Express mannequins are blind

If you don't know by now, I'm back in State College working at the lovely Pretzel Gourmet again this summer. For all you skeptics out there, there are good reasons for doing so, which are as follows:

1. More hours
2. More money
3. A feeling that my work-to-compensation ratio is better than at Hoss's
4. Assistant Manager (granted, only a title change...)
5. Less stressful

Now I know people who know me well will look at that list and not think that I would go back to such a place for those reasons, especially for more money, but let me rationalize a bit. It's only for times I'm off of school and there really aren't ways of acquiring teaching internships (especially since all teachers are required to be interns of a sort in order to graduate). Thus, the best thing I can do is earn as much money as I can. Now don't take this to mean that I should start acquiring money illegally, but in a way, unless your summer job is going to help you get a better job in the future (whatever a "better job" is), summer jobs are for money and keeping you from being bored. Unfortunately for me, the Pretzel Gourmet only accomplishes the former.
Bringing me to my thoughts of the day while sitting in the Pretzel Gourmet:

I love seeing the elderly. If you've been here before, you've no doubt read my mini-essay on the elderly. Well, here's another reason I love the elderly: elderly couples are adorable! I realize that it's not the most manly or culturally acceptable thing to say, but they are! Look at them next time you get the chance. I've worked at the Pretzel Gourmet for about three years and only this week have I ever really seen elderly couples as cute. But seriously, they are incredibly encouraging to me in that it shows that marriages do work; that no matter how hard society attempts to redefine the marriage and change the roles of husband and wife and destroy the family and community, love still prevails. But, of course, we knew that all along (cf. 1 Corinthians 3).

I hate Express. First of all, the place is as intimidating as Victoria's Secret, Hot Topic, the makeup counter at Bon-Ton and the DEB; I just can't do it. I get near the place and feel like I'm getting dizzy. It's too white, and big, and bright, and it has the most ridiculous music. That said, I want to discuss their mannequins. I'm not talking about what they're wearing (that's for another day). What I want to discuss is the design of their heads. Sure, who looks at the heads. Well, when you're stuck at a failing pretzel business 40-hours a week, you start to become very accustomed to your surroundings. Regardless, they're half-heads; that is, they end at the bridge of the nose and leave off the eyes and brain. I thought about why they would do that, but then I laughed at how truly simple their reasoning is. Express wants you to buy their clothes whether you like them or not, right? So they rely on advertizing to help "convince" you that their product is best. Not the best argument, but hang with me. So if the store wants you to buy their stuff and doesn't care what reasoning you go through as long as you buy stuff from them, their best tactic will be to get you to make an irrational decision. Disagree? Look at the mannequins at any store. They're all "perfect" people. And then look at how they present them under stylish lighting and hung in fancy ways next to other things that would look good with it. It's all very charming and clearly an attempt to convince you to buy something. Also, listen to the music at any big fashion place: it's loud, uptempo, and repetitive. Don't think that gets your heartrate going? Ever feel like you're always in a rush in a clothing store? At last you see where I'm going. Express doesn't want you to have eyes or a brain (figuratively, of course). They want you to make blind, irrational judgments to turn a fat profit. It's that simple. I really can't explain it any better.

That's all for now. I need to make these shorter if I want to update more regularly. Feel free to comment.

A Call For Beasts To Teach Men

I’m back! Now I didn’t see any comments in the box from my last post, but I am just assuming that people are too shy to post or they were too paralyzed by my hilarity to mechanically type a comment onto the screen. I prefer the latter, but if the former is the case, I so encourage you to leave something just so I know you visited. If I am merely talking to myself, then perhaps it was worth it.

I worked a few days at Pretzel Gourmet, went to dinner and a movie with Roland and Erica, and got to talk to a few people from Grove City in the past week. Other than that, I’m doing some reading at the moment. I’m in the middle of three books, which seems like a daunting task (okay it is), but I’m managing quite well. Since they’re all nonfiction books, it makes things a bit easier. The first book I started is by my favorite author, G.K. Chesterton, entitled The Everlasting Man. Most Chesterton fans argue that it is his greatest apologetic, so I figured I’d give it a shot. The second book is by my second favorite author and philosophic mentor, Wendell Berry, called Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community. The title sums up the book. Before you write it off (pun certainly intended) as a boring book, it really brings up a lot of good points (so far) about America’s educational and economic systems. If you want to read an absolutely thrilling piece from the book, click here and tell me what you think.

I had a lot of time at the store today to write, and I wrote a lot more than I anticipated I would. I’ve decided to post what I wrote here. If these were meant to be true essays, I would have polished them more than I had; therefore, I intend the following to be more of a discussion spark than a definitive point on an issue. It is open to criticism, but this is something that was just floating in my mind today.

A Call For Beasts To Teach Men

It’s a shame how people write off the old. They are not the waste of space the country makes them out to be. They only seem that way because we make them like so. When someone hits age 60, the only jobs we offer them are small-scale janitorial work or greeters at Wal-Mart. We hide them from the places they really ought to be: the public.

Why? They simply have more wisdom and knowledge than we do; and in our turbulent times, we could certainly use their assistance. Despite man’s cry that that was their generation and this is ours, man is still man and there are many things our elderly population knows that touch on the foundational aspects of mankind. They worship the same God, struggle with the same earthly sins, have fought for their beliefs (something less common today), know what it means to work for a living and a life, manage a household, love a wife, children and land, and have learned the importance of being thrifty and perhaps even frugal, especially in turbulent times.

No dishwasher, television, Internet connection, XBOX 360, Hummer, birth control pill, pleasure-increasing condom, cyclone vacuum or robot has changed man’s essential responsibilities. Technology and time have not changed man, but merely culture. Man will always have to love. Man will always have to fight for what he deems right. Man will always, as it always has, fall short of the glory of God. Man will always live on land, whether rural or urban, no matter how many feet in the air. Man will always have a finite sum of money. If one denies any of these, he is not a man and truly the one that is a waste of space; for he might as well be the beast, living purely for self and always consuming, and locked up on a cage.

This is what we have done to our old people. We have dubbed them beasts and claimed that they ought to be in cages (“homes”) because all they do is consume. We have trampled upon the responsibilities of man in our culture today in favor of pleasure, money, and ceaseless, bitter competition. We live for our selfish desires and deny humanity’s responsibilities. We have locked up the true men to let the beasts run wild.

This is not to say that the entire elderly population is righteous and the rest of us condemned as fulfilling our role as humans, but our view of the elderly as a hindrance on society and the youth as the truly wise shines a bright light upon our culture. The youth have not experienced what our elderly have; it’s time we reverse our current presupposition and have the former learn from the latter.

Our youth need to learn what it means to live a responsible life, and who better that those who have spent their lives living it (or not living it and dealing with the consequences) to teach them. It’s time we let the “beasts” out of their cages. The elderly ought not to be secluded from mainstream society or reduced to a lower class. They may no longer contribute to the economy (or, for some, the Economy), but what they possess collectively is something far more valuable: wisdom and a history of lives, however they lived them.

Release them. Let them visit schools. Allow them to be active in parks, malls and markets. Moreover, listen to them; they have plenty to talk about. They know more about what it takes to tame the true beast: us.

A Thought On Wal-Mart

For a store that has “everything,” Wal-Mart lacks the canon, books that have wrestled with the human condition and have stood the test of time. Rather, they sell what will make them the most money: bestsellers and romance novels.

Fools and Whores and Sad Highs

The band Augustana is more accurate that they perhaps envisioned when they penned, “We’re nothing more than fools and whores and sad highs. We’re living in a wasteland.”

Against Bratz

Walking down the aisles of the toy section of a department store, I discovered a lot about our present culture. The girls’ play doll section struck me in particular. Now enough has been said about Barbie regarding the near impossibility of a human female having her body proportions and how she has become increasingly immodest over the years. While Barbie has endured her share of attacks, it was a new breed of doll that most disturbed me.

The line of dolls, Bratz, is larger and thicker than its archetypal thin counterpart. Bratz are mostly dark-haired and have fuller lips than the blonde, thin-lipped Barbie. But what makes a Brat a Bratz is its attire, or the lack thereof. Every miniature Angelina Jolie look-alike wears clothes one would expect to see in a red light district. From short skirts to halter tops to leather high-healed boots, Bratz pack the attitude of a whore on her way to a night’s work.

Bratz even come in baby edition! They are scaled up in size so its human playmate can cuddle with her easier, but they still wear the same sleazy itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka-dot bikini as its elder sisters. Bratz are plastic prostitutes sold to children.

So what’s the big deal? Children aspire to become like their playthings. Boys who go into with GI Joe wish that they will someday become a war hero. Girls who play with horses hope that some day they will be as magnificent as the animal they hold. Girls that play with Bratz cannot put them in roles as housewives, teachers, business leaders or politicians. Bratz are bad; they make their own rules and morals, defy parents and live in the moment. Bratz are whores and girls who spend leisure time with these dolls can do nothing but pretend to be a whore and immoral like they.

If the unknowing girl fails to recognize the doll as unacceptable, she will assume her attire (and suggested implications of that attire) is acceptable. Unless an adult tells her that Bratz are prostitutes, they girl will see nothing wrong with promiscuousness.

Do we really want to glorify prostitution to our children? What makes the Bratz so appealing in the first place? Is it because they are more lifelike? I doubt it. Most girls will not achieve the beauty of Angelina Jolie. It is either because they are not Barbie, or because of their dress. They are “trendier,” thus more provocative.

It appears as if the pattern of wearing this “trendier” style is now starting increasingly younger. Girls in high school exhibit fashion that only the most daring college students would wear. Middle school-aged girls, instead of going with friends to a movie, take trips to Victoria’s Secret. The world places such a high standing to beauty that it has started to have damaging effects. School-aged girls should not be concerning themselves this early with how they look compared to other girls. It inevitably turns into a competition to discover who can dress most like the scantily-clad models on European runways and Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs.

The Bratz attitude has got to go. Immodest dress is not acceptable and can only lead to trouble, especially for younger girls. If you’re ever considering buying your daughter a Bratz doll, don’t. Instead, buy her a good book and spend time together reading it in the evenings. You, instead of a prostitute, will then be her role model.