Anti-consumerism: Part 2

The thrill of something shiny, the new car smell, the crisp clean pages of a new book, lusted after purses in your hand and sparkling new jewels around your neck. There is something about buying, spending, having that feuls an invisible need within us. As Marilyn Monroe once said, "Where's a man that can ease the heart like a satin gown?" illustrates that even she filled those voids with spending.

So it doesn't surprise me that we are a consumer-driven society- we like new toys! They bring new possibilities, visions of the person we would like to be, a stepping stone towards the life we think we want. But where do we get this idea from? How do we get these visions of these lives? Media, of course!

Don't get caught in their trap.

There is a marketing ploy named the "Rule of Three" that says it takes a person seeing something, or hearing it three times in different venues to create a want for said thing or idea. So if you subscribe to three different magazines and they all say purple is the color of the season or show splash pages of purple items, when you go shopping, you will find yourself drawn to purple, and quite possibly will think it is your own desire for purple, because you are "really feeling" that color right now.


So it makes you wonder, how much of our own taste or likes are really our own?
See if you can abstain from media for a while, and watch and see what happens to your spending habits. You most likely won't even realize all the things you usually "need".

I continue my buy-nothing month, but I must admit it is quite difficult at times. Even though I'm not looking at magazines, I mostly find myself wanting to buy fabrics and craft supplies to create things. At least I feel this is a more noble greed than the usual purses, shoes and clothes I lust after.

Love and lustlessness,
Kerry, the Momster