For last week's column, I wrote about CuteOverload.com, and the deliciousness therein.
THE TROUBLE WITH SPIKOL
Precious Matters
What happens when my two passions—bargains and adorableness—collide.
by Liz Spikol
There are certain words that make my heart beat faster. “Value,” for one. “Dollar,” for another. “99 c.”—arguably not a word—is especially beguiling.
This is not, as you might think, because I’m cheap—or poor. I’m doing okay. But it’s a question of values.
Why spend $3 on toilet paper if you can spend $1? Why buy a $28 candle when you can buy one for a dollar? Why buy $12 place mats at Pier 1 when you can find the same exact place mats for $1 each?
These aren’t rhetorical questions. I really want to know.
Until I’m persuaded otherwise, I’m sticking with Value City, where I recently purchased a cottony nightgown with yellow ducks on it. I say, “cottony” because I think it’s actually made of flammable plastic softened by boll weevils under the influence of too many pesticides. But it sure is cute. And it cost $3.
When I got it home I put the nightgown on over my clothes—that’s how excited I was to own it—and ran to the mirror, where I discovered one size does not really fit all. It was much too long, and it billowed ridiculously around my thin frame. (Yes, I’m saying thin frame. You want to argue?) The lace up the front was like a brittle shredded doily. The buttons were strangely slippery—maybe from the pesticides.
But the duckies! So incredibly cute. And if there’s any word I love as much as “value,” it’s “cute.”
My cute obsession is all encompassing and borderline self-destructive. I spend hours poring over photos of puppies, kittens and all other baby animals. That there’s now ample video footage online just makes it worse. How can I not click on a clip titled “The Tiniest Mew”? What am I, made of steel?
When I see cuteness, my insides melt. My blood pressure drops, and I get dizzy. I feel elated and unbearably moved. Tears form in my eyes, and I feel the world has been carefully designed to meet my needs. It’s everything I searched for in religion but never found.
Consequently, I cruise YouTube’s cute offerings like a sweaty-browed porn addict. I look for new videos because they stop “working” after about 10 views. I get ridiculously excited when I see there’s a new video of basset hound puppies—preferably with big, floppy ears they’ll trip over.
If the computer stalls while loading a video of kittens “discovering the big bed,” I get panicky and frustrated. When the little mewling and purring of the kittens on-screen gets too loud, I turn down the volume on my computer so no one knows what I’m doing. And I always keep another browser window open so I can toggle quickly between screens. Is this not a cry for help?
Thankfully, my job requires that I search for cuteness. I have a “cute fix” category on my website—which, I’ll remind you, is a blog about mental health. Every couple of days (not more often; that would seem desperate) I post a cute picture, ostensibly because people with mental health issues could use a little cheering up. In reality, the feature serves my addiction, making blog readers unwitting enablers.
The sine qua non of online cuteness is, of course, Cute Overload, the creation of the brilliant Meg Frost. On the site Frost employs her Rules of Cuteness to assess submissions, and she’s developed a cuteness dialect—including words like “baroo” and “anerable”—that other cute addicts employ in the comments section.
Not surprisingly, the comments aren’t the sophisticated political commentary you might find, say, on Daily Kos.
Here are a few examples I found in response to a photo of puppies inside a plastic bin of mint candy: “eeeeeeeeeeek puppehs!!!” And “Them’s some sleeeeepy lil stubbypuffs!” And, more sensibly, “That is so cute! Look at the little leg dangle! I bet their fur is so silky. I’d love to rub lil warm pupper body again my cheek.”
I’ve never felt so much kinship in my life. These are my people.
I’ve long wanted to be one of Cute Overload’s so-called cuteologists, but my submissions haven’t made the cut. I did place myself—defiantly, I’d say—on the Cuteologist Map, which features cute hunters from everywhere from Finland to Australia. And a video of my sugar gliders made it onto Cutecast, which is Cute Overload’s new video component. But it’s not the same. Until I get onto the home page, I won’t be satisfied.
But everyone hits rock bottom. Walking out of the gym the other day, a little girl passed me on the stairs. Generally, I don’t respond as acutely to human cuteness, but she was pretty charming.
I’d seen her marching around the gym in imitation of the adults, and it made me feel tender. I looked at her tiny nose and pink cheeks, and smiled at her in a goofy way.
She turned to watch me go, and then called after me, “I like your Hello Kitty backpack!”
Suffice to say, I’m getting a new gym bag. Is a Pikachu backpack too silly? Because he’s awfully cute, and I know where I could get one for cheap …
CO’s Rules of
Cuteness (a Sample)
>> More than one species of baby flopping around is cute.
>> A thing, accompanied by a smaller version of that thing, is always cute.
>> Piles of a cute thing jack up a cuteness rating exponentially.
>> Fuzz + floppy limbs = cute.
>> A cute animal + food = even cuter.
[This photo is my latest submission to CO. I think it's a winner.]
