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ma vie en rose I'm not your average Hilary Duff fan. In fact, I'm no Hilary Duff fan at all. But that didn't stop me from acquiring Hilary Duff stuff - or, as it is officially known, Stuff by Hilary Duff. Quite without my knowledge, the acquisition occurred while I was away from the office. A junior colleague had written what's known in the trade as a brief - a short article (as opposed to the other kind that lawyers write) about Hilary Duff's new line of stuff for the bedroom: the bedding, the nightstand lamp, the beaded curtain, etc. -- a lot of it autographed, all of it pink and made by cheap labor in a country far, far away. There was just enough snarkiness in the brief to keep it from being a total blow-job piece, but not enough to prevent the people who produce, promote and promulgate all things Hilary from sending the junior colleague the Stuff by Hilary Duff Home Collection. Because of its retail value, he probably should've returned it, as dictated by company policy. But instead, he and another junior colleague decided it would be fun to decorate my work space with it, a sort of welcome back to the office surprise. And there, on my desk and around my desk and near my desk, was all this pink Stuff by Hilary Duff - the bedding, the lamp, the beaded curtain, etc. To get to my computer I had to pull back a pink comforter that was draped over the monitor. It was quite a fetching sight, all that Pepto-Bismol pink. The junior colleagues had a good laugh. There was even a Hilary Duff cosmetic kit among the bedroom accessories, in case of an emergency or something. I'll be the first to admit my nails are a mess. I left everything as it was for a while, except I pushed away the comforter so I could sign on to my computer. A few days later, an intern came around to say good bye. Her eyes got big when she spied me floating in a sea of pinkness. "What's all this?" she said. "I'm a big Hilary Duff fan," I said. "Didn't you know?" "No, I didn't," she said. "Yeah, except they made me take down the poster." We got to talking about other things, and after she left, I realized I neglected to tell her I was just joking about the Hilary Duff stuff. Oh well. Eventually, I packed it all up and gave it to a colleague for her 9-year-old daughter. In other words, someone who would appreciate the stuff for what it was and not just criticize it for what it wasn't -- i.e., stuff by Martha Stewart. |
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