I Shop, Therefore I Am?

So, fate brought me back to Jakarta last week.  Yeah, fate, business, whatever.  The important thing is, by 9 AM on Sunday morning, I’ve already landed in the capital city, breathing the fresh air of consumerism.  Lunch at Chopstix, book hunting at Kinokuniya EX, dinner at Chatterbox to finally attempting the so called midnight shopping spree at Debenhams Senayan City If you’re planning to do so, let me tell you something.  Yes, the offer is abso-fashion-lutely tempting – where else would you find a couple of Matthew Williamson blouse for under 500 – but once you look at the loooooooooooooong – I don’t think I inserted enough O’s there – queueing line, you are so gonna give up.  Anyway, it is kinda an irony to see that in one corner of the city, people are queueing for kerosene while in another corner, a group of hedonistic society was actually lining up for the Debenhams buy-one-get-one offer.

Anyway, as I was enjoying a piece of heavenly dark chocolate brownies at Secret Recipe, a quote on one of the wall at the mall caught my attention.  “Whoever said that money can’t buy happiness, simply didn’t know where to go shopping – Bo Derek.”  Never thought I would say this before, but she’s absolutely genius.  Don’t tell me you haven’t had a day where all the stress that you got at work completely vanished once you’re walking around the mall with the blue paper bags from Zara at one hand and a couple of huge shopping bags from Sogo at the other hand, maybe a little box of cakes and other delicacies from Starbucks in between.  While it is chic jeans or pretty blouse or sexy clutch that does it for us girls, it might be stylish ties, designer t-shirts, or even car accessories for you guys.  This splurging habit has become a society thing, not just a girl thing.

I can’t really answer for sure if you asked me when exactly shopping becomes both a culture and a necessity for the urban society.  Is it the gratification of consumerism itself – some might say that we’re as customers are actually being capitalized by the consumer industry – or is it the reshaping of human hierarchy of needs, we can’t really draw a line of definite explanation.  But we do live in a world where society identifies its members from the products or services they consume, as some brands serve as status-enhancer and class identity.  It’s the world of Dean and Deluca, BMW, Stuart Weitzmann, and Panerai.  I’ve read the argument that relationships with a product or brand name are substitutes for healthy human relationships lacking in dysfunctional modern societies.  I wouldn’t call our society dysfunctional, but I guess we are really experiencing a great deal of orientation in valuing human nature.  We – allow me to generalize – are continuously included in a grading system that depict – genuinely or not – the value of our existence: the gap between A-average and C-average student in college and the gap between a Starbucks-coffee-cup-holding yuppy and homemade-brewed-coffee-mug-holding average Joe.  As we were divided into classes between the smarts, the average, and the intellectually challenged in college, we then continue to be classified and divided throughout the rest of our lives, and now it’s by possession and lifestyle.  We would not have such thing as the advertising industry if it weren’t for consumerism gratification, would we?

It’s sad, really, to see that we have actually fallen into this kind of society hegemony, in which you buy things not because you need them, but because they identify who you are.  Don’t get me wrong, I still believe in style and fashion and hedonistic self-indulgence, but now I see it in a different way: do and buy things because they make you happy, not because they make people happy to see you.  Buy Manolo if it makes you feel great, but never ever buy them just to make people say: I like you because you like Manolo.  Are we really hollow and lacking of self-quality and personality that we need Manolo and Weitzmann to spell it for us?  After all, when you’re dead, your tombstone will not read: Carrie, the Manolo lover, but it will read: Carrie, the loving friend and extraordinary woman.

So in the spirit of holiday and lots of bonuses, I just would like to say: go buy, buy as many things as you want, but buy them because you like them, because you like to see yourselves in them, not to please others.  And certainly, not to identify your very own existence with the brands.

No, I’m not suffering from hypothermia when I write this … but maybe I just bumped my head with something

 

How Mac Addict Can You Possibly Be?

Apparently, really really bad.

Believe it or not, my first encounter with a computer when I was a kid was with a Mac a zillion years ago, and been using it all those years until I started working (none of my previous and current companies were using Mac, so I was forced to learn Windows and get used to it).  Due to my constant burst of ideas wherever I am and the needs to jot them down immediately, I decided to bring home a Hewlett-Packard iPaq 4350, which I really really loved for its built-in keyboard that was so easy to use and even lit in the dark.

But despite my daily affair with Windows, Mac is a long lost love that I never stop loving.  Remember the saying first love dies hard?  Well this one doesn’t even die at all.  The iPaq was pretty much limited when it comes to organizing music, so I got an iPod Nano a year ago (my next encounter with Mac after so long!), one brilliant music player that is so tiny and so simple I could stick in my pocket and listen to my choice of music all day (the 2 GB was more than enough to accomodate every single album of John Mayer, Jamie Cullum, Sting, and Seal).

Then at one foolish incident (I kept my iPaq in my handbag and evidently my contact lens cleaning solution leaked from the bottle and ruined the LCD of the PDA, damn!) I had to let go of the iPaq (the cost to fix it was almost two-third of the price itself), and I lost my ultimate, mobile media of writing!  It’s about time I move on to laptop anyway, right?

I had been using IBM Thinkpad and HP Compaq for a while (one is the property of my company, the other one was borrowed from a friend), mainly to work and to write, until a few months ago when I decided to rekindle that first love by purchasing a gorgeous white Macbook.  It’s so quick, so user-friendly, so graphically beautiful, and so compatible with Microsoft Office, I even stop using the PC at the office and choose to bring my Macbook to work!

I frequently travel for work and I don’t really enjoy all those hours spent on the plane or at the airport lounge or in the hotel room if I’m not doing anything specific.  And I was thinking, it would be really fun if I can watch my favorite episode of Friends or laugh my ass off to The Daily Show of Jon Stewart instead.  Can I say that Steve Jobs and my boss AM are two of my favorite people at the moment?  Jobs for inventing the it’s-so-beautiful-I-could-cry iPod Touch, and AM for giving me a nice surprise in my bank account this morning

See that sleek and shiny black thing on top of my Macbook?  See how the screen adjusts its position automatically as you tilt the thing?  See how it can actually adjust the brightness of the screen to the ambience of the room?  See how it connects to any available wi-fi network in a matter of second and stores the visited pages offline?  See how the resolution of monitor is thisclose to the resolution of your plasma TV?  See how easy it is to blog using this lustrous piece of technology using its touchscreen keyboard?  See how the full widescreen presentation of video and podcast is so breathtaking?  And see how its sexy black and silver colors totally match my black Zara oversized handbag?

Thank you, boss, for the best early birthday present so far

 

Red Carpet Society

Just a little over a month ago, a couple of friends of mine flew over to my city on the same day, but taking different flights.  One was slouching comfortably on the couch of the executive lounge, sipping venti caramel macchiato with a copy of Jane Austen’s Persuasion on her hand, while the other was messaging me complaining about how miserable he was being on the economy AirAsia flight, waiting in the regular lounge on hard plastic chair with no Starbucks in sight whatsoever, not to mention that the flight was being delayed until further announcement.  I couldn’t help but grinning when I listened to his story, picturing his misery in my mind as he dragges his black Samsonite, running on the shiny Prada shoes looking for the best window seat on the infamous free seating system of AirAsia.

It’s only fair – and honest – to say that my friends and I, and thousands of other people for that matter, are dedicated members of the limelight generation.  I’m sure you’ve heard of the so-called baby boomers and Generation X, but exactly is limelight?  If you are between the age of twentysomething to fortysomething, young urban professionals with steady above average income, citizens of the coffee republic with at least one designer jeans in your closet, you might as well be a part of the limelight generation without even realizing it, the generation who craves VIP treatment at all times.  With the growing numbers of new money during the dotcom era and the expanding opportunities to jump ships earning more money for today’s yuppies, who can blame them – or us for that matter?  Now is the era where you don’t have to be a Kennedy or an Onassis to have red carpets rolled in front of you.

What is amazing about this particular phenomenon is that I couldn’t quite decide which actually influences which: whether it’s the ever-accomodating consumer industry that triggers the existence of the limelight generation, or is it the other way around?  Do banks promote gold and platinum cards because more people are demanding the exclusivity and VIP treatments the cards provide, or does the existence of such cards – and witnessing previous card owner’s elevated comforts by having them – that encourage others to crave such treatment?  It’s really like trying to answer the chicken-and-egg question.

Although the sufferers of the limelight syndrome mainly center their addiction towards the beauty of the entourage they desire, I would also like to call them the Andy Warhols of consumerism, shaping the very pop culture of capitalism even as they breathe.  Why do you think Bergdorf Goodman offers the service of personal buyer, Turnbull and Asser only make tailor-made suits, and Citizens of Humanity designs many range of jeans – although in limited numbers – to flatter the feminine curves of any woman?  These institutions – and many more – are actually contributing to the epidemic syndrome of limelight.  Let’s be honest, shopping at your friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart or K-Mart will not grant you a special treatment, but the case is of course 180 degrees different once you walk into Barneys or Harrod’s.  An entourage of friendly, helpful, and polite shop attendants are ready to follow your steps and accommodate your needs in the place where customers are truly kings and queens.  Yes, you heard me right.  The very heart of consumerism lies in the limelight desire itself.  Confused?  Let me put it this way: you can’t get special treatment if you don’t consume special products, mingle with special people, and live in a special kind of way.  Talk about mingling with special people, I’m sure some of you are already familiar with the story of some wannabe socialites in Jakarta who would go the extra mile to get invited to the most happening events in town, only to spend the whole night persuading lifestyle reporters to take pictures of them, in hopes that their faces will be featured next to the cream of the crops on the society pages of Harper’s Baazar and Indonesian Tattler.  I forgot who told me this, but Louis Vuitton actually sent a letter of protest to the magazine because one of these wannabe socialites was actually wearing a fake Louis Vuitton handbag.  Talk about public humiliation.

But that’s not what I want to talk about today.  I’m being nice when I say that the wannabes 15 minutes of fame is up.  I want to talk about the limelight generation who’s really the 20 in the 80/20 Pareto principle: the 20% of society who truly controls the trends, branding, and the whole culture of consumerism for 80% of the society.  The question is, of course, how do they decide which one is trendy and which one is not?  Why Michael Kors, Matthew Williamson, and Stella McCartney are so hip while Miu Miu and Betsey Johnson are so yesterday?  Surprisingly, there’s really no answer to this question.  To those who live the trend, they really do not think of it as the trend, they just regard it as something that makes them feel unique, individual, and different.  To the limelight generation, what we call trend is really just their raison d’être – the reason of their existence.  They just wake up one morning, put on a pair of True Religion jeans, topped with Michael Kors motorcycle jacket and a pair of Jimmy Choos because that’s the style that accentuate their very existence.  If you’re familiar with Maslow’s theory of needs, this limelight generation shops for clothes and other necessities not to fulfil their primary, secondary, and tertiary needs, but really to define who they are.  Why else would they crave a Balducci sandwich for lunch and a Cristal champagne for dinner?  These new essentialist shoppers redefine consumerism as a form of self-actualization.  Without realizing it, they also define the trends to the other 80 percent of the society.  Can you imagine the circle of influence that these limelights have?  In one way or the other, the consumer industry itself has to watch out for the limelights movement because their consumption habits reflect the choices that 80 percent of the population might make.

In the end, the question that you should ask yourself would be: do I want to be a fashion victim, or do I want to be the one who defines fashion and style?  The truth is, there’s only a thin line that separates the limelights with the followers, a line that you can only cross if you can self-actualize yourself like any red carpet society would.