On Saturdays while visiting my nieces, I marvel at the “good fortune” of these children at being able to have any throwaway toy they want. But, inwardly, I wring my hands at the rampant consumerism that seems second nature to this next generation of kids with well-to-do parents and often two sets of even richer doting grandparents. In the words of Douglas Coupland, they are up to their eyeballs in “striving middle-class participation.”
Let me unravel my cognitive dissonance. I survey my own Made-In-China Queendom—a jersey-knit, acrylic, rhinestone-dazzled mountain of crap (are you really one to judge, oh Duke of USB Chargers?).
I am aghast.