The Grass is Not Greener in my Yard

I want to get rid of all the grass in the front yard. Richard, my husband, does not agree with me.

My husband, Richard

I don’t see the upside of grass lawns. Unless you are a ruminant (a cud-chewing animal), you can’t eat grass. It smells pleasant, but its scent is fleeting. Today’s lawn craze requires a monoculture of this pretty useless plant without the inclusion of co-planting in the form of white clovers that would supply nitrogen for the lawn. An attractive grass lawn demands babying — fertilizer, weed killer, mowing, reseeding.

I read somewhere that the desire for a green grass lawn is a throwback to early humans feeling more comfortable if there were no trees in their domain for predators to hide behind. I don’t buy this because landscaping incorporates plenty of bushes and trees for predators to hide behind. I myself think that the fanaticism for perfect green lawns, now with their perfect cross-hatching mowing patterns, has to do with what preeminent Victorian economist Thorstein Veblen called conspicuous consumption.

Conspicuous consumption refers to spending money in a way that shows that one has money. Perfect lawns are a perfect example of this — they require a lot of monetary outlay and a lot of time investment. It helps to be able to hire a groundskeeper to get that verdant sheen without any dandelions marring the perfection.

I could live without a typical grass lawn with all its high-maintenance needs. When the dandelions pop in our yard, I don’t think of digging them up unless I want to roast their roots for Beau Monde style coffee (aka chicory coffee, as dandelions are a close relative). I fantasize about a lawn full of clover with its little white blossoms or edible lawn daisies, or a slope of camomile and pavers surrounded with scented thymes. Or maybe just expanding my edible landscaping until there’s no lawn.

For which I’d have to hire a landscaper and participate in my own form of conspicuous consumption.

Valentine’s Day according to economics

When I’m not writing, I am a family economist/behavioral economist. The philosophy behind both of those is that I study the use of time, money, and other resources — in household units and in a manner that accounts for psychology.

Running Valentine’s Day through the economics filter yields interesting results.

Take, for example, Valentine’s Day as a method of conspicuous consumption, and the role of social media in creating the conspicuous part. Today, people will post pictures of flowers, restaurant meals, and possibly engagement rings or jewelry. The gifts may be given from the heart; the need to post pictures on Facebook and Instagram comes from a desire for the world to know the value of the item.

Or for that matter, Valentine’s Day as an exploration of assortative mating. This is an economic concept borrowed from sociology that posits that people get sorted into couples based on complementary resources and similarity of levels of resources. Thus the stereotype that the rich man gets the trophy wife — there’s a little truth to the stereotype, according to the assortative mating theory. So, in effect, we don’t marry someone out of our league — we marry someone that complements us. And we marry as much for their resources combined with ours as we do love and romance.

And let’s not even mention that chocolate in a heart-shaped box costs much more coming up to Valentine’s Day than it does the day after. That’s pure supply and demand.

I take advantage of this last economic fact by celebrating Half Price Chocolate Day tomorrow.

Classism and consumption in romance novels

I used to read a lot of romance novels, probably because I was single for a long time. Over time, I kept seeing tropes pop up that rubbed me the wrong way:

Vast differences in social class between male and female protagonists. Titles like “The Millionaire’s Pregnant Secretary” and “The Sheikh’s Prize* make male wealth and female beauty the main selling point in the book. Edwardian romance paints the man as a duke or an earl and the woman as a genteel clergyman’s daughter or an orphan or a nanny. And don’t get me started with JD Robb’s romantic police procedurals — she’s a cop and he owns half the planet. The exchange of her beauty for his money is classic, but perhaps outdated in a society with much more egalitarianism.
Large amounts of money in the happily ever after — research shows that, although money changes everything, it does not necessarily change it for the better. Lottery winners are no more happy than us normal people, and maybe even less happy. People tend to throw their fortunes away, and given the bounty the male protagonist drops on his true love, romantic males are no exception.
Speaking of money, conspicuous consumption. When the male protagonist spends money, we get detailed descriptions about his wardrobe, his car, the dress, the dinner, the yacht, the trousseau, the … you get it. We witness how the protagonists spend their wealth, because if they didn’t spend it, nobody, including us, would know how rich they were. That’s the meaning of conspicuous consumption.
Overdone sex and male prowess. Don’t get me wrong, I like sex.** But these invariable rules make me skip ahead to the next scene: If the female is a virgin, she’s overwhelmed by the size of the male’s penis. If she’s not a virgin, he supplies better orgasms than anyone else. No matter how badly the two protagonists fight, they still have better sex than any of their readers. They always have sex before falling in love, and they spend the rest of the book dithering about why they can’t marry the other person, and it’s invariably that they don’t want to subject the other person to embarrassment or ridicule or a life of servitude. We, the readers, don’t only vicariously consume the couple’s wealth, but their out-in-the-open sex life.

I admit I’m not the typical reader. Wish fulfillment to me would be living in Canada as a published author, retired, and a cat***. I like my couples to have more equal footing, and the woman to supply more than just her pretty face to the union. I like strong females and males with depth, not just “strong and silent”.

I have to admit that I still read a few romance authors. Robin D. Owens I read for her world building and her focus on emotional baggage rather than “He/she wouldn’t possibly want to marry me”. Also, her sex scenes are reasonably anchored in reality. I read Barbara Michaels, although her books may not be considered romance, because she has very real protagonists who seldom have the immense social class disparities. I read a few others — Mary Balogh among others. And I still read JD Robb, but I skip over the sexual acrobatics.

* These may actually be real titles for all I know.

** Oops. TMI.

*** I would not be the first published cat. That honor goes to Lil’ Bub, the pint-sized alien cat.