I’ve been commuting between Brisbane and the Gold Coast a lot lately for work and as a result, I often end up sleeping somewhere I wasn’t expecting too (nothing suss, I just end up working late and can’t be arsed driving home). The upside is that I’ve been getting more and more intimate with various friends and their couches, the downside is that I’m often left without a toothbrush, toothpaste, or clean underwear. Toothbrushes and toothpaste are easy enough to pick up, but I realised that my underwear supply needed re-plenishing (it wasn’t an emergency, but it was getting close).

My initial reaction was to drive across town on my lunch break to the nearest David Jones or Myer to pick up something from Mr H.Boss or Mr C.Klein. The round trip would have taken me an hour, but I figured it was worth it to get some quality dacks, because after all, you get what you pay for. There’s a factory-outlet-style underwear shop just across the road, but I knew what they had would be no match for the real official merchandise. It was a no-brainer for me: Go the expensive version because they’ll last and they’re, well, more fashionable.

As I found myself reasoning along such lines I suddenly realised I had succumbed, almost completely, to marketing. Me. A savvy, industry professional, with insight, brains and a need to save money in a time of global financial crisis, genuinely thought that it was worth a trip across town to buy a brand-name item which would be worn, invisibly, underneath my clothes and seen only on a select few occasions to a select few people.

One of my favourite movies is Fight Club, and one of my favourite scenes in it is when the hero gets on the bus and looks at Calvin Klein ad and sniggers - “is that what a real man is supposed to look like?” before spitting on the floor.

I hate my industry sometimes…

Tags: underwear

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 10:54 am and is filed under Randomness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.