June 17, 2005

• I wrote a sassy little rant last Thursday while riding the 6:00pm train out of Chicago to see our family in Michigan. Shaun and I were happily “un-plugged” that weekend, so my little ponderings sat forgotten on our laptop until this afternoon, when I remembered that I wrote them. So, help soothe the little essay’s loneliness–give it a skim at the very least. ::smile::

  As always, thank you for your readership!

  Plastic Buyers
  © The Author, June 9th 2005

  I am riding the Amtrak train home to Michigan, wishing I could stop gawking at the smooth profile of a peach cheeked, cheese curd nibbling Amish woman who sits in the seat kitty-corner from me. I can’t get over how precious her skin looks; it is flawless, clear, and if it weren’t for her starched white bonnet and her blue tank of a dress, you’d think she walked straight out of a Dove commercial. I wonder if my skin would look less like the layer of oil that forms a gooey slick atop natural peanut butter, and more like soft and sweet powdered sugar if I too rendered lard and lye and carved out a shapely little bit to use as soap. As it stands, I don’t even know which animal lard officially comes from (although all us mammals are pretty lard-assed), so I’m guessing I’ll just have to keep forking over my hard earned cash to Proactiv Solutions in a desperate attempt to look as fresh as Ms. Amish does. However unlikely my ability to thrive while living primitively may be, I wonder if the products and technology that I’ve been told are essential to my survival are quietly ruining me.

  While I am by no means a high maintenance gal, I still feel stifled by the pressure to buy. This is not a matter of excess–I loathe shopping anywhere but the Farmer’s Market and my idea of a fashion find is a cool Halloween costume–but it is still a stress to afford all the things that American culture tells me that I need. This is especially true with both Shaun and I trying to live off the (p)hat paychecks cut by our not-for-profit places of employment (snicker).

  In my June 5th entry dubbed The Money Changers, many of you assured me that you don’t pay much attention to advertising and that it doesn’t affect you. But that’s the worst part: you don’t even have to be paying attention for the messages of capitalism to latch on to you and suck you dry. In fact, the hottest trend in marketing is to deemphasize the product. As many of you aptly commented on my last post, much of the time consumers aren’t even aware of which product is being advertised. This is intentional. Marketers know that consumers are growing skeptical and tired of traditional ads. They are now branding an image, an experience, and a lifestyle. They aim to create buzz–it’s not about products anymore; it’s about a state of mind. Creepy, eh?

  Whether you realize it or not, advertising not only influences you to buy stuff but it also defines your culture. And one way or another, your culture dictates the way you live (the pretty Amish girl pleasantly excluded).

  Since mine is making me itch like a mad bastard at the moment, let’s take bras as an example of how we are blithely supporting capitalism with our under wire cups. Bras do nothing but create sweating, aggravated tits, but still women wear them because they have been peddled in some heinous form or another for eons as something women ought to wear. I am the proud owner of the world’s smallest rack (and I am a so-called feminist to boot), and I still buy bras that mold my silhouette into the product that I’ve been raised by our society to recognize as the female form.

  For gentleman perusing this fine essay, lest you feel alienated by my brazier rant, rest assured: you too are at the whims of an advertising based society. Fellows, do you wear deodorant? Pit stick has been a must have for both American men and women alike long enough for it to be ingrained in us that if we don’t wear it we’ll seem–god forbid–French. Has the whiff of the pit always been such an offense? No, in fact, body odor only become rancid once smart businesspeople started to realize they could make money off their invention that the gentle onion waft was an atrocity. We are culturally compelled to spend $5 a stick to ensure that the area where our arms meet our torsos smell like flavors designated as Clean: Lilac, Ocean Breeze, Rainy Day with Worms, and Fresh Fish. Oh wait–scratch those last two; figments of my imagination as they may be, they are just as nonsensical as the rest.

  Some might argue that they find the odor of toxins exiting from their pores grotesque, but I wonder: how many of these people actually break an honest sweat during the week? Since the U.S. is no longer a manufacturing society (our C.E.O’s and government prefer cheaper, much browner people in other countries to do this task for them), a large portion of Americans earn a paycheck in an overly air conditioned office. Regardless, we slather on a pit product every morning. We’ve been trained, my dear readers. That’s why if we skipped out of the pit shellac one experimental morning and dared to shed one droplet from our weary pits while at work, our co-workers would call us smelly freaks with B.O. and make fun of us mercilessly behind our backs. A promotion? Don’t make me laugh. With that rancor steaming from your pits, you’re likely to get fired. Then you couldn’t afford to buy deodorant even if you wanted to. See how that works?

  Why is it considered hygienic to seal up the body’s pores and keep all the body’s toxins inside to rot us from there? Why do women accept the idea that our breasts must be round, identical, gravity defying bulbs? Even though bare flesh is wriggling and strutting all over the media, it is all primped and tweezed and shorn and sterilized. American media may appear racy, but I see a different story. Americans are sexually constipated; our ads and our culture (forever linked) teach us that the most basic, natural functions and forms of our bodies are filthy and undesirable.

  Advertising permeates more than just our body image and gender identity. Consumer products dictate the way we interact with each other as well. Cell phones, ipods, laptops, personal computers, televisions, and digital cameras–these things are cool and I truly believe that they make my life easier and better. As sick as it is, I can’t imagine much of my life without them. Even our little blue ipod–acquired only last week–has already become an actual member of our household; how else could I perform the important task of practicing foreign languages while I’m out on my morning run?

  All these products are truly great, but I wonder if I believe that they make my life better for the same reason that I believe my pits to be traitors to my hygiene if they moisten. I suspect the Amish girl who is now sleeping peacefully in her seat is just as satisfied with her life as I am with mine. Only she doesn’t have the worried, over stimulated complexion that I have, and looking at her little picnic basket versus my hulking laptop bag, she has much less luggage to heave than I do.

  While Ms. Amish has an entirely different world to assimilate to, I suspect hers is much cheaper than mine. I’m guessing from her peaceful expression that her breasts are comfortable and her armpits are unconcerned with whatever they chose to emit. And while I don’t dwell on these things nearly as much as this essay that highlights these two basic examples may indicate, it takes a special, scheduled time for me to feel as she must feel. Hiking, running, laughing with my posse around a campfire, hugging my partner, and diving off my family’s cottage dock into the cool, green water: these are the times when I feel that closeness to my body and my spirit that seem to be the source of the Amish girl’s beauty. The rest of the time I am detached.

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  When do feel at home in your skin?

  • 6:05 pm
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