Male Parts: Electronics and the American Female

Standing in the wide well-lit aisles of my local Best Buy, basking in the glow of fifty-seven screens showing me Johnny Depp grinning beneath swinging dreads, one thing is immediately apparent: Size Does Matter. The largest display in the store tops out at sixty inches, only four shorter than the average American female. I try to imagine watching Paris Hilton life-sized but the sensation is too disturbing.

An attentive salesperson hurries up to me, clearly aware that a female in this environment is as vulnerable as a wounded giraffe at a watering hole. Wearing the ubiquitous uniform of polo shirt and khakis, I don't know if he wants to bring me a chai latte or recommend a five iron for this distance on the fairway. He begins to speak.

We start off with the Stereo 101, the baby steps. Where will I be installing the stereo? How big is the room? Would I be using the thing for atmosphere or to loosen the screws in my home's foundation?

Then, the expected talk of component, cable and surround-sound integration. But his sales pitch wades deeper into stereo lingo and an unintelligible stream of acronyms. I discover that even highly-trained staffers must consult like anxious referees about the origins of THX and WEGA. If you cannot pronounce Wii, do not pass go. More importantly, do not shell out $400.

Remember when that neatly stacked set of boxes on an awkward stand in the corner of the living room was called an Entertainment Center? Now it's a Media Center, a term that accommodates both the fact that the average home has twenty-five electronic devices in it, with TV's outnumbering live residents, and that the average cable system offers five dozen channels - but there's still nothing on.

Television, Best Buy's most aggressively-displayed commodity, still anchors the electronics sprawl in the modern home. But its supporting accessories are immense. I inspect the store's shelves of receivers, CD players, speakers and equalizers — black and silver boxes with shimmering green and orange LCD displays. These are the dreaded "components," the arch enemy of feminine interior decor that can transform any carefully-fashioned living room into the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.

The salesman assures me — an obviously stylin' gal — that these systems are designed with a "small footprint" for "minimal intrusion" on your home's space. It takes me a moment to realize that he is serious. I express a healthy skepticism that seven pieces of anything packed in a box as big as a file cabinet can possibly avoid intrusion.

"Well," he offers helpfully, "you can hang them on the wall."

Mounted, perhaps, next to my series of black and white photographs from a recent vacation to London? Too polite to guffaw, I cough delicately and my stereo education continues: hertz, watts, inches. "It's all about power," my guide intones as he surveys the blinking readouts. Inches, indeed.

I share the terror of every woman when I envision my cozy home refashioned into a sports bar by a wall of electronics, the coffee table where I had artfully merchandised my accessories now buried under a herd? a gaggle? a click! of remotes. (Even die-hard techie friends acknowledge to me that the "universal" remote is a myth, like Atlantis or the unicorn.) The only shared characteristic for these gizmos is their uncanny ability to attract all of the dust in the known universe.

As men accumulate larger assortments of components, women retaliate with embellishments. A grim trench warfare ensues. Guys grudgingly realize that each electronics purchase entails a compensatory number of trips to Target. There, anxious spouses will search for camouflaging accent items like shallow bowls full of pine-cone potpourri and lacquered wooden fruit or fake orchids in elaborately painted ceramic urns.

I imagine how my honey and I could have put those same funds to decadent use during a series of pampered weekends at some snug bed and breakfast. But then his friends come over to watch the new Blu-ray release of T2: Extreme Edition. And they confront his masterpiece of surround sound. Pausing at a respectful distance, there is a hushed moment of inspection and awe.

His friend, the uber-tech, speaks: "Titanium-laminate-dome tweeters?" My man nods without any trace of smugness. A chorus of "Duuuuude" is their ovation. It may be goofy but I cannot help but be happy for him. At least until the next round of engineered obsolescence upsets our delicate balance of decibels and decor.

First published in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!, June 2007.
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