On Chapter 10, Holden is at the Lavender Room, a lounge at the hotel. In there, three girls who are from Seattle are visiting NYC and he tries to impress them by ordering drinks, smoking, and acting cool. The girls, however, are not impresssed with him because they want to spot celebrities at the bar. In the end, they leave and he gets stuck with the tab.
He is repulsed by the girls, and contrasts them to Phoebe and Allie, who (in his book) are unreproachable. He goes on in a rant on how these girls are extremely superficial, how the adult world is full of phony people, who only care about what's in the outside. Yet...wasn't he also doing the same thing? Wasn't he also acting superficiallyn in order to fit in?
What this says about Holden is that he is great at whining and criticizing others, but he has a hard time applying his philosophy of life on himself. He has a great deal of double standards, and he is no different than the people he criticized. He has a view of life that is convenient for him because it allows him to make excuses for his lack of gumption and his inability to build social skills. His views also help him hide his feelings and pretend that he is actually strong-willed and corageous. Which, he is anything but.
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