Each
morning, I go to outside garden to conduct daily price changes and validate the
occasional bay, and each day, I walk past the exotic plant stand lined with a
variety of cacti, aloe vera, and other desert plants. Usually, I don't pay them
much attention. Cacti have never really dazzled me in terms of beauty. Strange
and practical, yes. Usually it's the tulips that attract me this time of the
year. Last week, when I walked by, there was a small flower top lying on the
floor next to the cacti. Upon closer inspection, I realized that it was
actually fake and had been spray-painted and hot glued to the tops. Unbeknownst
to me, the plant vendors from Pure Beauty conduct this ritual to encourage
customers to purchase them. They feel that if customers see an element of
beauty, such as a flower, then they will be more inclined to purchase the plant.
I don’t understand the need for fake beauty when the plants produce their own
flowers as time goes on. Perhaps it merely reinforces this obsession to keep
things pretty and in place, no matter how fake. Much like the stars seen on the
cover of Starz magazine in the checkout line at Kroger. People like fake. It’s
comfortable and something to aspire towards.
Interesting. Keep going. I like that you played with reflection a bit.
ReplyDeleteBut I don't quite understand--so there's a plant and a fake flower was glued to it by the company? Do people actually buy something that has a flower glued to it? Work a bit more at explaining this department. It'll be a challenge, because you'll have to stay away from anticipated descriptions of natural beauty. You've already started to move away from that by focusing on the cactus first, which isn't exactly the poster child of the pastoral. Similarly, use your unique language and knowledge of that Home Depot department--the prices, the particular layout, what you did to the tulips (or whatever) that morning. The flashy signs or how they manipulate their customers into buying things--maybe they put the gloves beside certain flowers, etc.
Eventually, you'll get to this discourse of buying "fake." For now, flesh out the scene. It's a good avenue to explore, and I think when we have more of it, we'll be able to help you make the transition from description to reflection without it seeming like a blatant rant against magazines like Star.
Now the question is: how do you expand on this? I think it’s a very interesting oddity you’ve picked. Why do we insist on fake flowers at the very time of year that flowers grow in abundance? I wonder, too, if there’s anything to be said about the speaker who doesn’t care for “exotic” plants—how exotic are cacti, really, when they can come from our own country?
ReplyDeleteI think the trick, here, is to segue into something larger with the flower commentary. There’s definitely something to be said about the market here, and I think you could draw on your background as a retail employee to weave in your own knowledge-base. Heck, what’s it like working in a hardware store with a flower section? Also, what would help is looking back to the exercise we did in class: what value could you find in fake flowers or cacti? In fact, do they have something in common? It could be an interesting linking device.