One of my favorite television shows is the Real Housewives series. Which season? Doesn’t matter. Pick one.  What’s not to love about a drama filled show that follows middle aged women and their husbands, and their habit of spending thousands of dollars on clothing, birthday parties for their kids and gaudy furniture for their McMansions.

However, a quick Google search shatters whatever illusion we have about the lifestyles these women portray on television. The reality off the small screen is that many of the women are damn near broke; they are in foreclosure, having vehicles repossessed and facing thousands in IRS tax liens.  Yet for me, the show provides valuable insight into our society’s values and aspirations.

It’s generally believed that poor people spend their money on material possessions while wealthy people spend their money on assets. But this idea goes far beyond the ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ syndrome of the past since some of the biggest spenders appear to be the Joneses themselves.  What else could explain purchasing a $60,000 Swarovski crystal bottle of nail polish, an $8 million dollar Maybach and a $2,600 bottle of water? Yeah you heard me.

Why would a bottle of water be sold for $2,600 might you ask? Well, because it’s covered in Swarovski crystal. Interestingly, Kevin Boyd, the owner of the bottled water company called Bling H2O, admits that the water is no different than the water sold at the Cracker Barrel for $2.50. But according to Boyd, he is selling more than just water—he is selling a lifestyle.

Boyd isn’t the only one capitalizing off our thirst for the good life. The Discover Channel will soon launch Velocity, a cable television channel aimed at an often overlooked demographic: wealthy men. I’m not trying to knock the hustle of Boyd, Discover Channel or any other purveyor of “the lifestyle.” However, there is a sort of melancholy feeling among people these days who find themselves transfixed by shiny, expensive stuff. It’s a fascinating phenomenon if you stop and think about it—people buying stuff they can’t afford with money they don’t have just to impress people they probably don’t like. This is one of the reasons why foreclosure rates are high and credit card debt has increased ten-fold.

Part of the appeal is the whole concept of exclusivity, which is a clever marketing device to persuade folks that somehow their purchases will make them unique and different from others in their social standing. Being human means that we are not perfectly rational nor sensible at all times. Many of our purchasing habits are influenced by a whole host of emotional reasons such as self-esteem and self-image.

To fully understand this, you might want to consider Abraham’s Maslow hierarchy of needs, a psychological theory that was created in 1943 to describe the behavioral models of motivation as a means of satisfying human desires. Maslow believed that there were five types of desires that need to be fulfilled if every human were to feel whole: physiological, safety, love and belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization.

By Christina Burton

A group of scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem did a recent experiment that ended with a remarkable result: owning a designer handbag or bracelet may make a person feel like more than just a million bucks—it may actually boost human performance.

Dan Ariely, a behavioral researcher on the team and professor at Duke University, found that brand name products can act like placebos on people, much like the effect of a harmless pill given to a patient to see if it produces a psychological “feel-better” effect.

In the study, Ariely’s participants, who were given products tagged as luxury brands, read better, listened better and concentrated better in comparison to the participants who used the same products that were marked as cheaper brands.

However, branding expert Rob Frankel says that “there’s no way” that Louis Vuitton can make a person do better in life. Frankel, who is white, says when it comes to the black community, it’s all about what he calls “the golden rule of marketing.”

“If you want to go fishing, go where the fish are.”

Popular luxury brands have cornered the African-American market by simply copying and pasting famous black entertainers into advertisements or casting a desirable black actor into a commercial or magazine spread.

An example: Sean “Diddy” Combs. The hip-hop businessman is the lead brand manager, marketer, advertiser and product promoter of Cîroc vodka, a premium spirit owned by alcohol-maker Diageo PLC. Since Diddy got on board with Cîroc in 2007, the brand’s sales grew over 552 percent.

The  retail industry employs 19.2 percent of blacks. According to a Harvard Business School study, being surrounded by money and luxuries “might very well have an effect on cognition and decision-making.”

If luxury brands improve human performance, Ariely’s research is the lone ranger in proving it. Frankel attributes the powerful feeling that a black person might get when wearing a brand name to a lack of self-esteem and a lack of literacy longstanding since the time before federal legislation rid blacks of their civil, educational and economic shackles.

by R. Asmerom

And I could blame my environment but /there ain’t no reason why I be buyin expensive chains - -Jay-Z , “public service announcement”

Is it in a Black man’s soul to rock that gold? Is the attraction to the flashy and shiny coded in our genes? Are we wired to appreciate and covet the precious metals that lie in abundance all over the homeland? It may seem a peculiar thing to question – who doesn’t love jewelry after all? – but the unique role of this spectacular show of adornment in Black culture is quite extraordinary.

Nevertheless, the relationship between bling and Black expression is not generally understood as something deeper than just a case of conspicuous consumption. Grillz, over-sized platinum chains, and diamond earrings evoke images of rappers showing off in grand fashion in music videos,  defining and selling the idea of urban cool to the rest of the world. Ostentatious swagger, some may call it. And many critics, Black critics included, would demean it as a foolish display of wealth. As over the top as it is, the need to flash, is not something that was born in the ghettos of America.

As MC Schooly D put it, wearing gold “goes back to Africa.” Historians would agree, there is a connection, albeit underlying, between how African-Americans dress and the habits and customs of African ancestry.

“The sharper the dress,  the flashier the gold the more you are taking care of yourself and putting yourself ideally in proximity to important people and even to the divine,” said Robert Ferris Thompson, a renowned professor of African and African American Art who has dedicated his professional life to exploring the art history of the Afro-Atlantic world. “When the Portuguese first landed in Ghana the local chiefs with their gold and early versions of kente outdressed the greys.  Score:  Ghana 7, visitors 2.”

The source of this flashiness has been a gift and a curse. The continent’s cornucopia of gold, diamonds and other minerals are what determined the course of history when it came to the African continent and the explorers who would become its chief exploiters. The West African region got the name “Gold Coast” for obvious reasons.

“Certain areas of West Africa have been known historically for gold mining, which was an enormously important component in some of the most sophisticated and complex commerce networks the world has ever known, networks that included huge portions of West Africa and extended across the Sahara,” said Patrick McNaughton, an art historian and professor at Indiana University. “Accounts of two famous and very large empires—Ghana and Mali—indicate that finely worked gold ornamentation played a large role at court.  The same is true for contemporary leaders in Akan culture groups, within the nation of Ghana.”

by R. Asmerom

And I could blame my environment but /there ain’t no reason why I be buyin expensive chains - -Jay-Z , “public service announcement”

Is it in a Black man’s soul to rock that gold? Is the attraction to the flashy and shiny coded in our genes? Are we wired to appreciate and covet the precious metals that lie in abundance all over the homeland? It may seem a peculiar thing to question – who doesn’t love jewelry after all? – but the unique role of this spectacular show of adornment in Black culture is quite extraordinary.

Nevertheless, the relationship between bling and Black expression is not generally understood as something deeper than just a case of conspicuous consumption. Grillz, over-sized platinum chains, and diamond earrings evoke images of rappers showing off in grand fashion in music videos,  defining and selling the idea of urban cool to the rest of the world. Ostentatious swagger, some may call it. And many critics, Black critics included, would demean it as a foolish display of wealth. As over the top as it is, the need to flash, is not something that was born in the ghettos of America.

As MC Schooly D put it, wearing gold “goes back to Africa.” Historians would agree, there is a connection, albeit underlying, between how African-Americans dress and the habits and customs of African ancestry.

“The sharper the dress,  the flashier the gold the more you are taking care of yourself and putting yourself ideally in proximity to important people and even to the divine,” said Robert Ferris Thompson, a renowned professor of African and African American Art who has dedicated his professional life to exploring the art history of the Afro-Atlantic world. “When the Portuguese first landed in Ghana the local chiefs with their gold and early versions of kente outdressed the greys.  Score:  Ghana 7, visitors 2.”

The source of this flashiness has been a gift and a curse. The continent’s cornucopia of gold, diamonds and other minerals are what determined the course of history when it came to the African continent and the explorers who would become its chief exploiters. The West African region got the name “Gold Coast” for obvious reasons.

“Certain areas of West Africa have been known historically for gold mining, which was an enormously important component in some of the most sophisticated and complex commerce networks the world has ever known, networks that included huge portions of West Africa and extended across the Sahara,” said Patrick McNaughton, an art historian and professor at Indiana University. “Accounts of two famous and very large empires—Ghana and Mali—indicate that finely worked gold ornamentation played a large role at court.  The same is true for contemporary leaders in Akan culture groups, within the nation of Ghana.”