Most beautiful, prettiest, most popular. I don’t know about you, but these words combined with “high school” and “13 years old” stir well-hidden emotions in me. Even if you were in your younger days — beautiful, handsome, popular — it probably didn’t feel that way. Only, only later in life do you understand that beauty does not guarantee success. Happiness and handsomeness are not always directly proportional. And somewhere in this lies the explanation of the continued popularity of the AvroTros program The prettiest girl in class. For the seventeenth season, presenter Jaap Jongbloed is looking for the girls who were admired or envied by classmates at the time. “Did she become what you expected,” says the call for candidates. Does that question imply that you actually hope for notOr am I being too cynical?
All regular ingredients were again in Wednesday evening’s episode, about Simone Engeln. Girl from the province, with a te going out personality for where she was born, Enschede this time. Girlfriends from that time say that it was looser and freer at their girlfriend’s house than at theirs. She was rarely a brilliant student, dancing and singing rather than learning, yet the teachers adored her. She went out as soon as she could, soon in Amsterdam. There is also a stepfather with an aggression problem, a friend who died too young – his name was Jurgen, and he accidentally shot himself in the head with his father’s gun. There’s a “nasty” ex-boyfriend, and there’s a boy who had a crush on her in elementary school—and maybe still does. Ewoud, the decent boy with ‘socks in his sandals’, had kept the notes she used to write to him: ‘I will always go with you, will you also go with me?’ Simone Engeln, with her cosmopolitan appearance, chooses a life of “partying, traveling, rock & roll.” As Simone Angel she becomes a VJ at music channel MTV.
Almost all the “most beautiful girls” are now women around 50. The ideal age apparently to determine whether her life has been successful or not. If you look her up too early, there are still all kinds of options open in life. If she is too old, you will have an episode full of older people and that will look less good. No, 50 is fine. The decline is just starting to show itself, possibly drinking and drug use has left its mark and maybe there is now some overweight.
Two notable exceptions in the episode with Simone Engeln. Already in the first minutes a son of hers comes into the picture. The indicator for a successful and, above all, a happy life: is there a family? Usually that is saved until last, as if the bill is being drawn up. Her beauty has faded, fortunately she has children. Or, the false variant: she has lived a grand and compelling life, but she is not a mother. The reveal of what she looks like now also came faster than usual. Perhaps because Jaap Jongbloed traveled especially to Belize, where she lives (with a husband). There she looks back with Jongbloed on a career in which she interviewed Tina Turner and Snoop Dogg in perfect English. Then she presented, in perfect German, for the German RTL.
As always, Jaap Jongbloed ends by asking whether her appearance in her life was “a positive or a negative thing.” She doesn’t understand the question. “What do you mean?” He says, “You’re taking part in the prettiest girl…?” But I wasn’t, she says. And then: “I hate it when everything revolves around looks. These days, with social media, the pressure on girls is enormous. And it’s bullshit. Beauty is a snapshot.” She says it.
I’m sure I’m not the first to conclude that this program never The prettiest boy in class will be called.