OK. There is something creative and kinky about wearing hardware as a fashion statement. The Today Show this morning (September 9, 2010) had a short segment about women creating jewelry from some of your favorite items in the hardware aisle. My favorite accessory in the “DIY Haute Couture” line was a belt made of out of a pulley and rope. Of course, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with giving Home Depot a seat at the fashion runway, but is simple youthful exuberance all that is going on here?
The American Middle Class, bless its plaque filled heart, is being further softened up for what MadTV brilliantly satirized as “Lowered Expectations.” Over the past 20 years, the productivity of the American worker has increased but real wages have declined. Now that the biggest bubble of those last 20 years has burst (in real estate), the economy has hit the skids, at least for those in the bottom 80%. Those at the top have never had it so good. The levees of our economy have collapsed and, except for those who live in the most exclusive neighborhoods, we are all trying to keep our heads above water.
Thus, our friends at NBC are there making life a little more pleasant by demonstrating that as every penny of savings and equity are eaten up, women do not have to go about unadorned. They can galvanize their admirers with items that are themselves galvanized. The hardware store is replete with all kinds of rings, chains, spokes and spools in many sizes and shapes. Minnie Pearl step aside. Your dowdy image is in for some stiff and steely competition.
Doesn’t anyone else find this depressing? I thought diamonds were a girl’s best friend. Turns out that all along those blokes who worked themselves into a lather mortgaging their sweat for that matrimonial rock, could have saved a great deal of trouble. All they needed to do for their true love was trot down to True Value and buy their baubles by the pound.
However, the big surprise comes much later. Get ready all you little tykes. When your grandma loses her last little bit of private health insurance and slips off to those faux pearly gates, your inheritance is going to be one large screw.
