Shoe Event Horizon?

I don't know that it's a good thing when life reminds me of Douglas Adams. His worldview tends a bit toward the cynical. Unfortunately, he also seems to have been disturbingly prescient.

In this case, I was struck this morning by how bewildering I find so-called beauty products. I just don't really get it. Maybe it's a girl thing, but I just find the endless masses of bottles and tubes and tubs a bit on the far side of ridiculous. There's a strange fascination with foodstuffs as well. Everything is honey-oat this and cucumber-that. What about the combination of rose petals and yogurt says 'yes, I want to wash myself in that'? I can't imagine that those buying such flavored body wash would actually consider soaping themselves in foodstuffs as a way to get clean. Very odd.

Meanwhile, it is becoming really quite difficult to find just plain products without extra gratuitous extra stuff added. Try finding a hair conditioner that isn't heavily perfumed in the sea of fruit flavors. Or consider the reasoning behind vitamin fortified Coke. All of this, it seems to me, speaks of overactive product tinkering and marketing strategy, which has divorced the product makers from the needs of the product user. It smells of marketing for marketing sake. It seems to me that we have a lot more to buy, but a lot less that is useful. We seem to be heading toward a situation where we will only be able to buy what market analysis says will sell, but it will come in dozens of meaningless varieties.