I, Consumer

The busy girl buys beauty
The pretty girl buys style
And the simple girl buys
What she`s told to buy
And sees her world
Through the brightly lit eyes
Of the glossy romance of fashion
Where she can learn...
Top tips for the gas cook
Successful secrets of a sexual kind
The daily drill for beautiful hair
And the truth about pain

What was Anna Ford wearing?
What did Angela Rippon say?
What will you do
When you wake up one morning
To find that God`s made you plain
In a beautiful person`s world?
And all those quick recipes
Have let you down
And you`re 20½ and not yet engaged
Will you go look for the boy who says
I love you let`s get married and have kids

The busy girl buys beauty
The pretty girl buys style
And the simple girl buys
What she`s told to buy
Through the brightly lit eyes
Of the glossy romance of fashion
Where she can learn...
Top tips for the gas cook
Successful secrets of a sexual kind
The daily drill for beautiful hair
In a mail order paradise...


Billy Bragg

#117 by arjun2

Hey .. thanks for the unexpected honour of not attacking Paks/Jehadis in this post ... how come? If you`ve turned a new leaf then perhaps we can have a conversation about consumerism ... otherwise it will end up in the same name calling.

#116 by zeemax on January 8, 2007 5:33am PT


consumerism PROVIDED the basic necessities of survival with dignity have been provided to all and sundry,


That`s a failed approach...consumerism boosts the economy and that is what makes it possible for the most vulnerable sections of society to get their basic needs...roti kapda aur makan...somebody had to make that bottle of shampoo...and that somebody probably needed bricks laid...which created opportunity for a bricklayer somewhere...

Author,

Thus ads set standards for things like success, beauty and other stuff. Now more than ever, people consider success to be a post paid connection and glamour to be locked into a bottle of shampoo.

Very well said. This is the crux of the matter and deepens the social divide between the haves and the have nots.

There`s nothing wrong with consumerism PROVIDED the basic necessities of survival with dignity have been provided to all and sundry, alongwith equal opportunity to aspire to attain further goodies. It is all a matter of use of resources. You can make capital goods first to generate further capital, or consumer goods to be consumed and add to the garbage heap. After all, how many brands of soap does one need? The aim is just to wash one`s stupid mug.

In short, consumerism is good for the fully developed countries with saturated capital industries, who need constant product differentiation and built-in obsolescence to create further demand, but poison for us folks who import paper clips from China.

Thanks for the article. I was too busy with Saddam (R.I.P) to read it earlier !

Beautiful, white skin people are used to makeover a theme that our population is immune to believe. This skin color issue is as much expansive as of the industrial tactics of advertisments is concerned in a global way.
The more concerned thing is that our industry is only a producer of cosmetic soaps, some creams and mouthwashs and toothpastes. We have no concerns in the health industry to have easily available medicines of chronic diseases. There are 1001 brands of soap that are claiming to remove the germs and safeguarding against diseases. I am sure teh old lifebouy can still serve the purpose if all the medicated soaps and their slogans go away. A cold cream with one brand name can smoothen skins. The whole psychy of dark people is played in the region where people are not aware that if they get sick they wont get medicine easily. This Eid there was an acute shortage of many medicines in the drug stores that are life savers and gives relief to the infected diseases that are viral in this season. But we know ``Shan Masala`` can cook everything that we think in mind. All these cosmetic havoc is just drifting our nation from major problems that needs to be engineered and taken care of.
We majority of us have no idea what to do if a product fails our satisfaction. Can we speak for our consumer rights in courts.
What are they giving us in the form of milk. Which active ingredient is letting a milk a perished entity to survive more than months unspoiled. However only tetra packaging doesnt do miracle. Are our kids taking poison. And the milk brands are increasing as our buffaloes are increasing every length of day. Of an estimate there are not enough cattles to give milk for Karachi itself. Nor there is enough fodder. Then how milk is flowing like in heaven. Why these multimillionare companies not argued by the nation. There is scarcity of pure milk in evey town of Pakistan then how these mills are making milk in first instance.

Advertisments targeting comes in second phase. We are not in any position to crrirtize a product from becoming a part of our surrounding. The companies will keep healing us with mouth watering creams and our tears by rose petal tissues. We will have a handsome pack of milk thinking it a best dairy product and will slowly converge to the absolute diseases of cancers, but thats already late. Our doctors are selling them for soap ads, cream ads as if there is no tomorrow for them.

sobia: on #112, just to clarify: i didnt mean to #112 the way it reads - hamidm and stuka are in fact two of the smartest and most decent people on chowk.

This is crazy. Hamidm has a hell of an inferiority complex. Skin colour has nothing to do with attractiveness ... rather it is the grace, poise, bone structure, carriage, personality,and so forth which is attractive to either sex. Now if Hamidm was to argue that all these characteristics are more to be found in the white races than any other, I would accept that as a genuine argument being based on limited personal experience. However, I would tell him (from anecdotal evidence, I hasten to add) that Ethiopian hookers in Dubai charge about three times as much as the Italians, and about ten times as much as white Russians, precisely for the qualities mentioned above.

Anyway ... let him continue with misinterpreting Tazuk-e-Baburi and Ghalib`s references to siah `o` sufaid.

#107 sobia: please dont generalize about desi men. all of us are not as stupid as we look. :-)

aslam #109: true. that is why in #110 i am inviting the hamidm and stuka to behold on the left side of the decimal, not on the right. :-)

stuka/hamidm: you are arguing on the right side of the decimal when you measure beauty with skin color. i am trying to direct your attention to the left side of the decimal by saying that good health, hygiene, character, personality, manners, intellect, physique and even mystique (i.e. where advertizing comes in) are far more important factors.

Thus: to take stuka`s example, the fact is that europe has been way ahead of africa and asia the past few centuries, and this is reflected in the overall character, health, intellect and so on. europeans have the reflected glory of a highly successful civilization, while nigerians do not. italians have the image of living la dolce vita (the sweet life), while nigerians are infamous across africa (and now around the world thanks to their sending emails claiming to have millions of dollars they wish to put in your bank account) as being crooks. is thisaccurate? of course not. italians had the mafia, while nigerians had the nobel prize winner wole soyinka.

the makers of lux beauty soap dont want you to know this. i am liberating you from the tyranny of the advertisers by inviting you to focus on the left side of the decimal.

tahmed
all i can say on on this subject of skin colour is; beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.

Re:sobia#107

[..i never knew till i read these posts how many complexes desi men have about their skin colour. sad...]

Really? So prior to reading this article on chowk, you had no idea about desi obsessions with the fair skin? Heck not just desis, even ABCDs know this and practice it to the fullest in terms of their dating habits. So give me a break!!

i never knew till i read these posts how many complexes desi men have about their skin colour. sad.

``Then why are pakis attracted to goats?``

arjun,

for the same reason you`re attracted to pakis, you want to tie us to a tree, slice our necks, and savor our biryani, you just cant cuz it`s illegal, so let us have our goats and you can fantasize.

{``Ads promote and shape certain values. Fair&Lovely has been forever promoting the concept that only fair skin women have the best in life. ``}

Farheen,
Good article and you have made your point well. Despite what we Muslims, especially those from India and Pakistan, there is definitely a bias, even in Muslim rags, about the preference for fair skin. Just consider the matrimonials, where it is often stated:

``Proud Punjabi parents, settled in US since Civil War, seeking suitable match for tall, beautiful, and very fair 43 year old innocently divorced girl, no issue, looking for tall, handsome, and very fair Punjabi male doctor, never married, practising in the US, with own practice and solid Muslim values.``

#84 {``Are pathans men stupid that they let go of their superior genes and blue eyes and white skins to marry plain brown eyed, dark skinned panjabi women?``}


No one has even accused Pathans of being brilliant. Even much wiser men, e.g. Sardarjis, have been duped in Hira Mandi.