Return of the Douche

[Preface: for the benefit of my almost-octogenarian great-aunt in Ohio and any other readers who may be unfamiliar with the term “douche” and its colloquial use herein, let me go ahead and define it as “one who is brainless, vapid, and self-important; often one who pairs these qualities with great personal wealth.” This will save you all some awkward Google searches, methinks.]

There was a time, not too long ago, when I believed that the douche life in Dubai was dead.

The global financial crisis arrived late in these parts, but when it finally came to town in early 2009 it hit hard, and those who were most affected by the meltdown tended to be the biggest douche-spenders of yore.

(I mean, not to say that there’s a causal relationship between the kinds of people who drop a couple Gs on Grey Goose in the club on Friday nights and the kinds of people who lost all their money when the Dubai real estate bubble burst… but there’s certainly a correlation.)

For a while, I worried. What would define Dubai in the absence of profligate displays of wealth and bad taste? What would become of the club cellars full of Patron and Perrier-Jouet, the store racks crammed with garish D&G mini-dresses custom-sized to fit the lithe frames of Romanian / Ukrainian escort girls, the swarms of visiting Eurotrash DJs that no one’s ever really heard of but everyone claims to have rocked out to that one time in Ibiza?

What would happen to the club kids, the table dons, the douches?

Fear not, brave readers. For after a visit this weekend to a Dubai beach club recently opened by one of our friends, I am here to assure you that the douche is back, baby!

All the scenes were there, right before our very eyes: the ne’er-do-well offspring of the region’s moguls, oligarchs, and dictators, cavorting with harems of women in the comfortable confines of private temperature-controlled plunge pools…

The fake boobs, the fake tans, the fake blondes - visual offences easily smoothed over with copious cocktails…

The $500 bottles of Cristal festooned with sparklers and paraded proudly to their purchasers’ VIP tables…

… alongside the un-feted $80 bottles of lesser sparkling wine, purchased not for consumption (“you can’t drink that, it’s for poor people!” a friend admonished one onlooker who reached for a glass) but rather for dousing fellow revelers in a festive spray of bubbles.

And oh, the beach club fashion! Sequined, bling-laden couture bikinis, accessorized with shisha and a champagne flute…

… plus leopard-print leggings (that only an Eastern European could love, right?) and de rigeur Vilebrequins (or “VBs,” as I have learned to call them in douche circles), paired effortlessly with a velvet rope.

I know it’s easy to be disheartened by the return of douche-dom at a time when there are so many more… important events taking place in this part of the world. And I can understand - if you live in a place where you are not surrounded by epic douchebaggery on a day-to-day basis - how this could leave a bad taste in your mouth. But the way I like to see it is that the return of the douche means that something in the broader global economic climate is going right - and a rising tide lifts all boats, doesn’t it?

Even a rising tide of douches!

[Apologies for the poor quality of the photos in this post, but it is challenging to pretend to be a cool, disaffected douchette whilst simultaneously documenting key douche scenes on my Blackberry for later social commentary. If anyone would like to outfit me with a high-quality super-secret spy cam for future missions, holla atcha girl!]