infobong.com

This NYTimes fashion column about Target critiques the chain with an elitist tone. Although the piece was written for "members of the middle- and upper-income brackets who view discount shopping as a socioeconomic field trip," it raises some interesting questions. The author notes she found, "an ergonomic paper shredder in the Graves half-aisle beneath a picture of a woman who looked like the actress Felicity Huffman and the words "I like to coordinate my keyboard with my toaster."

Considering I use a chair for storing books, I am not terribly attuned to interior decoration, but coordinating your toaster and keyboard strikes me as compulsive or absurd. Is this Target's effort at irony?

The article also notes:

I think the author might be trying to make a quasi-liberal political point, that values seem to be misplaced when a single coffee can cost more than shoes. But I doubt she's pointing out that the labor that makes a Frappuccino behind the counter stateside is more expensive than the sweatshop labor that produced the shoes in some faraway land.