The Reasonably Prudent Law Student

Obscenely rich women are, generally speaking, ridiculous. It’s like the more money you get, the bigger a waste of skin you become. Gwyneth Paltrow is showing us just how ridiculous she can be, when she tells us in her newest Goopy Goop Goop newsletter that we should buy our children designer clothes that are not yet ‘ubiquitous.’ Oh, cram it, Gwynnie.

You can read her newsletter here, although I don’t know why you’d want to. I only check in on Goopie Gwyneth so I can mock her ridiculous fashion advice that proves beyond a reasonable doubt (or was the standard, by preponderance of the evidence?) how completely inane and irrelevant she is.

To clarify, I am also inane. At least, on this blog. I don’t know, if you want to read me being intelligent for a change, read my Twitter feed when an Arab country is on fire, or skim my book journal that I recently started doing online instead of in notebooks. But here? On this blog? I am completely, butt-paralyzingly inane. Because I have to be all serious and dignified in real life, and here I get to swear and make crude jokes and squee about shoes. But the difference is, I know I’m inane. I declare myself to be inane. I don’t pretend that I need you guys to take me super seriously here all the time, or even most of the time. Even *I* don’t take myself super seriously.

Anyway, I’ll quote the pertinent part of Goopy’s post.

This week we showcase some beautifully made, very original lines of children’s clothing that we have recently discovered and are adoring. Mostly started by mothers, these companies are producing very unique, very cool, and not yet ubiquitous things for the little ones in your life.

Yeah. “Very original lines of children’s clothing” — i.e., designer clothes that cost more than my first car. And my first car wasn’t shabby – it was a 1986 Mercedes Benz 560 SEL. Or was it 650? Whatever the biggest one was. I don’t know, I’m kind of dyslexic when it comes to car models – I jumble them all up and then people think I’m insane. I’m not insane. My mother had me tested. It’s just that I don’t know anything about cars except that ever since they started making Benzos in the US, the quality (and safety) went way down.

Sigh. I miss that car. It was the best car. I was half convinced that it was sekritly alive. Like a pet. It was a freaking tank, also. I’m amazed I could see over the wheel, but God, I loved that car. I parallel parked it in downtown Chicago! :D This means I’m awesome.

Anyway. Designer children’s clothing. That is not yet “ubiquitous.” As in, every little brat at your kid’s posh private school probably isn’t wearing it.

This woman… just…Grrr.

I’ve already said irrelevant and ridiculous, right? Fine. I’ll try to find some new words. Where’s my thesaurus?

Don’t get me started, first, on designer clothing for kids. They don’t need it, and it teaches them a horrible lesson. Kids grow like little bean sprouts. I swear, my brother sprang up 4 inches overnight when he was 15 or 16. It was odd. None of his pants fit, because he was suddenly all legs. They STILL don’t fit, really, because he has such long legs and such a small waist, and the fact that you can see the waistband of his boxers sometimes when he wears his jeans (because, like me, he hates belts) scandalizes my mother terribly. Oh, she’s just beside herself, you guys.

Any parent can tell you how quickly kids grow out of clothes. (I am not a parent. I just talk to a lot of parents. Somehow they find me and shove pictures of their children under my nose and then I have to nod politely and make noises of wonder and amazement for half an hour, which, coincidentally, is also what Andy does on Friday and Saturday nights when he is out trying to ensnare hunnies.) Expensive designer clothes are just a huge waste in that sense. Who gives a crap about hand-stitched seams and silk thread used to embroider whatever logo or design is on the back pocket? Certainly not your kid, who is out playing in the mud and catching frogs and sticking them in those pockets with the fancy silk-thread logo/design.

Aside from that, it teaches kids a horrible lesson: the importance of branding on their person. The world will be hammering that lesson into them as they grow older; let them deal with it then, yeah? The first thing every teenage girl does when she starts working and making some money is run out and buy a Louis Vuitton bag. There will be time for that yet. But at such a young age, do we really need to make kids conscious of the fact that their clothing has a certain label that other kids’ clothing doesn’t have, and this is the basis for some ridiculous social hierarchy? They’ll figure that out when they’re older – no need to start training little douchebags in elementary school. Wait until high school or college when your kid ONLY shops at the Armani Exchange or whatever.

And more than that, the whole post is just … crass. My father has this thing where, all my life, he’s always said, children shouldn’t worry about money. When I was a kid and I really liked a toy but I tried to hide it and he asked me why, I’d say that it was probably a lot of money. And he’d say, you let me and your mom worry about that. Kids shouldn’t worry about money. Sometimes I got that expensive toy I wanted, and sometimes I didn’t. When I didn’t, I understood without them having to say anything and moved on. But I never worried about money as a kid.

And when other children made remarks about how their parents just bought them the new Barbie Range Rover or whatever the hell it was that boys were interested in those days that was pretty expensive, it always struck me as odd and out of place. Usually, I’d judge those kids that were bragging about how much money their parents spent on them. Isn’t that crazy? I would judge them. Ugh. I was such a ridiculous child. I shouldn’t have been judging anyone, of course, but I was always like, ew, when some kid would start talking about money. Even then, the idea of combining childhood and money seemed crass to me, even though I didn’t quite realize it.

Parents that delicately brag about how much money they spend on their kids’ presents still squick me out to this day. They’ll be like, oh, that sweater he’s wearing? It was $120. But it’s cashmere, and I knew he just had to have it.

Um, no. Sorry, that’s not true. Your kid doesn’t give a crap that he’s wearing a cashmere sweater as he knocks a bowl of cereal onto himself. And that LCD you got for his bedroom? Same thing. I bet he enjoyed the box it came in more than he does the television.

Beyond combining money and childhood and the crassness I’ve always found there, it just boggles my mind when people say stupid crap like that during this recession. People are losing their homes, we had to bail out the banks that we have to pay mortgages to for fear of being foreclosed on, we’re still being screwed on what we pay for health insurance but in more creative ways, college tuition prices are rising steadily as Congress cuts funds for financial aid and grants which puts higher education even further out of reach for most Americans, the price of oil is climbing, there is a global food shortage due to freak weather patterns in the US and fires in Russia and intense freezes in the UK and swarms of pests in South America, to name a few examples … and you’re telling me about the hand-stitched jeans that no one else had that you just bought for your seven year old? Really?

Seriously. Go away, Gwyneth Paltrow.

I remember during the 2008 Christmas season, when we were first starting to feel the recession, people that shopped at Hermes (couple thousand for a silk scarf! Yay! That damn scarf better be able to cure cancer, for that price) would request plain brown shopping bags instead of the store’s trademark (orange?) bags so people wouldn’t know they’d just dropped several thousand on a shopping expedition.

And yes, I do believe Hermes has trademarked its shopping bags, just like Tiffany’s has trademarked its blue packaging.

Talking about designer clothes that (1) your children will just grow out of, (2) do nothing but reinforce the bullshit ‘I am what I wear so I’m better than you’ social hierarchy mechanism, and (3) are completely and utterly out of reach for so many in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression is just insane and deserving of nothing but criticism.

And to clarify, I don’t think that just because some people aren’t as well off as others, those that are shouldn’t enjoy what they have. Just because children in Africa are starving doesn’t mean I shouldn’t eat what is on my plate. All I’m saying is that, for God’s sake, try not to be a complete asshole about it.

Yeah, I’m sure Goopy Gwynnie is crying into Apple and Moses’s one of a kind designer non-ubiquitous clothing right now because I was mean to her in this post. ;) I’m sure that’s exactly what’s happening.

Rant over for the day. Probably not. But you know.

EDIT: Everyone go read this comment by Merrilyn, because the anecdote she offers is, wait for it, RIDICULOUS.