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Smart Water, okey dokey?

Water, H2O, has always been thought to be the purest of the elements. However, Smart Water, “Water that’s the envy of all water,” would have you believe that if water is not bottled and infused with electrolytes, vitamins, and minerals, it is tainted, undrinkable and teeming with impurities. Yet, why do we believe that the addition of electrolytes, vitamins, and minerals to our water makes it more pure?

Smart Water is advertised as “the water with all the answers.” The advertisement asks, “What do you drink for purity?” and goes on to say, “It’s dirty out there. Smart Water makes water the way natural used to, but in a totally pure environment. 100% pure water, 100% pure electrolytes. Nothing else. How smart is that?” How is infusing water with electrolytes, vitamins, and minerals in a laboratory making it more natural in a “totally pure environment”? Smart Water has warped our sense of what is natural. No, water from a spring is not natural anymore. Water from a spring is tainted, dirty, ridden with what Smart Water identifies as “random stuff and whatever else the animals that swim in it leave behind.”

Smart Water’s alibi is its ability to play into the average American’s fear of the unclean, the polluted. Smart Water’s website elucidates the fact that Smart Water vapor distills the water and adds electrolytes in order to speed hydration. So, in addition to the fact that Smart Water plays into our fears of the unclean, it also plays into our desire for quick fixes, offering more bang for our buck. What more could we ask for?

Celebrities play into this myth. Celebrities have the power to dictate what is popular and what is not. Celebrities play a very active role in the world of marketing. Not all of us watch the news, but I’m going to guess that the majority of us are up to date on the goings on of such celebrities as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. When these celebrities promote a product, we are quick to listen.
Not only playing into our fears of the unclean and desire for the quickest fix, Smart Water employs the likeness of a very prominent celebrity, Jennifer Aniston. With her flawless skin and trim body, it is no wonder that Smart Water’s sales are booming. Through Aniston’s glowing, flawless skin, Smart Water promotes its ability to provide us with water that has a powerful effect on our looks. The advertisements portray her effervescent, laughing, in a state of pure happiness, all of which promote the purity of Smart Water. The picture is black and white, and the only color we see is focused on the blueness of the shapes that seem to promote the wholesomeness of the product.

Perhaps the most telling and prominent myth behind Smart Water is its namesake. Who wouldn’t want to drink water promoted as “smart”? Smart Water plays into our desire to make the right choices as to what we deem healthy and pure. Smart Water suggests that if we are not drinking bottled water, we are backwards, unhealthy, primitive, naively imbibing tainted water. In today’s day and age, who wants to be considered backwards in a world that is relentlessly moving forward at a whirlwind pace?

YAY! My sleep perils have been remedied...

Yes, I am one of those people who kicks that one leg from under the cover intermittently throughout the night, in hopes of achieving a short-lived sensation of "coolness." But, I also suffer from another affliction in the middle of the night... I am one of those masochists who sleeps with one arm under my pillow, until discomfort gets the best of me and my arm feels like it's going to fall off, on account of the fact that the human head weighs 8 lbs. (thanks Ray) and my weak arm, one of the many defects of my kind, (thanks Dwight) well, not so many. Lo and behold, my sleep ailments look like they have been put to rest, enter "The Arm Sleeper Pillow," YES. You can order one from Hammacher.com, get excited, I know I am! :)

The Tanning Myth...

Jane thumbs through Vogue everyday and notices all the models have beautiful tan skin. Jane likes bronzed skin. The magazines do say, “Tan fat is better than white fat.” Jane lays out everyday and even goes to the tanning bed too, in hopes of achieving the perfect tan. People compliment Jane on her new glow. Jane feels beautiful. Jane goes to her annual doctor’s visit. The doctor notices Jane’s bronzed skin and admonishes Jane's tanning habit. Jane shrugs off the doctor’s admonition and continues to tan. Jane gets skin cancer. Jane dies.

Call me crazy, but wouldn’t you stop tanning if you knew it had the potential to kill you? I find it disturbing to know that the majority of people would rather strive for a good tan, than live? We really have our priorities straight.

Apparently, looks really do kill. One would think that it would be frowned upon for society to purport an image of beauty that has the potential to kill. But, society does just that. Magazines have the power to inculcate our culture and fill girls’ minds with the idea that being pale is just not attractive. How absurd. When did society decide tan skin was in and who was the genius who had the grand idea for a tanning bed?

Despite popular belief, bronzed skin wasn’t always the rage. Think back to Europe circa 1500, the era of the blue bloods. The blue bloods were the upper class, the creme de la creme. These high society ladies had the luxury of lounging around the estate all day, never lifting a pinky to the any menial task. Having tanned skin was considered low-class, associated with peasants, who made their living slaving away in the hot sun...hardly fashionable. When did it become trendy to sport such a golden glow?

Popular culture makes it socially acceptable and even encourages girls to have bronzed skin. The myth then is that bronzed skin suggests youth, vivacity, and gives women that longed for “glow.” Achieving that longed for “glow” also suggests that you are akin to the finer things in life, like going to the Riviera on a weekend jaunt, masking the monotony of the daily grind. Synonymous with youth and wealth, who wouldn’t want to have bronzed skin? So long as society purports a tan’s synonymy with wealth, youth, and good looks, so long will girls flock to the tanning salons, and ultimately risks their lives.

I have racked my brain trying to figure out just what keeps girls coming back for more “fake bake’? Why do girls insist on frying themselves in a coffin-like structure all for the sake of looking good? How did having a nice tan become an integral item on our beauty checklists?

Women go through a number of procedures for the sake of beauty, oftentimes entailing a lot of pain. It has become the norm to fix those minor dissatisfactions with one's body through chin jobs, nose jobs, boob jobs, eye jobs, facelifts, lipo, tummy tucks, even calf implants. You name your problem with your body and there is a doctor more than willing to fix it. But let’s think about face peels and restolyn and botox. These procedures for beauty are done at the expense of another beauty ritual: tanning. So you see, it’s a vicious cycle. The psyche of the average woman these days would be something along the lines of, “I NEED a tan to look good. I get a chemical peel to rid myself of my wrinkles, caused by tanning in order to look good. My face is now pale: unattractive. I tan more. I get another chemical peel.” Is this not insane?

It is insane and until the day comes when society is not such a dictator of our beauty do’s and don’ts, women will continue to worship the sun. Every doctor advises against tanning ad nauseum, yet women still do it. Why? Tanning releases endorphins, those natural painkillers that make you feel like you’re on cloud nine. No wonder women flock to tanning beds like the swallows of Capistrano. You feel better, you look better, and you’re more attractive to the opposite sex. It sounds like a win-win, except for the fact that it has the potential to kill.

Apparently, people simply would rather look good than be healthy. Until we stop buying into popular culture and truly value our very lives, we are hopeless. There is a lot more to life than looking good, but that’s not the adage our culture purports. Our culture purports the idea that the surface is what counts, making tanning and countless other beauty rituals all the rage. We, as adults, need to think back to the forgotten maxim we learned when we were little kids that read, “It’s not what’s on the outside, but what’s on the inside that counts.” I think we’d all do ourselves a favor if this adage was encouraged by popular culture.

Social Skills NOT Stalker Skills

I wrote this my senior year of college, but I feel it still holds true today...

College students have found a new way to occupy their time and it does not consist of drinking or partying. Rather, it involves hours upon hours of sitting in front of a computer. No, these students are not studying. Well, actually they are studying each other, and with websites like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, college students have become enamored with each other’s pseudo-identities.
Facebook prides itself on being “a social utility that connects you with the people around you.” However, there is limited interaction on this website. Facebook merely plays into our culture’s tendency to live life through the all-encompassing computer. People merely sit in front of their computers, incessantly reading a person’s profile which consists of really profound information such as: interests, favorite music, favorite T.V. shows, favorite movies, favorite books, favorite quotes, and last but not least, the “about me” section. I’d say that’s a really great way to get to know a person. What is Facebook turning our social life into?
Facebook allows you to open a window to peeping toms all over the world; a window that in no way allows for social interaction, but rather pseudo-interaction teeming with pseudo-information. Through your profile, you present to others your ideal self, your pseudo-identity. Facebook, while posing as a social interaction tool actually is quite the antithesis. Facebook is rather an isolation utility that transforms the average person into a creepy stalker, lacking social skills. Facebook does nothing to further social skills and has bred a generation of stalkers.
Facebook’s alibi is that it is a social utility, allowing us to get to know others through a convenient medium, the Internet. Yet, Facebook actually is a social hindrance, making its users all the more awkward in social situations. Think about it, people only get to know you on a two-dimensional level, which may or may not be completely feigned. You have created a full blown relationship with someone’s pseudo-identity without ever hearing this person’s voice. It is very hard to switch from a two-dimensional relationship through mediums such as AIM, to an actual live relationship. I would think that Facebook creates awkward tension in social situations, and is a far cry from its celebrated “social utility.”
The "News Feed" feature on Facebook has managed to make Facebook all the more invasive. The "News Feed" feature allows you to track each and every one of your friends’ moves. People get to see intimate things that you really didn’t want people to see. Facebook, through the News Feed feature, has made the once innocuous invitation to view others into a very threatening invasion of your privacy. It acts as your own personal big brother documenting the lives of you and your friends. This News Feed plays into our culture’s desire to acquire the most information, no matter how senseless or impertinent.
Facebook has added the term “lurking” into our everyday vocabulary. There have been times that strangers have approached me on campus and when I ask them how they know my name, which is in itself kind of creepy, they respond that they came across my profile as they were lurking on Facebook. If that’s not awkward I don’t know what is. Where do we draw the line? We need to get up off our desk chairs and actually meet people the old-fashioned way. We need to go out, experience life, strike up conversations with strangers and hone our social skills, not our stalking skills.

Best. Thing. Ever.

How many times have you heard the following:

"OMG, I burned like 750 calories at the gym today!"

First of all, let me just say that the above statement is ridden with fallacies.

Here's the bottom line: CARDIO MACHINES ARE TRICKSTERS!

Fitness Partner: Activity Calorie Counter

"Well, I broke in my purple clogs."

This is a postscript to my aforementioned post on the cyclical nature of fashion... While I was perusing my daily e-mails this morning, I came across my daily Saks fashion update informing me of the latest "rage." The subject line read, "Clogs: The Next big Thing." Really, clogs???

Think about this...
The Year: 1995
The Movie: "Clueless"
The Scene: Mel: "So, what did you do in school today?"
Cher: "Well, I broke in my purple clogs."

This movie, mind you, was relased on July 19, 1995. For me, it was the summer before 5th grade. (Wow, time flies!) It's July 2, 2010 today. That's almost 15 years to the date that clogs are making a come back!! Madness, I tell you!!

I must say, the Christian Louboutins on the left are calling my name! :)
On the other hand, the Marc Jacobs' on the right are a little too eerily similar to a pair I had in 5th grade!

The moral of the story is this: ...Watch out... it's more than likely that in 15 years that wretched trend you loathe today will re-surface!