One of the best things about flying is the in-flight magazine–the schlocky voice of corporate marketing and upscale hub-city businesses trying to attract some tourist clientèle. It’s always an odd mix of high prices and low class.
From a recent issue of W!ld Blue Yonder, the in-flight magazine of Frontier airlines, comes the ad at left, from a Denver furrier. The headline reads: “Every fur tells a story.” The story I get from the picture is: “When the Hooker tried to steal my baby.”
Note that the little girl is also wearing a fur: a “reversible pink Mongolian vest,” according to the caption near the woman’s right ankle. The copy below the headline explains that “An investment in a fur is a lifestyle decision and now your furs can last a lifetime and suit every stage in a lifetime too.” We can conclude from this that the copy writer has something against punctuation, and that perhaps the child’s pink lifestyle decision/investment will last a lifetime, and can be “restyled” for her when she’s old enough to hit the streets.
The same issue contains a story gushing over the lavish services offered at a some high-end health spas for the dangerously wealthy. The article opens with a picture of woman having the 24-Carat facial available at Nidah Spa in Sante Fe, New Mexico. The mask of one of the world’s least-reactive metals is supposed to “lighten, firm and hydrate” the skin, producing a “lustrous golden glow” lasting a full month. To complement the healthful effects of precious metals, you can also get a Turquoise Massage that “lets you experience the healing properties of the precious gems placed on your chakras” while you’re “drizzled” in warm sage oil. If after that you’re still experiencing unhealthy liquidity, you can have “age-defying caviar-infused treatments” massaged into your hands and feet, all while sipping champagne and snacking on (what else?) caviar.
Even better, head over to the Lake Austin Spa in Texas for a Diamond Facial, during which “crushed diamonds… reactivate cellular metabolism and make your skin softer and plumper.” In other words, an industrial abrasive is rubbed in your face until it’s swollen and sensitive. Fab. That’s got to be worth a lot more than the $230 they’re charging.
It truly is, as the article with tongue-in-gold-encrusted-cheek proudly says, “a new Gilded Age.” How many Beverly Hillbillies are out there paying for this sort of stuff?
I can’t stop laughing at the hooker and the little kid. You have to wonder what “story” the geniuses in the advertising department had in mind when they dressed the lady in a fur, no pants, and high heels.
The oddest thing about all this Gilded Age advertising, to me, is that it’s in the magazine of *Frontier Airlines*, an explicitly low-budget carrier. Maybe they expect its customers to spend all that money they’re saving on their flight to Denver on gold-flake facials.