What??
You don't have $6,000 granite counter tops in your kitchen!
Your "updated" bathroom is not a $10,000 a week spa?
Your floors are not "floating Brazilian hardwood"
Your floor plan is not "open"?
Your decor is "so 80's" (or, heaven fore fend, 70's!!)?
Then I invite you to join the latest slick infomercial scam and check out television's taste shaping web site, based on an entire channel devoted to marketing expensive stuff that you really don't need.
You can turn on the TV any time of day and see young women hauling polluted water to make infant formula. You can see dung fires being tended to heat a meger meal for a family of 11. There will be no trace of refrigeration, no stainless steel ovens or dishwashers, and no travertine marble being installed on tent floors. The great majority of the world lives with basic inventive tools to prepare meals and practice hygiene.
But, turn on HGTV and the greatest excesses of American consumerism are paraded for your fantasies. And a strong message is sent that any failure to embrase the products foisted on the hapless is a total failure of taste, marketing sense, and style.
And marketing is all that is being offered!!
A series of half and one hours "stories" have been developed to introduce high-end products and make them seem indespensible to your daily life.
The first, and perhaps most powerful tool is framed as indespensible to selling an existing house. An "expert" comes in and destroys your pride in your home with demands that it be gutted and fitted with all new products. The shopping, purchase, and delivery of these items features name brands that are presented as critical.
The second technique involves a very young, and inexperienced couple, or single person, trying to buy a house. Their inane comments about "loving the hardwood floors", or hating the PAINT COLOR, are featured as cautionary tales, urging you to conform to the latest style trends, if you want to sell. It also suggests that you should be sure to pack your stupidity when you go house hunting - the world will do hand-stands to meet your purile demands.
The third technique involves bringing in an expensive designer to completely re-vamp your self-described pathetic life style by creating georgeous rooms for between $50,000 and $100,000 bucks, apiece. They leave you with "adult spaces", luxurious fabrics, balance and flow in furniture arrangements, and it only takes a crew of 15 to 20 people to do it! It also usually involves picking up the toys and detrius that accumulate in the average home, and creating a "showroom" atmosphere that most people could not inhabit comfortably.
There is a story line, pathos, heart stopping suspense, excitement, and a great deal of squealing involved.
It's all great fun. You can actually learn a bit. And it is a profoundly sophisticated marketing tool that makes the old late night infomercials...so 70's.
Beware. Marketers are getting ever better at convincing you that you can not live without their new, improved, and very expensive products. We have moved far beyond product placement. Your failue to buy the message marks you as old hat, old fashioned, out of touch, and just plain cheesy.
What if we fight back?
If your stove is clean, and works, if your refrigerator is reasonably energy efficient and chills your food and beverages, if your counter tops can be cleaned and your floors mopped, consider how far ahead of most of the world you are. Don't get suckered into thinking that if you don't "upgrade" to budget busting levels you are a total failure.
Sit back, enjoy the programming, as I do, giggle at the foolishness, join in with the derision, but never forget that an entire channel has been created to sell you expensive things that you don't need. All under the guise of imparting new knowledge and teaching you style. Remember, in another 10 years your upgrade will be dismissed as "so '00", and you'll just have to do it all over again... <g>
By the way, if you don't think this is political, you have not been paying attention!