Confessions of a Home-Shopping Addict
My name is Jeannine. I am a home shopping addict. This is my story:
*
Bored one night a couple of years ago, I was channel grazing on my cable-less TV with the so-so reception. I tried random channels, hoping to pick up some weird shows. But all I got was static and religious programs. Then I punched 46. Bingo. The Home Shopping Club.
I had read about these home shopping channels, but had never seen one. The image before my eyes had me instantly transfixed: A woman’s hand, perfectly manicured, wearing a blue topaz ring as big as a Caesar salad crouton.
The hand--for that’s all it was, a disembodied hand--kept rocking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, the stone occasionally catching the glare of the TV lights.
The bizarre hand-rocking thing lingered on the screen for a good five minutes as the announcer, sounding as if he’d just inhaled a cup of amphetamine-laced coffee, extolled the virtues of the gem.
“Ladies, I gotta tell ya, the color in this stone is in CRED ible! LOOK at the way that ring GLISTENS ! Your FRIENDS are gonna be KNOCKED OUT when they see you coming with THIS ! Now, you gotta HURRY up and dial in on this one ‘cause we’re just about outta QUANTITY on these!”
I watched the little clock on the screen ticking away the time left and saw the price being shaved down further and further, to less than half the suggested retail.
I became so caught up in this frenetic race for time and the relentlessly cheerful, overhyped sales pitch that I suddenly thought what an incredible fool I’d be if I passed up this offer. My hand inched toward the phone, ready to call “Tootie,” the automated telephone order system, when I came to my senses. What was I going to do with a 9-carat blue topaz ring? Wear it to meet the Queen?
Although I came thisclose to being $129.99 poorer, it didn’t matter. I was a goner. Hooked. A video shopping voyeur.
*
In subsequent months, I’d check in with the Home Shopping Club whenever I had the TV on. I’d be sucked in immediately, thrilled to have discovered a 3-D shopping medium that offered radar scanners, water filters and Ivana Trump selling her own line of clothing, all in the space of an hour.
Television didn’t get any better than this.
I loved to see rainbow gem bracelets merrily spinning around and around on a mirrored tray, or hear how a huge cubic zirconia ring would completely fool my friends into thinking I was wearing a real diamond.
A few times I was tempted by a pair of little ruby heart-shaped earrings, but when they were on I always had more pressing commitments for my money--like rent.
None of my friends understood my fascination. When I’d turn on the show and try to explain the gestalt of the Home Shopping Club, they’d look at me quizzically and ask if I’d had a recent head injury.
After about a year, however, the Home Shopping Club started to lose some of its appeal. The Vegas-y sets and decorative ceramics, once fascinatingly kitschy, now were sort of depressing. Even The Hand lost its charm.
But then I got cable and had my second home-shopping epiphany.
Channel hopping again, I happened upon QVC (Quality, Value, Convenience) and its sister show, The Fashion Channel.
It was love at first Diamonique simulated diamond.
The sets were more sophisticated, the hosts calmer, the sell softer. Shows were structured by the hour--Western jewelry, followed by Collectible Dolls, followed by The Linen Closet.
In The Kitchen With Bob had affable host Bob Bowersox cooking yummy things in T-Fal cookware. Kathy Levine’s goofy humor made watching an hour of Diamonique jewelry pleasant. Whatever the product--even boring Craftsman tools--there was always that feel-good feeling about it.
I was amazed at the designers and celebrities who showed up hawking their merchandise: Bob Mackie (scarves), Joan Rivers (costume jewelry), Diane von Furstenberg (clothes and bedding), Morgan Fairchild (Diamonique) and Paul Prudhomme (cookbooks and spices). Even pricey costume jewelry designer Kenneth Jay Lane (who did those famous Barbara Bush pearls) sells his wares on QVC. Wearing a tux and sounding vaguely bored, he’d nonetheless chat amiably with Iowa housewives who had just purchased his gold-tone necklace.
Soon I found myself watching QVC through an entire show. It was a happy land without problems or strife, a place I could always turn whenever I was depressed.
I started feeling guilty about the time I was spending until I heard callers talking about how almost everything in their homes came from QVC. “Oh, you’re my favorite host! I just love you!” they’d gush in perfect idol-worship tones.
I didn’t feel so bad.
The cult of QVC is strong. Callers know when the hosts’ birthdays are, how many children they have, what kind of pets they own, and the pets’ names. When two hosts decided to get married last year, the pre-wedding hoopla made the Grace Kelly-Prince Rainier marriage look like a quickie at the justice of the peace. But it’s all part of that feel-good feeling.
I had come awfully close to buying something in the ensuing months. Once it was a pair of silver and onyx earrings, another time flannel sheets, another time a Kenneth Jay Lane pin. But something always held me back. Maybe I was afraid of shifting out of my voyeur status.
But some time between Thanksgiving and Christmas last year I broke down. Exhausted from buying presents for family and friends and mired in holiday ennui, I was feeling more than a little sorry for myself.
During a design-it-yourself earring hour, I saw a pair of gold hoops with a little frosted crystal ball drop. Impulsively I picked up the phone, dialed, got through, and bought. I had no regrets. I had crossed the line, but darn it, I felt good . I was a member of the QVC family.
The earrings arrived a few days later, along with a QVC schedule. I looked it over and started to pick out the shows I wanted to watch in the next few days. I was too far gone to care how much of an addict I had become.
I wear the earrings fairly often, and when someone asks where I got them, I just smile and say they were a gift. I could risk telling them the truth, but . . . nah, they’d probably scoff. After all, it’s an acquired taste.
