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Written by Caryn Rousseau, asap
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Friday, 08 June 2007 |
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The shelves and tables at Amber Warren’s new Chicago boutique are filled with clothes, accessories and shoes in a style that she describes as “bubble gum.” There are matching containers of candy and lollipops on the check-out counter.
Before she christened her shop, Warren found herself on an airplane with the movie “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” starring Johnny Depp on the docket. That whiny, crying, spoiled little rich girl Veruca Salt came on screen and Warren says she knew that her boutique finally had a name.
“Veruca Salt is always saying, ’I want it now’ and so that’s kind of the theme for my store,” Warren said. “Because everything’s kind of impulse buys. You can have everything right now. I think every woman has that side of her that wants things now, wants the pretty new dress or the sparkly bangle.”
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GREEDY GIRLS VERSUS GREEDY BOYS
It seems Veruca Salt, the pretentious child from Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” has worked her bratty ways through pop culture for decades. Besides the book and two movies, Veruca Salt’s popularity has stretched to rock bands, wart removers and slang terms for being a spoiled brat.
Why after 33 years is she still finding her way into the American lexicon?
“This would be a kind of sexist thing to say, but in our culture a kind of a greedy arrogant female has a kind of a diva quality to them that maybe would have some underground appeal,” says Mark I. West, a children’s literature professor at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and author of the book “Roald Dahl.” “Whereas a greedy boy really in that sense has no redeeming values.”
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HIT ME BABY ONE MORE TIME
Veruca doesn’t hold the monopoly on the bratty-girl persona. Remember Nellie Oleson from “Little House on the Prairie?” Or take West’s more recent examples: Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.
“Veruca, of course, is younger than Paris Hilton, but in a way she’s cut from the same cloth,” West says. “They’re both from well-to-do families with parents that indulge them and always told that they’re precious and always told that they’re wonderful and always told that they’re beautiful.
“Paris Hilton, what does she represent? She’s just a rich, spoiled girl, but there she is always on the news. Everybody’s following her around. She really has never done anything of any significance, but in some ways she represents that quality of the rich, spoiled girl that for some reason or another we have an attraction to,” West says.
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CAN’T FIGHT THE SEETHER
In the early 1990s Veruca Salt surfaced again. This time, musicians Louise Post and Nina Gordon chose her as the namesake of their alternative rock band, Veruca Salt, which saw success with hits like “Seether” and “Volcano Girl.” Post, who still tours with the band since Gordon’s departure, said it was more the sound of the words “Veruca” and “Salt” that caught their attention, not the rich girl persona.
“The character herself, I think we, over the course of the next couple records, actually came to embody a little more of her characteristics than I would like to admit at the time, because we wanted the world and we were really ambitious,” Post told asap. “We also, I think, got a little bratty in the face of some early and fast success.”
Post says it wasn’t until the band toured Europe that she came to know another meaning behind “Veruca Salt” — in the United Kingdom it is a wart treatment. The word “veruca” can also mean “wart,” she says.
“Roald Dahl very cleverly named Veruca Salt after something you put on a planter’s wart because she’s such a despicable detestable character,” Post says.
Post sees the character Veruca Salt embodying a pervasive attitude in culture that has people feeling like they’re not responsible for the consequences of their actions.
“I think it’s the result of having a super-materialistic society and people feeling that they deserve to live within certain standards that I think to the rest of the world are shocking and decadent,” Post said.
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LOOK IT UP
So pervasive that, according to urbandictionary.com, “veruca” also is slang for “a spoiled brat.” The example sentence there? “Sarah gets everything she wants. She’s a total veruca.”
“She’s a feisty little girl who is just a bad egg, literally a bad egg,” Post says. “And I guess I came to identify her with a certain level in the negative parts of getting a lot of success, but I never identified with her on any kind of deep level.”
Warren, the boutique owner, says she sees Veruca Salt as very bold and outspoken, very memorable, and a name her customers will notice.
“I do think she’s very recognizable,” Warren says. “I really think it’s that little girl inside of every woman, you know, whether you’re a brat or not, you still want things. Everybody has that side to them.”
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Caryn Rousseau is an asap reporter based in Chicago. | Only registered users can write comments.
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