Studies have shown that chimpanzees enjoy looking at photos of the dominant chimps in their tribe. And, as evidenced at Bloomingdale's this afternoon, human animals will sometimes even stand in a long line and buy an overpriced bottle of perfume just to have their photo taken with a dominant chimp: Whitney from "The Hills."

Whitney (last name: Port!) was very tall and her hair was perfectly blond and curled. Stuck behind lines of photographers and fans, she was on display zoo-style. She wore shiny lipgloss approximately one shade too dark for her, an orange sack dressed tied at the waist, and knee-high black pointy boots.

Coincidentally, orange is the color of the perfume she's hawking—Clinique's "Happy." Everybody there was happy, happy, happy, passing out cupcakes and candy. A couple of lost-looking gays even got in line and bought the $49.50 perfume in order to have their picture taken with Whitney. "That's the point, right?" one of them asked.

My encounter with Whitney was brief and vaguely unsettling. The photographer instructed us to "cozy up" more than once. Whitney put her arm around my waist and called me "hon."

Unlike the little girls and middle-aged women in line before me, I did not feel the need to hug her.