Review: Some Girls

At age eighteen Lauren dropped out of NYU, and went to Brunei to join the royal harem. Her duties were to look beautiful at nightly parties, and be sexually available to the sultan's younger brother. In return she received expensive clothes and gifts.

The world of the Brunei royal family is a strange one. Women from all over the world jockey, fight, and manipulate for position within the harem. They live together in communal houses that could rival the cattiest sorority. The women are not allowed to leave the compound unescorted.

Essentially this struck me as a case of adolescent rebellion on a grand scale. The Brunei harem was fairly grotesque. Still, I enjoyed this look into a totally bizarre life. It was disturbing how disposable the women in the harem were. Some lasted weeks, others months. All of them seemed to be chasing a completely unattainable goal- to become one of the royal wives. None of them would.

Jillian Lauren, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem (Plume, 2010) ISBN: 0452296315