I’ve been traveling for the past two weeks. Hence, my absence from the blog. I was in civilization, but I was cut off from it. I didn’t turn on the TV to watch the news once; I half-read two articles. I signed on to Twitter twice. True, I was busy. But that is not the only or primary reason for my absence. It probably has more to do with A Post About Today’s ADD World, I Think, written before leaving on my trip.
My semi-voluntary disconnection from the 24/7 news cycle left me plenty of brain time to focus on and think about important life stuff with the occasional mental wandering into fluff. For example, why are plastic shoes with holes, named after what I’ve always considered giant lizards, so popular? Crocs look cute on children, adorable on toddlers, but I don’t get why anyone over the age of 12 wears them, seriously.
Speaking of seriously, what’s up with Apple’s new MacBook? It is the lightest, thinnest MacBook ever invented. It is lighter and thinner than MacBook Air, except in name. As I’ve previously pointed out, it means that at Apple a book is lighter than air. That is disturbing to me, that a company known for its marketing genius would let this go. I get that they’re keeping the MacBook Air line and that maybe they wanted to differentiate the new laptop somehow. But, couldn’t anyone over in Cupertino google use Safari to look up, “What is lighter than air?” I did. Hot air, neon, water vapor, ammonia, methane, hydrogen, helium, and graphene aerogel are all lighter than air. Better yet, why not just do a name swap: calling the new MacBook, “Air” and the current Airs, “MacBook”? Considering Apple’s marketing might, this would not have been too hard to do. Damn, I miss Steve Jobs.
Sometimes my mental wandering led me to actual physical wandering, which is how I found myself inside a Victoria’s Secret store last week. I don’t go there often, and much less in recent years. But, I stayed a while this time. It wasn’t always like this. I used to love Victoria’s Secret. Sexy lingerie and comfy pajamas, thong underwear (which I don’t buy, because only a man could have invented it), and lace shorties all under one roof.
It suddenly hit me, the reason I’ve stayed away. It’s sooo pink. And, what is pink? A whited-out red. Even the color’s name is ugly. Someone took a strong, vibrant color and made it soft, weak. Then, they assigned it to girls. Yeah, I hate pink and, probably, mostly because I’m supposed to like it by virtue of the fact that I’m a girl. But back to Victoria’s Secret, at first, it was bad enough that they made their shopping bags so glaringly pink. However, I was willing to walk around with them because I liked the merchandise held inside. Unfortunately, today, a lot of that merchandise has turned pink.
Since I’ve been traveling so much, I stood around their accessories table looking at their small travel bags. They have nice shapes and sizes. But they’re ALL pink, and to add insult to injury they added black, as if pink and black should co-exist in any piece of merchandise. Tacky.
Victoria’s Secret loves pink so much that, in 2002, it launched a lingerie store aimed at 15-to-22-year-olds, and named it “PINK.” As I stood there, getting totally pinked out, it occurred to me that Victoria’s Secret and its pink obsession have done more to set back the women’s lib movement than a bunch of tea-drunk extremists ever could.
Ok, so maybe the fumes from their PINK fragrance were doing a number on me. But, think about it. Women have been wearing more than fifty shades of blue for decades. But a man wearing a pink shirt is still a much less frequent sight. While blue has long ago turned unisex, pink is still very much associated with women, even more so with baby girls. Victoria’s Secret secret could very well be that, despite their use of Amazonian models exuding sex and power, it infantilizes women, unwittingly or not.
Yes, yes, I realize that I might be the rare exception, that most women might like pink, and that Victoria’s Secret is targeting them after a “pinkload” of research. But, I doubt it. My woman’s intuition tells me that what most women like is variety, that they like to be seduced by a colorful imagination, and that most have outgrown their love of pink by the time that they’re 30.
I could be wrong, you tell me. However, one thing I know for sure is that when it comes to Victoria’s Secret, I am most definitely not tickled pink.
