Monday, October 11, 2010

Artistic license

A clothing catalogue I received in the mail the other day cracked me up. On one page a wholesome-looking model stood in a well-tended vegetable garden proudly displaying a bunch of carrots. A purple pickup truck was visible behind her, just waiting for her to jump in and head to the local certified organic farmers' market.
Very stylish, certainly, but the sanitized scene bore little relation to the earthy joy of gardening as I know it.
The model's clothes looked more suited to a yoga studio. She wore sandals (dirty toe alert!) and a chiffon scarf with a tattoo-style pattern artfully knotted around her neck. There were no signs of gardening gloves or utensils. The "freshly harvested" carrots were scrubbed clean and perfectly uniform, a food stylist's dream. Even the vintage truck looked spotless.
In contrast, the circular I received from a Lancaster County store for Carhartt work clothes was a whole lot more realistic. The guy depicted wearing Carhartt overalls was holding some kind of a pipe valve, and he actually looked like a working plumber.

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