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Friday, March 31, 2006

Why Buy It?

So I know I've been going around saying that people are free to spend money like lunatics and who am I to tell people what to do. And I don't really spend most of my time contemplating consumerism anyway...

But this week has revealed some things that are beyond everything- beyond, even the unpleasant "crowning head earrings."

A few weeks ago, I got tarted up and went down the hall to a cocktail party (the one that left me feeling like something of an underachiever) and was reveling when I noticed a distinctive flapping gesture across the room. "Oh look!" My conversation partner (someone who put the whipped cream and cherry on top of my underachiever-feeling sundae) noticed it too. "An ultrasound picture!"

I hadn't seen one socially in a while, but a small crowd of people I never wound up meeting was indeed crowded around one of those unmistakable, shiny, black and white square pages. I have a small clutch of them myself.

The ultrasound image is a strange thing. It is obviously completely unique, as unique as each set of parents and each kid; but it is also often generic. In fact, ideally, it will be generic. Perhaps I say this because I don't have the trained artist's eye needed to make sense of what I'm seeing. (At the anatomy scan that is generally performed at around the 20t h week of pregnancy, I faked being able to recognize anything the ultrasound technician pointed out to me until finally we got to the feet which even a dolt like me could identify.) But I think, apart from how novel and reassuring sonograms are, and how emotionally compelling they truly can be, one hopes they are not unique. You want them to conform to a standard set of statistics. When I look at the murky weather map images of Felix in utero, I know they are pictures of my kid, but they look like pictures of Everychild.

Oh, but I wandered off. I'm back. Forgive my digression, because I did have a point and my point is that these pictures hold emotional resonance to the parents-to-be and their families and are largely curiosities to everyone else. But one thing they really aren't, is APPETIZING.

Which leads me to consumer folly #1, the Picture This White Chocolate Box of Ultrasound Cookies. (I must give credit where it is due; I found this on Daddy Types today.) Why one would find these appealing is mysterious. I suppose there is something Mutter Museum-esque about bringing the anatomical images into dessert items, but it really isn't cute or charming. In fact, the whole business is loopily fetishistic if not cannibalistic. Or maybe it's the red bow that makes it all seem so lurid.

I was less amused when I received this Washington Post article about the Club Libby Lu chain. This has made the rounds, and I was quite late to hear about these stores that host princess parties for (presumably exclusively, but who knows) little girls and encourage them to demand that their parents buy them sexy clothes and makeup. The article itself, while a bit purple in its choice of vernacular, makes most of my points about how sinister it is to try to make little girls in to pre-teenage sexpots, how the language of "makeover" is ridiculous when it is leveled at a six-year-old who shouldn't have to feel that one is necessary, and questions the wisdom of spoon feeding "princess" attitude without irony or skepticism into receptive brains.

So I'll just say that I find it strange that we live in times where women's reproductive rights and choices are being threatened- in part, I think, as a way to punish women for being sexually active- while places like Club Libby Lu are mushrooming everywhere that educate little girls through play that it is their job to act sexy, walk on little catwalks and be obsessed with their bodies. In an article full of depressing tidbits, the one that made my heart sink the most was the assertion by the company's "Princess of Royal Relations" that Club Libby Lu suffers from "feminist backlash."

Why spend money at these places? Why support an industry that would prefer- as evidenced in the language used by Princess of Royal Relations- to keep little girls from being critical of the pink princess stereotype? Resistance is not futile.

And finally, on the South Dakota front, where there is little hope, there is an interesting fight being fought with humor and energy.

posted by Elise at 10:54 AM

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22 Comments:

Kim said...

Hi, I was watching CNN and I saw a bit about splurging on your kids... absolutely ridiculous parents spending insane amounts of money on clothes. I just really liked what you said about it, and I'm interested in reading your blog :)

4/03/2006 1:49 PM

Elise said...

Many thanks, I'm glad you found your way here.