moisturizer and diamond rings: attempts to freeze time

[caprine]

In talking with the Inimitable Arne today, I had an insight about the beauty industry and the wedding-industrial complex. Both prey upon our desire to stop the progress of time.Billions of dollars in skincare advertising persuade us that if we just spend enough money we can stay young, can stave off the inevitable and hold on to the precious glow

Comments

[dieppe]

It's a crazy relationship. They tell you that you look like shit to get you to give you your money. They use beautiful models that we could never hope to look like, and wear away at our self-esteem in order to get our money. There's a word for a relationship like this, and it isn't nice...

[caprine]

Thank you! Can you think of a website where it might belong?

[aries_jordan]

"From a Jungian perspective marriage should be, or at least could be, the vessel in which the process of individuation is accelerated, the crucible wherein the soul is refined, the process by which we let go of the irrelevant and build on what we learn to be truly important. It grinds down our sharp edges and then shows us what was under that obsidian accretion. It can both grow us up and grow us deeper."

It is. But so is just living in sin.

[whswhs]

There's a Joni Mitchell song about that, "Sweet Bird":

I lay down golden in time
And woke up vanishing

Sweet bird, you are
Briefer than a falling star
All these vain promises on beauty jars
Somewhere with your wings on time you must be laughing

But then, it's not exactly a new cultural motif. I think you could say that the ancient Egyptians were largely driven by a very similar denial of time.

[psybelle]

Damn, my younger sister needs to see this...