NOTICED:UNNECESSARY ACCESSORIES
Why is the Queen carrying her own purse and umbrella?
(First published, 2007)
Have you seen the video of President Bush’s watch being lifted? Shot by Italian journalists covering Bush’s “historic” visit this week to the notoriously impoverished nation of Albania—one of the small “coalition of the willing”—it appears to show the US President’s $50 Timex being expertly removed from his left wrist as he surfs the crowd shaking hands. Although the White House quickly dismissed the story, claiming that the President actually removed his own watch before launching into the melee (why, because maybe somebody would steal it?), what is clear is that it’s time for the President to make some new friends.
Like the old joke says, he’s certainly going to need a new watch, but lucky for “Booshie”– as the Albanians like to call him—his now missing accessory was standard- issue Timex with a Stars ‘n Stripes face, rather than 24k Rolex. Aside from the rather obvious question of what exactly Bush’s phalanx of secret-service guys were up to when this little assault on the President did, or didn’t happen, however, is the bigger question of why Bush needs to wear a watch at all. Presumably the Leader of the Free World doesn’t have to worry much about whether he’s running late for a meeting or the last bus home. Not to mention all the eager flunkies around him 24/7 who would only be too happy to give the outgoing President the time of day.
My own pet theory is that the reason that the President wears a watch is the same reason that the Queen always carries a handbag. Like Bush’s Timex, the Queen’s purse is never a particularly attractive or fashionable one. And presumably she’s not using it to squirrel away a pack of smokes, the keys to Windsor Castle or some emergency Tampax (which if she actually required could be carried by any number of accompanying bowing and scraping factotae whose official title might even be Tampax Carrier to Her Majesty the Queen). No, what Bush’s watch and the Queen’s handbag tell us is that the more powerful and important one is, the more one can demonstrate that fact to others with entirely unnecessary accessories.
Think of it. Like the kinky Asian practice of growing one’s fingernails so long as to render oneself useless, or binding a girl’s feet so that she can hardly walk, unneccesariness—geared to raising one’s social standing– can be both a goal and a dominant aesthetic.
In the sad case of Paris Hilton, whose sheer unnecessariness epitomises her career, her unnecessary accessory of choice is an SUV. Say what you will about how unfairly she has been treated by “the media” and how the fickle fans screaming for her head are enraged with jealousy and schadenfreude, there is still absolutely no reason why poor little Paris, who stands to inherit a sizeable chunk of Hilton chairman Barron Hilton’s $1 biilion fortune, cannot afford to hire a driver to ferry her from party to party, rather than get behind the wheel. Particularly when said unnecessary accessory is further accessorised with an apparently au courant suspended drivers licence for DUI.
The very latest word from Paris’ cell, courtesy of Barbara Walters, with whom Hilton conducted a celebrity one-on-one via telephone from her jail cell, was that the very same girl who starred in a much-circulated sex tape and flashed her privates to paparazzi, has now found God. Which leads me to believe that when released, her new unnecessary accessory will be a cross–perhaps something in coloured jewels for fall, from Harry Winston.
Proof positive that the more fabulous you are, the less necessary your accessories is the latest must-have from bad-boy Brit artist Damien Hirst. Currently on display at London’s White Cube gallery, the work is a platinum human skull (reportedly of a European man who died some time in the 18th century) covered in 8,601 diamonds–one phat mother, weighing in at 52.40 carats, sits on its forehead like a chandelier-sized bindi–and carries a price tag of fifty million pounds (or $100 million dollars). According to the gallery, several oligarchs have nonetheless expressed interest in the adorable little objet—one of them the public loo-hopping pop tart George Michael. And the name of this wildly unnecessary accessory? It’s called For the Love of God. To that news, I can only say, indeed.