Money Didn't Buy Taste, Until Now
Today's Post has a disturbing piece on the rise in lifestyle consultants who, for choice fee, will help you revamp, reorganize, and restyle your life into something resembling "cool." The idea, of course, being that this will then trick your acquaintances into believe that you actually are cool. In reality, however, you've just paid some control-freak shopaholic several thousands of dollars to perform your consumerist duties for you:
The best lifestyle consultant will overhaul your wardrobe, redesign your apartment, send you to the best plastic surgeons, hire your hair and make-up people, throw your dinner parties, tell you what car to drive and what music you should be listening to on that drive.
[...]
"It's the equivalent of a friend loading up your iPod with stuff they think you'd like," says O'Neal, adding that most people who have come to look at [her pre-designed, Sedaris-stocked] apartments are 30- to 40-somethings in the financial industry.
Of course — not because finance folks are cheesy, but because they're just busy (they hardly have time to go to Libation). Besides, it's not like any cowboy boot-wearing downtown-type would relinquish control of their carefully calculated hip.
