of America there are more than enough examples of families depleting their savings accounts and mortgaging their lives to keep up with the Joneses, whether in pursuit of the latest PlayStation, hot-new SUV or Modern Bride-approved wedding celebration. Has Kantor — a former Times "Arts & Leisure" editor who presumably pays attention to such matters — never heard of the documentary Maxed Out? Or watched any recent episode of 60 Minutes? Perhaps she's too busy making "homemade ice cream" and dusting off her wedding album!

Also disturbing is Kantor's breezy brush-off of this country's obsession with consumption. "Yes, sure, lots of American weddings are overblown confections; and O.K., that probably tells us something about ourselves," she writes dismissively. After all, she adds, everyone's doing it! "Today, even the preppiest country-club bride is likely to write her own goofy vows, wear a $5,000 gown with an immodest neckline and treat herself to a little Botox before the big event. We're all nouveau riche now."

We think we're gonna throw up. To fit into our Vera Wang wedding gowns, that is.

The Princess Brides [NYTimes]
Earlier: The Economics Of Weddings Continue To Blow Our Minds

The wedding special is $720 for 3 ½ hours and includes an aisle runner, Champagne, bar and "horns" that play a recording of "Here Comes the Bride" when the car stops. Ever the experienced shopper, Ms. Mead asks how much the regular rental would be, if there were no wedding. "A four-hour minimum is $576." So you could spend $144 less and receive a half-hour more? Why not do that instead? "You can't," the saleswoman replies. If it's a wedding, you must do the wedding special." After taking a few steps away, Ms. Mead said, "This is the kind of thing that I'm really interested in — that mentality: you're going to get the horns whether you want them or not."

Intrigued, we decided to IM our fellow bridesmaid in an upcoming Destination Weddingpalooza about just what Rebecca Mead is trying to sell us.

Jezebridesmaid: So my question is, what is up with the whole wedding thing?
How much do you think Bridezilla's wedding is costing?
I am supposed to write about this but I am just sort of dumbfounded
You had a nice wedding.
Did you feel societal pressure to do so?
steph?
Notbridezilla: honestly, and i'm only telling you this confidentially, i think my wedding cost $65g, not including honeymooon
Bridezilla's must be 3+ million
Jezebridesmaid: ohhhhh....mygod
Notbridezilla: and yes, i felt pressure.
Jezebridesmaid: how do you decide how much to spend?
Notbridezilla: i'd rather own property, but parents want a blow-out
plus, once you're in it, you're in it
you gotta have the best band, the best flowers, the best dress
forget a budget
it's insane
Sent at 4:48 PM on Wednesday
Notbridezilla: and then you're like reading the knot and you hate the knot but you read it because you're spending all this time and money getting thin (and you think i'm obsessed now, last year i ate literally lettuce)
Jezebridesmaid: JESUS
there needs to be a support group for this shit
Notbridezilla: and you just pray that nothing goes wrong because people have been telling you for ages how you just get this ONE DAY
and you're like, um, what about the MARRIAGE
Jezebridesmaid: and you believe them because you are starving?
and your brain is addled by starvation?
and you're like "that's RIGHT, THERE IS ONLY ONE DAY"
Notbridezilla: and then three weeks before the wedding when everything hits the fan (which it will) and your future mother in law is on her like 6th makeup trial because she thinks it's her wedding, you will contemplate divorce
because at that point your future husband's CHEWING is driving you crazy
and you're like, the rest of my life is a LONG TIME
Jezebridesmaid: so boomer parents with excess liquidity are basically driving this industry
they're driving the demand
just like the real estate market!
we just need to raise their taxes
Notbridezilla: it's like the princess phenom among 3 year olds
Jezebridesmaidis the honeymoon at least fun?
what you up to this weekend?
Notbridezilla: friday i've got a bachelorette party — wanna go?
Jezebridesmaid to the maritime hotel?
Jezebridesmaid: sure!
Notbridezilla: yay!!
you should totally come
Jezebridesmaid she loves you.
Jezebridesmaid: how approps! a bachelorette party!
Notbridezilla: it gets better — her fiance's brother is a millionaire (works for that leverage buyout firm, kravis or something) anyway, the bachelor party is on a yacht called "We Won"
Jezebridesmaid: uhhh, we LOST.

Love, Honor, Cherish And Buy [NYTimes]