The Psychology of Sephora

Guys, have you ever ventured into a Sephora store?  I have lived in NYC, but never actually went into one.  I was mostly prepared for the sheer volume and variety of products.  I would bet that their web site is the first to truly use all 16.7 million colors that modern computer monitors can display.  (Many lipstick colors looked basically the same to me, but the ladies inform me that subtle shade differences are really important.  Sorry, but I don't feel deprived that women have a better ability to discriminate colors in the red-orange spectrum.)

But the most amazing part for me was the product names.  They range from fun & funny to incredibly aspirational and emotional.   Guys need to take a graduate course on the psychology of this stuff.  You can't tell me that a product line called "Unconditional Love" isn't setting high expectations from shampoo!  The copy on the bottle uses phrases like "you see all people and all living things as beacons of light" and "you have unconditionally arrived realizing the love you sought was the love you already owned".  Oh.  My.  God.  It is like Barack Obama in a bottle.

The Sephora web site has a fingernail polish selector showing colors with more incredible names:

Finally, when the glitzy creams, shampoos, and makeup aren't enough to make the fairy tale real, one can settle for an Orgasm, Super Orgasm, or possibly the mystic Multiple Orgasm.  Men, take note:  there is something going on here that we don't understand.  However, a good start might be this gift for Valentine's Day that should, um, satisfy both parties:

Man Purse Math

Herr J is still manpurse-less.

To be honest, we haven't really focused our efforts on the issue. Too many other things to do...vacation, vacation photos, job search (me), german class (again, me), enjoying the wonderful Christmas season in Germany, Christmas shopping, etc.

Though, with winter, a man purse has even greater utility. It's really cold here - cold enough that even I am choosing function over form. yes, cold has brought me insanity and I wear gloves and hats and try to wear warm, flat boots. The point being that now guys also have to carry around gloves, hats, umbrellas, and extra weather-related necessities...greatly weighing down the pockets of the man with no manpurse.

I've been keeping an eye out for good bags for Herr J. The ones I've seen and liked brought up some interesting questions:

• Should a guy have a more expensive bag than his girlfriend?
• Is it OK for a guy to have more bags than his girlfriend? (In most cases, I'm going to vote no on that one!)
• Is there some Maximum Man Purse Ratio? i.e, what's the maximum acceptable ratio of how many bags a guy has to how many his girlfriend has? Is it 1/2, 1/3, 1/4???
• In terms of contents of your bag, is it ok for the guy to have more in there than the girl? (I'd say it depends what's in there....electronic gadgets good, hair care products not so good)
• What's the minimum ratio of electronics to other goods that need to be in there to keep the bag manly?

 This is so much more complicated than we thought