Thursday, July 19, 2007

Consumerism and American (I dont know what) at an all time Low

Bling H2O Water Hits the East Coast

Your average plastic bottle of water costs about $1 to $3, depending on the brand. But Bling H2O water is far from average, at least in terms of packaging, and carries a much heftier price tag of $50 to $90 per bottle. So why such a high price?

Bling H2O doesn't come in a plastic bottle, rather, it comes in a fancy frosted bottle adorned with sparkling Swarovski crystals. The bottle is also available in gold or cobalt blue.

Bling H2O was the idea of Kevin Boyd, a Hollywood writer-producer, and is bottled at a Tennessee spring, purified in a nine-step process that includes ultraviolet treatment, micro-filtration, and ozone.

The high-priced water has been a hit on the West Coast, being snapped up by stars like Ben Stiller and Jamie Fox in luxury hot-spots like the Grammy Awards show, the MTV Video Music Awards, and the MGM Mirage in Las Vegas. Spoiled heiress Paris Hilton has been reported to have poured some for her pampered pooch. The craze has now hit the East coast, landing in Chappaqua, New York at Via Genova, an "eclectic cafe and water bar."

Make no mistake about it, Bling H2O isn't for your everyday person. It's for those who've got money to blow on overpriced water, and those who want to set themselves apart from the everyday Dasani-drinking water crowd.


Source: The Cleveland Leader

4 comments:

AG said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
AG said...

Creating the desire, injecting the subject with lack...and thus the (American?) consumer!

The Spectacle, Debord would say, creates our reality, shunning past experiences and proliferating its images anywhere and everywhere...we're meant to think that this is reality...sustaining life through bottled water (let alone $50s a drink!). Some of us, apparently, have been convinced that life without filtered, processed, bottled water fails. It's the age of the constructed individual, that is, the consumer of strong conviction. Michael Franti put it well:

"New world days and new world nights/New world wrongs and new world rights/Putting new world funds in the new world banks/With the new world guns on the new world tanks/...New world sons and new world daughters/They're already selling us new world water."

Ma'asalama,
Amer

Unknown said...

brother amer wow. I have a question, do you look at a book or your notes before you type this up, because mA that is quite insightful commentary. I almost feel that that should be the introduction to this piece.

AG said...

JazakAllahu khair :)
Debord has been (unintentionally) stuck in my head for a while and he's particularly relevant, I think, to American consumer culture. And I had actually listened to the song "We Don't Stop" by Franti and Spearhead earlier that day at work. Just luck, alhamdillah!

keep up the great work!
Masalama,
Amer