Perfect gift wrapping

My theory on why women love gift wrapping is that it's a metaphor for what we do in our everyday lives. We gift wrap our bodies, our imperfections, our problems, and our desires. I love going to the Container Store during the holidays because you will see the absolute coolest stuff in gift wrapping. They got it all. Target and Borders Books also carry colorful and stylish gift wrap. It's titillating stuff because symbolically, we get new ideas to package ourselves.

I'm an expert in packaging. In fact, I got my degree in Product Design but found that I had a better knack in business, so I found myself doing high tech corporate marketing for 12 years. As a marketing person, your job in essence is to make something look better than it is so that more people will buy more of it at higher prices. Marketing is the perfect job for little girls and boys who grew up as perfectionists and obsessed with presentation. Many marketing people, like myself, have tormenting histories laced with manic behavior, emotional swings, body image issues, not-good-enough syndrome, and whatever slew of emotional tidbits related to ones looks.

Now, marketing is not all bad. I mean after all, you are dealing with the glamorous side of the business. There's the press, events, tradeshows, wining, dining, and schmoozing at hip and trendy places. It's all high profile stuff, and that my friends is the part of the show that we skinny jeans seekers (of the marketing kind) love more than anything. We go into marketing secretly because we get to have a job where we as everyday Joes and Janes get to be in the spotlight. Forget for the moment the movie stars, TV stars, models, and pro athletes. They are a whole different kind of skinny jean seekers. Here I'm just talking about everyday people who live everyday lives in everyday ways.

If I can't be extraordinary in my real life, than there's always gift wrapping to help me make the gift look better than what it really is. Or perhaps, the real problem is that we just can't see that the gift is already lovable the way it is, faults and all.