MANILA, Philippines - The new pop anthem of reemerged icon Britney Spears is not just a catchy ditty. It is a cautionary guide against living off of undeserved wealth.
Amid the many clever caricatures and blood pressure-raising images that emerged from the raging pork barrel scandal, one stuck out to me the most. No, it wasn’t the silhouette of a pig, colored in the Philippine flag’s red, white and blue. Neither was it the activist/comedienne Juana Change’s many adorable costumes that ranged between a Kevlar vest to a pig’s snout. It was the image published by Rappler’s.Natashya Gutierrez of three paper bags, obviously filtered through Instagram’s Valencia, of Jimmy Choo, Hervé Leger and Christian Louboutin. Rappler was the first to break the story on the lavish lifestyle of Jeane Napoles, daughter of Janet, the epicenter of public furor over the pork barrel scam. The daughter was, just days ago, slammed with a tax evasion case by the BIR to the tune of P32 million. News about the mother and daughter are readily available online and in print, and while the Philippine public patiently waits for trial and verdict if indeed our tax money has been laundered in the form of luxury goods and the Ritz Carlton, there is already one lesson to be learned from the ensuing saga. And it is parental and sartorial in nature.
You want a Lamborghini? Sip Martinis?
Whether the limousine-living, Grammy-attending lifestyle was funded by legitimate business or ill-gotten wealth, the fact remains that Jeane Napoles is a 23-year-old unemployed young lady who just finished a degree in fashion merchandising. In this age of bragstagram, self-promotion can easily become self-incrimination. There is nothing wrong with loving beautiful things. However, these items must be earned by dint of hard work. Full disclosure: I am in the business of pushing luxury items — anointing the It bag of the season and declaring the must-have jewelry piece of the year. However, I have always believed that class and money are two very different things. Beautiful baubles become worthy trophies only after you have worked your way up, given back to your parents and put your brother through college. They are not the priority in life but may be considered the sweet ending, rewards after a hard-won business plan is executed or after that big launch saved a company from bankruptcy.
A nice condo is okay but it must be the product of sleepless nights of beating work deadlines, doing shoots back to back or styling for television’s 36-hour tapings. It was to my horror when, walking around one campus, I saw students carrying Celine luggage totes, wearing YSL sneakers and pulling out Chanel lipsticks. Pardon the perfunctory wave of ye old walking stick, but when I was a student, I was perfectly happy with my Jansport navy blue backpack and beat-up Converse Chuck Taylors. I was too busy trying to close the next month’s issue of The LaSallian while nailing my grades to be bothered by what my next luxury purchase would be or to imagine how life might be if I had some cool CDG kicks.
You want to live fancy?
Are fashion magazines and fashion sections of media to blame? While I might be called biased, I think not. Growing up reading Vogue and Vanity Fair (and Time magazine) never gave me the desire to be decked out in Rodeo Drive labels head to toe when I couldn’t afford them. I would cite good parenting as the best preventive measure, if not the antidote, against the social pressure of doing selfies with Hermès Birkin bags and a newly minted Porsche Cayenne. My mother never gave me more than what I needed, and by what I needed, I was perfectly happy eating P60 meals in Agno (De La Salle’s dusty street lined with penne carbonara takeaway boxes and taco salad in Styrofoam containers), taking the LRT, and going to the reliable Surplus shop for my clothes. In an act of pure genius, she cut off my allowance the day after my commencement exercises, promptly pushing me out into the working world with an abrupt but motherly splash. Good thing I wasn’t completely broke, as I was already working in one of the biggest multinational companies while still studying, and it turned out to be the best foundation for my career, where I met some of the best minds I still call mentors and friends to this day. The lesson was simple: “If you haven’t earned it, you can’t buy it, let alone selfie it.â€
While some people might call this upbringing a tad harsh, it was actually the best training one could hope for. It teaches one the value of money, that taste can never be bought, that it is never, ever cool to live beyond your means. This lesson is not just for children of erstwhile public servants but also of private individuals blessed with trust funds. American tycoon Warren Buffett is admirable for famously appropriating majority of his money to philanthropic foundations, instead of bequeathing it to his children. In a Fortune magazine article, Buffett explained, “My kids are going to carve out their own place in this world, and they know I’m for them, whatever they want to do.†His benchmark for how much is enough? “Enough so that they feel they could do anything but not so much that they could do nothing.†Parents have the power to spoil and unspoil children, and children have the power to rise beyond their parents’ names and make a mark (and build bank accounts) of their own. On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are children from affluent families who, even if they could rely on their parents for life, still choose to till their own soil and create ventures that would provide jobs for Filipinos. There is just no room for self-entitlement.
As we observe, with much derision, the unsolicited, self-published lifestyles of the rich and the newly rich, one can only hope to have something like the AMLC (Anti-Money Laundering Council) for shopping. It is, of course, impossible and against capitalist culture to investigate the source of funding of every single purchase. Barring this, we must simply take to heart the wise words of Britney Spears: “You want a Bugatti? You want a Maserati? You better work, b*tch.â€
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Author’s note: B*tch here is not meant to single anyone out. Rather, it refers to all and sundry, myself proudly included.
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