According to an article in today’s Washington Post, Amazon wants to change all that, at least, if you’re buying your gifts from Amazon:

Amazon is working on a solution that could revolutionize digital gift buying. The online retailer has quietly patented a way for people to return gifts before they receive them, and the patent documents even mention poor Aunt Mildred. Amazon’s innovation, not ready for this Christmas season, includes an option to “Convert all gifts from Aunt Mildred,” the patent says. “For example, the user may specify such a rule because the user believes that this potential sender has different tastes than the user.” In other words, the consumer could keep an online list of lousy gift-givers whose choices would be vetted before anything ships.

As someone who dreads gift-giving season, I think this sounds like a great idea. I live in a New York City apartment that requires keeping stuff-levels well under control, so gifts often create a clutter headache. Fortunately, half of my family has mostly given up on giving stuff and makes donations to each other’s pet charities. On the other side of my family, the main gift giver has for years been struggling with the depression and encroaching dementia, and her foggy thinking means that 20-something family members get oddly age-inappropriate things like toy helicopters, while others receive the exact same gifts year after year (I have donated multiple identical sweater sets, robes and pajamas to the Salvation Army). Obviously, the only correct response to is to smile and say thank you. But then you have to figure out what to do with the stuff.

But what if you didn’t have to? What if you could discreetly swap out the hideous XL reindeer turtleneck or ensure that you wouldn’t get duplicate toaster ovens? Tempting, right? But is it selfish and inconsiderate? Some people think so:

Amazon’s idea has raised the ire of the Miss Manners crowd, which thinks the scheme rather uncouth. After all, receiving an e-mail notification of a forthcoming gift – and thereby being able to check its price – is hardly the same as unwrapping the item at home.

Anna Post, great-great-granddaughter of the late etiquette author Emily Post and spokeswoman for the Emily Post Institute, said she hopes the company realizes it is risking major backlash and abandons the idea. Because of Amazon’s dominance online, she and others say they fear the idea could spread throughout the e-retailing industry, which this holiday season racked up $28 billion in gift purchases.

“This idea totally misses the spirit of gift giving,” Post said. “The point of gift giving is to allow someone else to go through that action of buying something for us. Otherwise, giving a gift just becomes another one of the world’s transactions.”

I think Post doesn’t quite get it—this innovation wouldn’t prevent someone from going through the action of buying something for us. It would just ensure that they buy us something that we like, rather than something that they think is right for us.  Nor does this make gift-giving transactional in the sense of “I give you something so that I can get something.” It’s still a gift, after all.

I do think there’s something to be said for teaching people that “it’s the thought that counts.” You can’t always get what you want. Learning to smile and be polite when disappointed by a lousy but well-intentioned gift is a valuable learning experience; it teaches you to prioritize other people’s kindness over your own gratification. But personally, I wouldn’t be offended if someone wanted to use that Amazon program to make sure I got them something they actually wanted and liked. In fact, it would save me a lot of trouble.

So…is the end of gift-giving as we know it? A brilliant innovation? Another reason to shun Amazon?  Discuss. Feel free to share your worst gift stories and vote in the Post‘s “Tacky or Terrific?” poll.

A little bit of 19th century misogyny for ya. Thanks, Charles Allen Gilbert!

Last week, we discussed the things that we would spend our last dimes on, and although there was a bit of thread drift simply toward things y’all wouldn’t give up, there were a couple of mentions of personal grooming products and such, prompting this week’s topic.  Lip balm, particularly, was a necessity for many.  I hear that, and I refer you to this resource in case your habit has become unsustainable.

So, because it’s Friday, and a long weekend for USAmericans, and because I’m kind of burnt out (and yet still have a lot of goals for the day) I’m just gonna run with the shallow awesomeness that is a vanity thread.

Now, by “vanity” I mean neither a judgey “ohhhh you think you’re all that?”  nor a glassy, panting, “OMG WHAT’S THE MOST OUTRAGEOUS THING YOU DO OR BUY??? SQUEEEEEEEEE!!! GIMME GIMME GIMME!!!”

I’m pretty low maintenance, and working on dialing it down further.  I’m strictly a drug- and discount-store kinda dame, and I try to limit the number of products I use as well as the packaging they come in.  I wash my face with honey, occasionally scrub it with baking soda, use olive oil-based bars of soap (Dr. Bronner’s or Kiss My Face), rinse my hair with apple cider vinegar instead of using conditioner (srsly, it totally works!) and use jojoba oil and shea butter for lotion/moisturizer.  Basically: if I can eat it, I’ll put it on my body.

But I do have my less-edible preferences and particularities.  J. R. Liggett’s shampoo bars are the best thing in the world, and I don’t go a day without using my tweezers.  LOVE.  TWEEZERS.  Love the word “tweezers.”  I am vain about my eyebrows.  If I’m going to work or out to fancytown, concealer (don’t care, whatever is cheap) is de rigueur, since I was born looking like someone just punched me in the nose:  huge dark circles, always.  Rested or not, healthy or not.  I am vain about not looking like an ancient, exhausted raccoon. And mascara I like, plain old green-and-pink Great Lash.  I’ve tried other kinds, and I always go back.  And, almost forgot:  a retinoid cream that my derm gave me after my BCP caused some melasma (so pritty!).

So for today’s FFT I just wanna know 1) what you’re vain about, 2) where you spend your vanity dollars.  Go ahead and name products if you like, but since I don’t wanna turn this thread into a commercial bonanza for corporations who really don’t have our best interests at heart, or spend all day approving comments in the mod queue, please don’t link anything.  We’ve all got google-fu.

Go nuts, you beautiful creatures.

Via londoninflames @ Flickr

Welcome to Harpy Seminar, a regular feature we plan to have at regular intervals, unless we get too busy to have it at regular intervals, in which case it shall appear whenever we have time and inclination for it. Each Seminar begins with a question, which we discuss amongst ourselves, and we then edit the highlights of our conversation into a post. Please feel free to join in in the comments!

I had intended to do my own thorough dashing of Charlotte Raven’s soi-disant book review at the Guardian, but it was just too wrong and fucked up.  So, I sent the link around, and the other Harpies helped me sort it.  It’s still wrong and fucked up, but at least we’ve sifted the wheat from the chaff.

PhDork: Okey-doke. So I’m all “whaaa?” about this article, and I think it’s due to Raven’s all-over-the-map writing (although it could be Spring Brain).

The thing is, she does have some good points:

• Self-consciousness is a hallmark of the current age
• Women and girls are getting horrible conflicting messages in mass culture about how to succeed as women
• A consumer mentality is detrimental to a political one

But those legitimate views are all scrambled up with screwy generalizations, like “Thinking women have turned their backs on feminism” and even more problematic ideas like women are just weak and simple, unable to resist the siren song of Sephora (or whatever), and therefore responsible for Katie Price tarting up her toddler.

BeckySharper: She really lost me with her “Thinking women have turned their backs on feminism” and her constant use of a monolithic “we”: “We simply couldn’t be bothered to be political. If we could prove there was no need for it, that would leave more time for deciding between fabulous face creams.”

O RLY? Speak for yourself, sister.

PhDork: What, you got a mouse in your purse?  Also: is there such a thing as “the new feminism”? Is this a “wave” I haven’t heard about?

SarahMC: Babies wearing fake eyelashes and women trading in books for stripper instruction videos is not the new feminism. It’s the old consumerism masquerading as the new feminism. It’s obnoxious when people who should know better perpetuate the myth that anyone who yells “Girl power!” is a deluded feminist when in reality s/he is probably just a savvy capitalist.

PhDork: That’s what it is. She should know better. Why is she laying all this blame at the feet of feminists (or good lard, Madonna), rather than looking at how fucked up the larger culture is, and pointing a finger at it, for purposefully trying to undermine women at every turn?

BeckySharper: It’s indicative of a larger belief that feminists are supposed to be the custodians of all Womanity. She seems to believe that when women co-opt harmful Patriarchial bullshit, it’s because feminists aren’t cock-blocking the Patriarchy hard enough. No blame is being placed on the Patriarchy! Or the media! Or advertising! Or politics! Just feminism! Instead of pointing the finger at the underminers, she’s just going to do a little undermining herself.

PilgrimSoul: I actually do think there is a problem with the conflation of political action and self-assertion with consumerism.

SarahMC: A consumer mentality is detrimental to a political one. And that applies not only to women but to men too. There’s been an across-the-board dumbing down and yet all the hand-wringing is about women (and women get all the blame).

PilgrimSoul: This is mostly just crazed ranting. I mean, I’m not sure the sex industry has entirely successfully rebranded itself as a legitimate choice. That strikes me as a pretty reductive analysis, considering that it’s still pretty much the case that putting “porn star” on your resume rules you out of basically all other career choices in a way that “lawyer” does not. Again, there’s this weirdly reductive vision of agency working in reverse here – it’s imagining that patriarchy really wants us as porn stars, when in fact it wants us to do nothing at any time which involves asserting ourselves, including BOTH being lawyers and being porn stars.

BeckySharper: I totally agree with her points about mass culture, the sexualization of girls, etc. But why is it feminism’s fault that such nastiness is proliferating? It should be be the responsibility of all parents–male and female, feminist and non-feminist–to ensure that their daughters aren’t hypersexualized or exploited by a porn-obsessed culture.

PhDork: And for all people, parents or not, to provide alternate messages for girls and boys (and women and men).  Which you can do in a zillion different ways.

PilgrimSoul: I find a lot of her “I don’t wanna be a victim!” stuff annoying because it implies that there’s something wrong with meaningfully and seriously addressing the fact that someone has victimized you.

BeckySharper: I totally co-sign on that point.  Acknowledging that you’ve been victimized–and seeking redress or justice for it–is not something to be ashamed of. It returns dignity to the victim, and dignity is what’s conspicuously missing from the hypersexualized, “I Wanna Be a Glamour Model” streak of Girl Power Raven’s talking about.

And for the record, societal avoidance of talking about women’s victimization is really JUST A PART OF THE VICTIMIZATION!

Ooh, sorry for yelling.

PhDork: Yelling can be a perfectly reasonable response to stupid crap.

Commenters, you got anything to yell about?