Holographic Lipsticks
( this is derived from a guest blog I wrote for Shaunak)
Here is something that worries me, yesterday I spotted this store next to Ozone in Aundh…its called Bonsaii or something…apprently its a lifestyle/luxury store for… hold your breath…KIDS!!!….aged between 6 n 13!!!!
I doubt if I could spell luxury correctly till I was 12 . The point I am trying to make is that I have started feeling a generation gap with kids barely six years younger than me. I think for many many reasons their lives are getting totally devoid of any imagination what so ever. I remember us as kids, when seven stones, a rubber ball and some open ground could keep us entertained for hours. When we barely had to bother with books after school hours ( I barely bothered with school books even during school hours), lessons of life were learnt over numerous rounds of hopskotch,dodgeball, tree climbing, gola eating and jumping into puddles of rain. Basically anything that made you go home with a bleeding knee/elbow, a new pet , an interesting rock or even Diarrhoea was an evening well spent…ok I pushed it with the Diarrhoea but i guess you get my point.
From another point of view, I think this is the coolest marketing gimmick ever…I am sure most of the young 12 yr old guys shopping at Bonsaii right now will grow up to be…ahem ahem …metrosexual men!!! I am quite certain all of this comes out from the same factory and is a part of a larger conspiracy thats aimed at enlarging the consumer base for cosmetics ( eg. ‘Fair and Handsome’, the hoardings for which read ” Hey Man, do you wear bangles?” ,”Then why do use a girls Fairness Cream?”. I can now visualise Sunny paji in his next flick scream out ” Maine bhi koi choodiyan nahi peheni hai, mai toh fair and handsome lagaanewalon mein hu!!”)
But the word ‘metrosexual’ was the greatest tragedy of our times, initially I never understood why such hype was created around men who were having sex in(or maybe with) trains, the ‘mile high club’ I think might just deserve some of the hype…but trains!?!??!….Hell no. I am quite sure that this trend hardly spread beyond a square kilometer area in cuffe parade and square meter areas in Andheri and Bandra, but you see, these metrosexual men were changing their haircuts/haircolors, clothes n noses so fast, and being photographed so frequently, we thought there were a lot more of them than the actual number.
Though I do believe in grooming, I have studied in an engineering college, where the concept of a deodarant ( or even a bath) hadnt quite caught on, but there needs to be a line drawn between deo and lip balm! And we need to draw this line asap before life becomes more difficult for a lot of pretty young things who will now have to compete with men when it comes to (previously women dominated domains such as) fairness, glossy lips and cleavage display.
But the word metrosexual is a little outmoded now, we now even have ubersexual men, retrosexual men and I am hoping a few heterosexual men have survived as well. Although, one very interesting question does remain unanswered, why do advertisers need such fancy new terms for only men, why dont we have any terms like “metrosexual women” so to speak?
I guess its because they dont need to be very imaginitive to convince a woman to pay an amount equal to her rent to buy a new lipstick, she might just pay double for the new L’oreal Glam Shine Holographic Lipstick ( kindly do not ask what a holographic lipstick is).