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Thursday, December 01, 2005

Creepy Jewelry

I took a glance at Daddy Types this morning and my eyes are still burning. There's an entry about Christmas presents for new mothers (and, I suppose their corollary, "push presents) that almost put me off my coffee. Not quite, but almost.

It is hard for me to muster complicated feelings about "push presents" generally. If someone wants to give the woman who delivered his or her baby a present, that's a nice and sweet idea, especially at a time when one feels really weird and one's body is doing interesting and painful things. I won't quarrel with it on principle.

What is unfortunate, if inevitable, is that once a market for these presents has been identified, companies will come up with all sorts of prefab items that people can grab without having to put much thought into it. I realize time is short after a kid has arrived, indeed I lived it, but the presents Daddy Types point out, no matter how expensive, seem to have come out of a can, AND are sort of infantilizing, an unwelcome quality in any present for a mother. What is the appeal of a four thousand dollar diamond necklace branded by Baby Gund, the company that makes "Sprinkes (formerly Speckles) the Giraffe"? (Yes, Sprinkles, or Speckles or whatever he goes by is very cute, but not so much around one's throat, unless I'm missing some subtlety.) And the other deluxe bits of jewelry Daddy Types mentions are strange charm bracelets and necklaces that while surely very chi-chi, are extremely childlike, not grown up or sophisticated or the sort of thing one would wear in hopes of distracting oneself from postpartum exhaustion and spit-up covered shoulders.

But the insane push present is not the exclusive domain of the rich and strange (or rich and unimaginative). Daddy Types gets credit for pointing out the most insane representational jewelry I think I have ever seen. I realize these items are being sold through Midwifery Today magazine, which is read primarily by midwives, but that are listed as "Products for Parents."

They are:
"Baby's Joy earrings". Even if you can discreetly nurse in public, your ears can show the world what's really going on.
"Womb With a View earrings" That kid isn't breech.
"Baby Earrings" The size of an 8-week-old fetus. Creepy, perhaps?
And
"Crowning Earrings" Words escape me except to say that this particular spectacle is always, always, always best kept private.

The comfort here, and there is one, is that everyone can go too far, regardless of financial limitations.

posted by Elise at 10:14 AM

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5 Comments:

Chloe said...

I just looked at the jewelry & while words don't even begin to express the weirdness I feel about those gift suggestions, the imagery makes me cringe. I need a cartoon bubble to appropriately convey my disgust, Akkkkkk. Maybe 5 months postpartum is too close for me to view those with an unbiased eye. I love my midwives & was humbled by the lifelong gratitude I now hold for their guidence during my baby's birth. We couldn't afford anything that would convey the depth of our feelings for them. So after 3 months when things were a little sane I made things for them & we plan to donate to their fundraising efforts every year (when we can't afford it, we will volunteer). I don't think midwifery is a financially profitable career early on, & I suggest dropping some home cooking off to your local clinic or midwifery school rather than forking over $ for dumb charms. I would like to know how midwives & doulas feel about gifts of that nature.

12/01/2005 7:17 PM

Anonymous said...

I have never even heard of a "push" gift before. I think it's something the PID (pregnancy industrial complex came up with to get us to fork over more $$. That being said, if I visit someone in the hospital I usually bring a gift of some sort of pampering item for the mom and a bottle of wine for the husband (if the wife can't/wpn't drink) to celebrate with.

I also hope my husband will be too busy helping me prepare for the baby's arrival to go shopping for some really lame gift.

12/03/2005 12:23 PM

Thor Swenson said...

I just recently gave my wife a "Push Gift" or Push present, whatever. A friend of my wife owns a business that helps men shop for women (I'm a little offended by the slogan "...because guys can't shop" but I'll live with it) and I got my wife a cashmere robe as a push gift. She loves it and it scored me some brownie points with my wife (who is abnormally hormonal right now, and needs me to be a gracious and giving as possible). Her friend's website is called RomeoShops.com- I would recommend this to most guys who are expecting because my wife was taken aback by the gesture and wasn't expecting it. Something we don't experience too much after 10 years of marriage!

4/04/2006 1:14 PM

xiaonanok said...

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.

3/16/2007 7:55 PM

Anonymous said...

I am actually wearing a pair of the baby crowning earrings as I type.. it's a wonderful celebration of women's power, and no one has ever guessed what they are, I wear them in corporate and other settings. Modern art, is the best guess.

Giving birth was one of the most powerful events of my life, and I've had quite the life with many material successes. I choose to celebrate that by wearing a talisman of my preference. Shrug. others may do as they wish.

3/19/2007 2:51 PM

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