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LEVI NATION

One lavish six-page magazine spread depicts a shifting soap opera saga of young love -- coupling, uncoupling and recoupling. The captions tell us how long these romantic liaisons lasted: "Callie & Ty, three years." Turn the page and it's "Callie and Noah, one year, five months." On the next page Noah has moved on to Kim ("two and a half years"). Next we see Kim with Jeremy, "eleven months (not counting three-week break-up)." Turn the page, and Jeremy has hooked up with Andrea -- "a week and a half."

That the course of youthful love meanders a bit before settling into a good groove is not news, of course. But in case you were still hoping, the final scene shows Andrea hugging a girlfriend in a cluttered kitchen. A poster above the sink declares "Mis Padres se Divorcian" (My Parents Divorced). The caption reads: "At least some things last forever. ... Levi's: They go on."

Young love doesn't last. And let us remind you: Old love doesn't, either. But here -- now that you've been made acutely aware of the longings you will find impossible to satisfy, buy this brand of jeans.

As David Blankenhorn, who wrote about this ad in the latest issue of Propositions, the newsletter of the Institute for American Values, put it, "I don't know what is more upsetting: the lie about our society contained in this ad or the truth."

"What advertisers increasingly sell," he says, "is not simply the product -- this toothpaste makes your teeth whiter, this cola tastes better -- but instead pure symbolism aimed at psychological gratification that, on the face of things, has little or no discernible relationship to the product. Are you an individualist, different from the herd? Buy this car. ... Want a relationship that will last? Buy these jeans."

Economists may prattle on about how the decisions of the Rational Man drive the economy, but advertisers know better. The way to move customers (or, increasingly, voters) is to bypass rational argument altogether and simply associate your product with a particular mood or set of values. The act of buying becomes a quasi-religious act, an attempt to gain access to a different, better realm of being. Surely the symbolic portion of our purchases has never been larger. How else do you explain the millions of Americans who, in a country with the highest water standards in human history, shell out two bucks for bottled water?

When it comes to marriage, Levi's exaggerates (demographers say 60 percent of recent marriages that are first marriages for both partners will last). But here, too, the gap between what we long for and what we get has never been more apparent. "To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse" is the vow. "Disabled Spouses Are Increasingly Forced to Go It Alone" is for too many the new reality, according to a recent New York Times headline. Since 1984, the proportion of disabled adults who are divorced jumped by a third, just as divorce rates for the rest of the country were leveling off. "It's no longer considered necessary to hang in there with a disabled spouse," says Ira Lurvey, former chairman of the ABA's family law section. "The real message we get ... is if the marriage is too hard, you're not expected to keep it going." If that leaves your spouse "without income, health insurance or support at home" as The New York Times says is the new trend, well, that's his problem.

That's the joy of consuming values, instead of having them.

(Readers may reach Maggie Gallagher at GallagherIAV@Yahoo.com.)

COPYRIGHT 1999 MAGGIE GALLAGHER

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