Jewelry Commercial Makes Woman's Head Explode: Film at Eleven

*Que frou frou music, as the woman's coaxing voice begins to speak* "The words 'I love you' are just words. Show her how much you really love her with a gift from Shiffman's."

I fumble with the setting change, quickly finding another station, as my blood begins to boil. With a random song now playing, my brain is still caught on the commercial I couldn't get rid of fast enough. I mumble a string of swearwords at the woman on the radio who obviously can't hear me, as I eviscerate her thoughts on love in a mini-tirade. My husband will tell you that he hates marketing, and in this instance, I'm in total agreement. Jewelry commercials make me crazy!

Giving a gift of jewelry is NOT proving your love to someone, unless the person you're giving it to is shallow, materialistic, and has zero sense of what "real" love means. And while I realize the words from some marketing ad are designed to entice customers to shop there, I find it extremely distasteful to use distorted definitions of love in order to promote some ridiculous product.

We live in a world that inundates us with mixed messages, lies, and digs to create insecurities in order to drive the capitalism train. Be more beautiful...be more popular...be cool...buy her/his love...I have had it with being told I'm flawed but your miracle product can "fix" me. And how many ways can various media venues tell us we're all broken, while claiming they have the magic bullet to fix us? Turns out, a BUNCH. What's worse, absolutely none of those ads speak to anything truly important or offer solutions to fix real problems! It. Drives. Me. Bonkers!

If you're the kind of person who likes bling....great! If you're the kind of person who thinks you're flawed, somehow, without it, or that a show of love requires a materialistic gift...no bueno!!! Don't get me wrong, I like presents. I even like jewelry. I do not, however, confuse them for someone expressing their love for me. People's actions (...to exclude, but are not limited to buying me jewelry) tell me everything I need to know, about who they are and how they feel about me, and others. And yes, my inner lawyer reared her head to pipe in on this matter. Wanna show someone how much they mean to you? There are about a thousand ways to do so, none of which involves a purchase of any kind. Wanna show ME how much you love me? One great way is to change the radio station quickly when a jewelry commercial comes on.