There were twelve of us at the hotel.
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e had all won a fashion magazine contest, by writing essays andstories and poems and fashion blurbs, and as prizes they gave usjobs in New York for a month, expenses paid, and piles and piles offree bonuses, like ballet tickets and passes to fashion shows and hairstylings at a famous expensive salon and chances to meet successfulpeople in the field of our desire and advice about what to do withour particular complexions. I still have the make-up kit they gave me, fitted out for a personwith brown eyes and brown hair: an oblong of brown mascara witha tiny brush, and a round basin of blue eye-shadow just big enoughto dab the tip of your finger in, and three lipsticks ranging from redto pink, all cased in the same little gilt box with a mirror on one side. 10 | The Bell Jar I also have a white plastic sun-glasses case with coloured shells andsequins and a green plastic starfish sewed on to it. I realized we kept piling up these presents because it was as goodas free advertising for the firms involved, but I couldn't be cynical. Igot such a kick out of all those free gifts showering on to us. For along time afterwards I hid them away, but later, when I was all rightagain, I brought them out, and I still have them around the house.I use the lipsticks now and then, and last week I cut the plasticstarfish off the sun-glasses case for the baby to play with. So there were twelve of us at the hotel, in the same wing on thesame floor in single rooms, one after the other, and it reminded meof my dormitory at college. It wasn’t a proper hotel—I mean a hotelwhere there are both men and women mixed about here and thereon the same floor. This hotel—the Amazon—was for women only, and they weremostly girls my age with wealthy parents who wanted to be suretheir daughters would be living where men couldn't get at them anddeceive them; and they were all going to posh secretarial schoolslike Katy Gibbs, where they had to wear hats and stockings andgloves to class, or they had just graduated from places like KatyGibbs and were secretaries to executives and junior executives andsimply hanging around in New York waiting to get married to somecareer man or other. These girls looked awfully bored to me. I saw them on the sun-roof, yawning and painting their nails and trying to keep up theirBermuda tans, and they seemed bored as hell. I talked with one ofthem, and she was bored with yachts and bored with flying aroundin aeroplanes and bored with skiing in Switzerland at Christmas andbored with the men in Brazil. Girls like that make me sick. I’m so jealous I can’t speak. Nineteenyears, and I hadn’t been out of New England except for this trip toNew York. It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back andletting it run through my fingers like so much water. I guess one of my troubles was Doreen. I'd never known a girl like Doreen before. Doreen came from a
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