Conscious Choice: Bloomingdale’s and Produce

July 2006

Bloomingdale’s and Produce

By John Peterson

I was in Bloomingdale’s of New York this weekend. I was in New York for reasons I’m not quite sure of. Perhaps it had to do with a hundred days straight in the fields of my farm, Angelic Organics. Maybe I needed a break from dry weather, hot weather, cold weather, workers quitting, weeds flourishing. Maybe I was just in terror of the stampede of vegetables coming our way—twice the crop we’ve ever raised, the daunting, exhilarating problem of a dream come true. Perhaps I needed a reminder that the throb of Angelic Organics produce was not the only commotion in the world.

Anyway, I found myself in New York City—at the Lexington and 59th Street subway station. As I ascended the steps, I noticed the entrance to Bloomingdale’s. I was wearing a shabby straw hat. Perhaps this marvel of consumerism would have a suitable replacement.

Dozens of groomed women greeted me with spritzers as I made my way through the enormous cosmetics department.

“Would you like to try our Jaipur by Boucheron?” The poised, uniformed clerk, her features impeccably shaded and toned, misted my wrist with a luxurious, fruity haze of eau de toilette Jaipur. “It’s made exclusively for Bloomingdale’s of New York. You can’t get it anywhere else in the world.”

Does this mean it’s indigenous? I wondered to myself.

I wandered the aisles of glamour. Chanel, Orlane Paris, Shiseido, Studio Gear, Clarins, Clinique. Scrubbed, coiffed clerks offered exotic aromas. Teeth gleamed. Eyes glistened. The Lancôme display implored, “Choose your two colors: Personal Eyes.” Lancôme’s Bienfait enticed with “Total Well-Being for Your Skin. Total Hydration. Total Radiance.”

Alexandra de Markoff offered “Eye Shapers—the nonsurgical eye lift” and “Face Shapers—the secret weapon that’s easier than a face lift.”

Something in this is familiar, I mused. There is an impulse here that is similar to an impulse in the produce business. In produce, quality is usually associated with exterior qualities: sheen, uniformity, and the absence of blotches or insect or worm damage. A certain look is regarded as identical to wholesomeness, freshness, quality. But was the crop really grown on well-mineralized, biologically active soil? Was it really harvested recently? Is that reflective skin an expression of inner glow or just the right wax?

“Lasting, luxury lipstick gives a smooth, moist youthening glow.”

This is the image era. The image is confused with the real thing. Photographs are marketed as memories. Intense personal moments are like something in the movies. The wax on the apple becomes the message of health. The blush applied to the woman’s face becomes her vitality. That celebrity who celebrated the beauty of pregnancy by offering her naked body to the front cover of a national magazine—the image went back to the studio again and again for manipulation, once for a smaller neck.

“Why are you picking up all those brochures?” the Gale Hayman saleswoman asked me.

“I’m a farmer, and this cosmetics floor is making me think about vegetables.”

She looked bewildered.

“It’s about looks,” I offered. “Cosmetics and vegetables. Do any of these companies offer health programs, spas, food seminars? Anything Ayurvedic?”

“Ayurvedic?”

“It’s an Indian approach to wellbeing. It’s a little more comprehensive than this.” I gestured towards the counters.

“Oh, you mean from the inside out,” she chirped. “No, on Fifth Avenue there’s a company that does that. I don’t think it’s Indian, though. This is all from the outside in. Just looks. I grew up in Vermont,” she added. “Everyone had gardens. No one worried about what they were eating there, ’cause they just went out in their backyard and grabbed it.”

She interrupted her memory to answer the question of a more promising customer than the farmer in the tattered straw hat.

She then continued, “You know what I’m really worried about, though? I don’t want pig genes in my potatoes. They’re starting to do that, you know, and it’s terrifying.”

“It won’t even be labeled,” I mentioned. “The FDA will pull supplements off the shelves of health food stores, but they won’t protect you from animal vegetables.”

I proceeded through the plume of fragrances. Estée Lauder beckoned with lotions—Youth Dew, Knowing, Beautiful. I was mesmerized. I’ve never minded makeup, never thought it was something people weren’t supposed to do. But as I navigated this labyrinth of images, aromas and colors, I kept imagining customers buying engorged, glossy peppers in a produce department. The organic section in this imaginary store did not have a customer.

“What are you doing?” I asked the lanky, redheaded Tuscany clerk.

She quickly covered a drawing.

“Nothing,” she answered.

“You’re doodling,” I challenged.

“That guy over there,” she nodded towards a handsome young man in a white jacket at the Aramis booth. He was flanked by Plexiglas display columns of Tuscany fragrances. “He keeps making drawings of me. He puts them in my drawer. I want to get back at him.”

She reached into a drawer and handed me a flattering sketch of her done with a slight Art Nouveau flourish.

“He wants a date,” I said.

She giggled.

“Show me your drawing,” I requested.

She reluctantly revealed a primitive sketch of round eyes, a triangular nose, a line mouth—the beginnings of a stick person. Behind the clerk loomed a giant illuminated-from-behind black and white photograph of a couple-in-love, reveling in the fragrance of Joop.

“Did you hear that?” she asked.

“What?”

“The bird noise. You’ll hear it.”

A tropical warble floated through the Bloomingdale’s din.

“It’s that guy who draws me,” she offered. “All day he makes those bird noises. He doesn’t even open his mouth.”

I watched him polish bottles of Devin cologne. His mouth seemed closed.

Another beautiful bird sound floated through the hubbub.

“I have to get back to work,” she said.

She flitted behind the booth, tucked herself behind a tall display case, rested her chin on the top of the wooden molding, and stared at the bird caller.

I departed amidst the wild noises of Bloomingdale’s. The next day I found the right hat. I’ll model it at our next field day. And don’t forget to smell my wrist.

Excerpted from Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables by Farmer John Peterson and Angelic Organics. Text ©2006 John Peterson and Angelic Organics. Reprinted with permission of Gibbs Smith, Publisher, gibbs-smith.com .

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