UPFRONT:I AM, I LIKE TO PRIDE myself, an embracer of the 21st century. I have a mobile phone that takes photographs, a Facebook account, light-diffusing make up and an impact guidance system in my runners. I have even, albeit under duress, recently started to tweet. Yet there are moments, still, when the full force of this Day and Age stops me, saucer-eyed, in my tracks. Like, for example, a recent e-mail with this enticing instruction: "Eat yourself beautiful!" Why, I'd love to, thought I immediately, being a fan of both eating and being beautiful, though having till now displayed considerably greater talent at the former. So where do I sign up?
But wait – even though this is the 21st century, and we are all too time-pressed to finish our sentences, I persevere with this one. And lo, it turns out that to eat myself beautiful in this particular instance, I have to consume collagen. In marshmallow form.
Would that I were making this up. I am talking about the de facto, real live “Eat Yourself Beautiful Collagen Marshmallows”. That is their name. Google it, you cynics of the modern age. Google, and weep.
Now, I am as much a fan of marshmallows as the next girl, but I do not usually expect them to come tasting of the ingredient they put into fake lips. Because that is what collagen is to me: Melanie Griffith. And I do not want to taste those lips in my marshmallows.
I am sure someone will e-mail in to correct me about all of this and explain that the daily ingestion of collagen peptide will enhance my dermis (at least this is what Google just told me though I’m still none the wiser, really). Besides, these marshmallows are “delicious pink grapefruit flavoured”, according to the press release. You can almost taste the Vitamin C flavour. They also contain the aforementioned peptide, which is “the polypeptide form of collagen to allow maximum absorption of collagen when ingested orally, which has been shown to produce longer lasting results by stimulating the body’s natural collagen production levels, without the need and expense of medical assistance”.
Ha! Even though I am neither a scientist, collagen expert nor medical assistant, I am not fooled by this. Marshmallows, let’s face it, are sweets. I love sweets, but I know they will not make me more beautiful, even though they do make me a little bit happier sometimes, which I suppose helps. And it may well be that my collagen production levels need boosting, but so much of me needs boosting these days, it’s hard to know where to start. Though I’m pretty sure marshmallows aren’t the place.
It’s moments like these when my inner ancient harridan comes out, the one who’s all “tut tut” and “what’s with the young people” and “in my day” about the likes of collagen-boosting marshmallows. It is on the tip of my tongue to rant about how back in my day, we had more important things to worry about than collagen levels, like dial-up internet connections and other serious deprivations. Yet I can feel my dermis wrinkling as I work myself into a lather, and resolve to keep mum about the mallows and other such modern inventions.
That is until across my television screen flashes an ad for something that makes me almost apoplectic with disapproval. It is for, as far as I can tell from the 15-second advertisement that so vexes my subconscious it shoves it all the way up into my conscious, a random name generator service. But it is not called a random name generator service, oh no: it is called something more like “Miraculously Find the Perfect Name for Your Baby by Magical Expensive Text Service”.
Say you are expecting your baby and agonising over the choice of name – you know, because it’s a pretty big decision and your child will have to live with the consequences forever, or until he/she is old enough to fork out for a deed-poll change. Well, look no further, because for a not-insignificant fee, you can text this spiffing service and it will send you by return text the absolute most perfect name for your child. Oh, that lucky, lucky kid.
Once more, I am astounded to the point of harrumphing. Whatever next? Strapless knickers? Tick! The C-String is already promising a life without panty lines, though it largely resembles a sanitary towel attached to a pipe cleaner. If you ask me, the inventiveness of the human race increasingly appears to run in direct proportion to its gullibility.
Still, it ain’t all bad. There’s my iPod, for one, and Touche Éclat, GPS and the true innovation that is Throx: the pair of socks that contains not two but three, and is being hailed as the cure for the missing sock. The point is, it’s not like I’m always railing against the new. It’s just sometimes the things people think up and then get other people to pay hard-earned money for quite simply astounds me.
And yes, I am aware that my mother would probably say the same thing about my Touche Éclat. Which leads me to reconsider the collagen marshmallows. Perhaps it was the name that put me off. Melanie Griffith Mallows, anyone? Didn’t think so. It’s the name you see, that can make or break a product like that. But where does one go for a name? A light bulb turns on slowly, energy efficiently – this is the 21st century after all – in my head. I reach for my mobile phone . . .
fionamccann@irishtimes.com