Now that I've thought about it . . .

So, tonight I saw a commercial that really irked me. A man was driving down a road at night while a voiceover droned in the background. The gist of the message was something like this [actually, it's pretty much word-for-word]:

"These days, we are addicted to immediate gratification. [Dramatic pause while car swooshes around a curve.] Don't like your nose? Get a new one. [A creepy caricature of a guy with a humongous nose floats across the screen, followed by a picture of the same guy with a new, regular-sized nose.] Don't like your job? Get a new one. [Picture of someone working at some desk job.] Don't like your spouse? Get a new one. [Picture of a woman in a bridal gown. All of these pictures are superimposed over the car driving along the road.]

Then, the kicker line: "Whatever happened to commitment?" The car continues breezing along the highway, and maybe they talked about the car a little at this point, since this was apparently supposed to be a commercial for said car.

Right as the commercial ended, some words appeared on the screen: "Think About It." So I did. The first thing I thought was, "Who the fuck makes a commitment to their nose?"

O.K., first off, the text of the commercial itself makes no sense. The whole nose thing, obviously. But are they really trying to imply that switching jobs indicates a lack of commitment? So, if you really hate your job, you should stay there anyway, out of some sense of "commitment" to the company? No one should ever leave to, say, find a better job? Go back to school? Start their own business? What kind of commie commercial is this?

Then there's the whole "find a new spouse" thing. I can guarantee, right there they alienated anyone going through a divorce right now. From experience, I can tell you that even the most mutual, uncomplicated divorce is still gut-wrenchingly painful for the normal person, quickie ridiculous celebrity breakups aside. When you've split from your spouse, about the last thing on your mind is "finding a new one." Luckily (?), divorce is like childbirth (or so I'm told)--you eventually forget the intensity of the pain so that you're able to get involved in a relationship (or get pregnant) again. Still, for folks going through a divorce right now, this commercial is completely insulting and off-putting.

The big question, though, is . . . what exactly are we supposed to "think about"? It's a friggin' car commercial! The logical last line to this whole joke would have been, "Don't like your car? Get a new one! This one!" What are we supposed to be showing "commitment" to here? Apparently, not the company that makes whatever car we're currently driving, unless its the carmaker of the commercial, which, ironically, I can't even remember (nor can I remember what kind of car they were attempting to advertise, not being a "car person").

If they're trying to communicate the idea (which I have to assume they are) that their company stays committed to a certain way of making cars, they went about it totally wrong. The whole text of the commercial should have been something like, "These days, some companies are addicted to instant gratification. They cut corners. They take shortcuts. But not us. Blah blah blah." You get the idea. About the last thing anyone trying to sell a product in a consumption-based economy should do is admonish people for seeking immediate gratification--that's just stupid. And when said admonishment is dressed up as knee-jerk family values propaganda (which, I have to point out, doesn't make any sense even apart from this particular context), it's insulting as well.

How To Woo Me

No, this is not a post about my love life--sorry if I misled you.

So, today I get home and check the mail, and there's a solicitation letter from Harper's Magazine. Normally I just throw junk mail like that away, but I do like Harper's, and I used to have a subscription, so I thought I'd check out what they were offering. And I have to say, someone put some thought into this marketing campaign . . . but with mixed results.

The letter they included is chatty with a conspiratorial tone, and it starts out by stroking my ego, warming me up to the pitch:

"Dear Heather,
You thrive on independent thinking. You're intrigued by events and ideas. And you read as much as you have time for."

So far so good! Harper's knows me so well! (But how do they know . . . ?)

The next part, however, proceeds to semi-insult me:

"But there is far too much information to cope with these days. Too much disinformation. Too much misinformation. The more you read, the more you wonder what it means."

O.K., so I read a lot, but I'm not so great with discernment, I guess? In fact, I even have trouble piecing together the meaning of what I read? Thanks a lot, Harper's. What's more, I'm left to wonder what the difference is between "misinformation" and "disinformation." (I'm guessing "misinformation" is unintentional, while "disinformation" is put out there on purpose? Of course, now I'm questioning my reasoning abilities in general, so who knows?)

Then I am reassured:

"Our mission is not to add to the information explosion but to help you defend yourself against it . . . to rout the propoganda peddlers . . . to make sense of a nonsensical world." [ellipses theirs]

Wow. I hadn't even realized that the entire world was nonsensical, let alone that a mere magazine could clear everything up for me! Oh, happy day! The letter then goes on and on in a rather patronizing tone, extolling the virtues of everything Harper's, occasionally tossing out some rather dubious claims:

"Harper's doesn't presume to tell you what to think. We simply tell you what people are thinking. Nor do we preach a particular brand of politics. We'll gladly ruffle feathers on both the left and right wings."

Oh, come on now. Like I said, I used to subscribe to Harper's, and it's definitely left-wing (as most magazines with actual thought behind them tend to be). Not that that bothers me--but don't pretend to be something you're not.

The best thing they did, though, was to include a complete version of the Harper's List, as well as a listing of recently published articles . . . and that is what eventually sucked me in. So, I'm going to resubscribe, but not because of anything they put in this really long letter that someone obviously took a long time to draft. Maybe I should let them know that.

[Despite their missteps, Harper's still knows me better than Ticketmaster, who today sent me an e-mail urging, "Don't Miss Poison!" Oh Ticketmaster, it is so over between us. You're pathetic. Really.]

What's in a Name?

O.K., here's something new--for the first time, I'm going to mention my real name (not my Blogger name) in my blog. It's necessary for this little story. You'll see.

So, my name is Heather, in case there's anyone out there reading this who doesn't know. I've always liked my name, and I think it suits me. It doesn't even bother me that all the famous Heathers--Heather Locklear, Heather Thomas, Heather Mills--tend to be blond and a little . . . bimboesque. Nor did it bother me when the movie "Heathers" came out, depicting all of us as evil, conniving social climbers. Doesn't matter. I am my own Heather.

I've always been aware, of course, that my name is also a flower and a color--kind of a pretty, greyish purple. In fact, I own a few heather-colored items of clothing. I can live with my name being a color, but now things have gone too far. Now, apparently, my name is also an adjective. Walking through Target yesterday, I noticed a display of shirts labeled "heathered tees."

Of course, I had to stop and check this out. The shirts were not all a pretty, greyish purple--they came in a wide variety of colors. So what, exactly, made them "heathered," and more importantly, who decided this was even a word? What did it mean? I examined the shirts. The only thing different about them that I could see was that they were all kind of pre-faded out. Was that it? Great. Apparently, if something comes pre-faded, it is now referred to as "heathered." This makes no sense to me, and I feel kind of strangely, personally offended.

Advertisers are ruining the language, people. This must stop.

What I think about all the time, unfortunately . . .

I don't blog much about my job, because, as we all know, there is always the danger of getting dooced from doing so. However, I've never hidden the fact that I'm an editor--more specifically, a textbook editor, and more specifically still, a high school social studies textbook editor. Upon hearing my job title, some people think, "That sounds cool," while even more people think, "God, that sounds fucking boring." Actually, it's both. In some respects, my job is pretty cool--I get to be creative, I have a lot of autonomy, I write and edit all day, and sometimes, I even get to travel. In other respects, it's tedious and extremely stressful, and the pressure is never really off. And then there's the whole thing about getting addicted to one's salary and benefits package, said benefits package being pretty fucking awesome and basically having the effect of doubling the salary, for all intents and purposes . . . but I digress.

I'll go out on a limb here and divulge the information that I'm currently working on an economics textbook. An economics textbook that somehow needs to be "hip" and "cool" and "cutting edge." Which means that, whether I'm actually at work or not, I'm keeping a constant eye out for market trends and new products and other stuff that I might be able to put in my book, eventually. And I gotta tell you, it's pretty exhausting. I can no longer watch TV, listen to the radio, or look through a magazine (all of which are supposed to be "relaxing" activities) without constantly evaluating everything I see and hear, consciously or subconsciously, on its potential merits as a feature or mention in my book. And in case you haven't noticed, advertising is everywhere. There is no escape.

It's really no wonder I'm exhausted and/or drunk all the time.

Anyway, it probably makes sense that with all this scrutiny, I've become particularly critical about ads and whatnot. And I have a particular favorite right now. One that makes me wonder what people are thinking and what's going to happen to this product in the long run. Really, I'm curious and incredulous. Without further ado, the product in question is:

VEET.

Have you all heard of this? It's yet another way for women to remove hair from their bodies, supposedly. First off, let me say that I'm a little suspicious of alternative over-the-counter hair-removal solutions. Remember "Nair"? Of the "We wear short-shorts" long-legged skinny women commercial fame? Nair was supposed to be this cream you just rubbed on your legs and, magically, the hair came right off. Did that stuff work? Did anyone ever actually try it? I remember asking my mom about it many years ago, when I was still a young lass with barely a leg hair to bitch about. According to Mom, no, it didn't work at all. Then why would people buy it, I asked? Because, she said, they had great TV ads, and a lot of women would go out and buy it once, and then realize it didn't work, but by then it would be too late, because they'd already spent the money. That's how the company made money, she said, by all these women buying it once. But why wouldn't all these women tell their friends it didn't work, I asked, and then no one would buy it?

Oh, what a sophisticated young consumer I was.

As far as I know, that' s what DID happen with Nair--it's not around anymore, right? So now, I'm wondering what will happen with VEET.

The marketers of VEET are pretty sophisticated as well, as marketers tend to be. In the commercial, they focus consumers' attention not on the dilapitory cream that one must use, but on the "special tool" that you get when you buy VEET. This "tool," by the way, looks exactly like a razor with no blade. In the commercial, a woman (whose face you never see, of course) runs this "tool" over her slender, perfectly toned, apparently already hairless leg, and suddenly . . . well, I guess we're supposed to assume that whatever hair that was there that we couldn't see in the first place is now gone. That is the magic of VEET. Can you dig it?

Now, I have many questions about all of this, but none of them center on whether or not VEET really works. Honestly, I don't care. I made my peace with razors a long time ago. Sure, shaving is a pain, but it gets the job done. It's reliable. Compared to most of life's trials, it's no big deal. I'm O.K. with it.

Of more interest to me is the thinking behind this whole marketing campaign. I don't know, maybe it's the particularly astute discernment abilities I've developed after months of working on this economics book, but a lot of things in the campaign make no sense whatsoever to me. Allow me to lay them out for you:

1. What, exactly, is VEET? Is it the "special tool"? Is it the cream? Is it the whole system, as a whole? Or is it more a concept, an idea, a dream of living a leg-hair-free existence? I'm just not sure.

2. Who was the genius who decided to call a major part of this product, marketed very specifically to women, a "tool"? Really, you couldn't come up with anything better and/or more appropriate? Honestly, the idea of using a "tool" on my legs doesn't sound very appealing. It seems vaguely surgical, and to some, it might conjure up images of people's shins being cracked with a wrench or something. I won't even go into the possible sexual innuendos that could be derived from an alternative definition. Just a really, really bad choice of terminology, in my opinion. (The assertion that the tool is somehow "special" doesn't help either. Not at all.)

3. And finally--VEET??? What the hell does that even mean? Is it an acronym? Is it supposed to summon up some association with something else? And what would that be, exactly? To me, it sounds like a word aliens would use. If an alien landed in my backyard, descended from his/her/its ship, floated up to me, and said, "Veet!" I would not be surprised. That would make sense, in some strange way. But as a way for my legs to be sleek and smooth? Nah, it just doesn't work.

So, while I'm curious to learn what others might think of VEET, I have no plans to include it in my book in any way. Apart from the mind-boggling aspects of the marketing side of the whole thing, I just don't think teenage girls need more cajoling into trying to be even more hairless than they're already encouraged to be.