Discaimer: This is a work induced rant, and quite possibly just a rationalisation of my frustrations working in a yuppy baby shop.
Come into my place of employment. Push past the pink things, the £50 Ralph Lauren romper suits, the £30 Dior plastic baby bottles. Step over the high tech £85 baby carriers and wipe the baby sick from your shoe. See it? The new 'Vibe' Travel System (read Buggy). It's the very latest model by the trendiest manafacturer. It's fire apple red. Its £500. It looks like a space ship. You have to book one six months in advance. It's the perfect thing to offset the way society makes you feel now that you are pregnant: ugly and useless, because it oozes the opposite. It says beauty and praticality.
You are now wittnessing one of the most wearying and jaded manifestations of consumerism. The vulnerability experienced by pregnant women, the lack of support they recieve, thier bordem and isolation is exploited to the extreme by the rapidly swelling designer baby products industry (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/main.jhtml?xml=/education/2008/03/15/fababyconcie.xml.) As with all consumption of goods, we are taught that we can buy our way out of our anxieties, and the wheels of the economy don't go rusty. I write this because, aside from the fact that I have to face this appallingness on a daily basis, I do think that focusing in on this particular industry is useful in realising how consumer culture works primarily by exploiting insecurity.
Moreover, a lot of first time parents are fairly clueless about how to proceed, and seem to lack a direct and accessible source of advice and support. Here, baby shops step gleefully into the breach - one person's emotional needs are another person's financial opportunities.
If I can address new parents directly: If you've just given birth, well done. If you come into my shop, or any 'top end of the market' baby shop you're pretty silly. If you buy something, you're an idiot. If you were the people who came in yesterday and bought an £800 designer pushchair made entirely of leather, you WILL be the first against the wall when the reveloution comes.
