An Examination of Quality

This is what has become of an eye shadow compact that I have owned for a relatively short period of time, not even long enough to use up its contents:
Despite its appearance, I DID NOT bring it on a wilderness survival expedition, where it jostled, uncushioned, in a nylon backpack, rubbing against a device that would allow me to purify water from my own urine, as I ran from a hungry lion.

What DID I do with it, you ask? I opened it each morning, applied the eyeshadow, closed it, and slipped it into a silky little makeup pouch, where it lounged in comfort and luxury for the rest of the day while I busted my ass working, cooking, and doing laundry. (For the record, I DO NOT walk around with sparkly purple eyelids; I apply a very thin layer of the purple color underneath an earthy shade of brown just to add richness and dimension. Awwww, yeah. I read Allure.)

I know what you're thinking. "Well, that's what you get for buying drugstore makeup, Arabella. $3.59 a pop does not make for lasting quality."

I used to think the same thing. So much so, in fact, that I tried department store makeup. I tried paying $30 for a little box of pressed talc mixed with rust (yes, ladies: "iron oxide" is rust). You know what happened? The exact same thing.

Something like this happens to ALL my makeup. Look at this drugstore blush--the compact lid has broken right off:



Something similar has happened to the lid of a tea kettle that Ty and I have owned for less than three years. Above is how it DOES look; to the right is how it SHOULD look. This tea kettle was on our wedding registry. It cost either $25 or $50; I forget exactly, but I'll go with $50 here because it makes a better story. We do not run an English teahouse; we boil water for tea once a day--all right, sometimes multiple times a day. In my opinion, a tea kettle that costs what my ancestors probably paid for acres and acres of Sicilian olive groves in 1900 should last at least five years.

In contrast, below is a photograph of organic brown eggs. They are not made of petrochemicals. They have not spent their days leisurely lounging in a silky pouch, or heating small quantities of filtered water for moments at a time. Their shells are mere micrometers thick. They are unfortified by antibiotics or chemically-engineered chicken feed. They were extruded from their mothers' bodies through a tiny orifice, harvested, handled, and packaged in one of those states with grass and trees, and then boxed and shipped to the good people at FreshDirect, who unloaded the package of eggs at their facility, boxed it up again, hoisted it onto a truck, pulled the box down from the truck, and delivered it to my apartment, where I sliced the box open with a pair of scissors, removed its contents in my usual maniacal way, and tossed the eggs into the refrigerator. I paid something like $2.59 for twelve of them.