|
Under the Sun Cynthia Oi |
Show us the substance,
not the superficialWHEN A clip on CNN repeatedly looped Martha Stewart's arrival at a Manhattan courthouse on the first day of her trial last week, I noticed through my cold-medication grogginess that she was toting two handbags. No big deal, I thought. She probably had lots of stuff to carry, and being obsessively organized, needed both to keep it all marshaled.
Imagine my surprise then when news reports about the bags followed a few days later, revealing that one of them was an expensive Hermes Birkin. Starting at $6,000, a Birkin's price can skyrocket to as much as $85,000, depending on material and options, although Stewart's model was evidently lower end. If the cost alone wasn't enough to raise eyebrows, a Birkin's exclusivity was; those desiring to part with that much cash must wait more than two years to have a Birkin made.
The bag-tattle was, of course, fodder for tabloids and flash-bang television gossip shows, but even "serious" news outlets filed reports.
The Washington Post, in particular, carried an 800-plus word analysis about how the purse carried "too much baggage," the notion being that Stewart -- accused of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and securities fraud as a result of selling her stock in a company owned by a close friend before it tanked on the market -- should not flaunt her considerable wealth before the rabble of potential jurors.
Valid point. Despite the seemingly manini matter of a handbag, appearance counts.
If it didn't, no self-respecting politician in Hawaii would show up in public without draping a lei or two over their shoulders. In fact, there was a time in recent history when thick, red carnation garlands favored by reigning Democrats in the islands were dubbed the "machine lei."
George W. himself donned a brilliant scarlet tie, after two years of blues, for his State of the Union speech to signal his bid for re-election. Red, image experts say, is the color of confidence. Not that the imperial president who always knows best and has never made a mistake -- even about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- really needed any steroid pump-up in that regard.
If image isn't a consideration, no presidential contender would campaign with rolled up shirt-sleeves among blue-collar workers to import a regular-guy countenance. None would swap suit and tie for pullovers or cardigans to sweeten his style. Few would lace up for a photo op as an ice hockey jockey or a bowling-for-ballots player in New Hampshire. Even if Howard Dean isn't the angry, unrestrained man his post-Iowa rant suggested, those few minutes of bellowing to rally his dejected supporters came to overshadow months of hard work building his candidacy.
But that's the way it goes. We humans respond to what pleases our eyes. A well-dressed, attractive young man has a better chance of getting a job when up against a dweebie older guy in a rumpled aloha shirt. Image can work the other way, too. It may be that a looker is just as capable as the homely, but often beauty is judged as a mask for emptiness.
Still, there is a worship, an adoration, of appearance as witnessed by the popularity of makeover TV programs that take ordinary people and transform them into close copies of fashion models and movie stars. And not just through hair cuts and make up but through surgery where people are nipped and tucked and augmented and cut to create a new version of themselves.
Political image-creation is kind of a chicken-or-egg question: Did the voting masses surrender deliberative consider- ation before candidates began doling out less substance and more show or the other way around? I'm not sure, but I do know that many people are still hungry for red meat rather than mush. A red badge of smirking confidence is no substitute for true-blue spirit.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin since 1976. She can be reached at: coi@starbulletin.com.