The Lesser Known Siblings Girl Gang

Solange Knowles, Haylie Duff, Ashlee Simpson, Ali Lohan and most of the Baldwin brothers have formed a girl gang that admitted a few boys. The lesser Baldwins are proud to call themselves members though the girls remain skeptical. The sign on the door of their clubhouse just beneath the Hollywood sign reads “No Boys or Really Famous People Allowed.” In their Hollywood Hills hideout, the girls and the lesser Baldwins come up with secret handshakes (hold a latté in your left hand, a large handbag in your right, shake your hips twice, air kiss, air kiss) and elaborate plans for comebacks, endorsement opportunities, vengeance and recruitment. They flag colors. They have rules—serious rules—and consequences when those rules are broken. Nicky Hilton and Jamie Lynn Spears are being fiercely courted. Gang membership is serious business.

To join the club, initiates need to pass a test and the test is simple—release a juicy tidbit to the press about their better siblings—the more salacious the secret, the higher their position within the gang. The lesser Baldwins wormed their way in by letting it slip that Alec had unkind things to say about his daughter though they would never admit their indiscretion in mixed company. For Solange, it was by no means an accident that the paparazzi knew when and where her sister was married.  All the gang members understand that gossip is power. They know where most of the dirty laundry hangs. It is a comfort.

Each member of the girl gang has her (or his) personal (public) demons. Ashlee spends most of her time sitting in her corner rocking back and forth like she’s davening with a rabbi, cursing the day she ever agreed to appear on Saturday Night Live. She is haunted, at night, by the memory of the awkward little jig she did as she exited stage left. Looking upward, looking for answers, she often grabs her hair, careful not to damage the extensions, and cries, “Why isn’t Papa Joe obsessed with my breasts? Why does my husband wear more makeup than me? Why wasn’t my nose job enough?” I’m the skinny one, she often reminds herself, when she’s feeling particularly low. Ashlee’s fellow gang members listen to her cries sympathetically but have little to offer in the way of comfort. They have their own crosses to bear.

Ali likes to comfort herself with reruns of Living Lohan and listening to her favorite tracks of her Christmas album though when she stares at herself in the mirror…when she takes a good hard look at herself, she’s forced to admit that the whole thing is awkward. Her mother is a bit much and she needs to do an Ashlee Simpson on her own nose if only her drug-addled father would sign the consent form and then there’s her sister everywhere Ali looks and always getting everyone’s attention. Lindsey, Lindsey, Lindsey. It makes her sick to her stomach.

Ali comforts herself with artificial skin pigmentation. There’s something soothing about the cool mist of toxic chemicals. When she’s being sprayed down, Ali exhales deeply and thinks, I am ever more beautiful. I have not yet peaked. Ali’s fellow gang members have devised a warning system. They worry. When her skin takes on the appearance of rotting aged leather after a particularly vigorous spray tan session, they stage mini-interventions reminding Ali to embrace her pale skin, to just say no. She knows they’re trying to help but she ignores their warnings. She believes in better living through bronzer. That’s the secret to living Lohan.

She always wanted to be one of destiny’s children, but much to Solange’s chagrin, such was not her fate. She stomps around the clubhouse in impossibly high heels and the hand-me-downs designed by her mother that her sister doesn’t want, occasionally glaring at her toddler and wishing that she had been given a chance to be a Survivor so she could pay her Bills, Bills, Bills. She keeps a notebook, and in it she writes, over and over, May the House of Dereon Burn. The more she writes these words, the more euphoric she feels and when she’s done, she often finds herself flush and sweaty. Feeling good, she runs through Destiny’s Child routines for her friends who enjoy the free entertainment and plots her seduction of her sister’s husband. He’s a man, she’s a woman, and she’s willing to do things her sister won’t. That is a comfort too.

Haylie knows she had a bright and glorious moment with her work in Material Girls. She carries the DVD wherever she goes because it comforts her and reminds her that she has a career. She is fabulous. She is. She is. Haylie tells her fellow gang members that she is different. She loves her sister. They’re BFFs. Her friends know she’s lying. She knows they know she’s lying. Once in a while, someone mistakes her for her sister until they take a second look—notice the longer face, the straighter line of the nose, a hint of wrinkle at the temples. To face their disappointment as they realize Haylie is the sort of next best thing eats at her like a cancer. There are days when it is more than she can bear. She’s the older sister. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. At their daily meetings when the gang congregates to commiserate, Haylie is known to lament, “Where is my Disney deal? I have fucking family values.” She’ll look plaintively at her friends, want them to nod in agreement, and they’ll do so because when you’re in a gang, you have each other’s backs.

Reality television. That is how the lesser Baldwin brothers console themselves. So long as reality television exists, they will be fine. As long as they have reality television, they won’t have to think about Alec and 30 Rock and his Teflon reputation that nearly cost them their membership in the gang because their news leak didn’t ruin him. The lesser Baldwins like to think of themselves as royalty—perhaps diminished in bloodline, but royal nonetheless. Daniel enjoys a solid working relationship with VH-1. For once, his addiction issues are a blessing, Daniel will say to anyone who will listen. Billy has to face every day knowing he made the movie Fair Game. He wears his shame nakedly and in doing so, spends much of his time mutely trying to muster the strength to make it from one moment to the next. Stephen has found God. He has found God and he loves God. He prays a lot, pacing the clubhouse clutching his designer bible. He has tasked himself with the gang’s salvation, has deemed himself their chaplain. The gang members mostly ignore him.  They’re from Hollywood. They know there is no God.

On their good days, of which there are few, The Lesser-Known Siblings Girl Gang (that let in a few boys), will get dressed up in their best hand-me-downs and loiter in downtown Hollywood, just beyond the periphery of the hotspots their better known and more deeply loved siblings frequent. They’ll often be followed by one or two sad, frightening paparazzi, halfheartedly snapping away in the hopes that one of the better-known siblings might breach the awkward constellation of failure that follows the gang. On their good days, it is enough.