Write a personality profile in the context of “The Semiotics of Home Décor” by Joan Kron (119) by describing 3 possessions and linking them to a specific facet of your personality.
McMahon’s Example
Item 1: Oversized “Manly Watches
McMahon’s preference for the “manly watch” suggests an alter ego that secretly longs to do something conspicuously masculine. Serving his country as a Navy SEAL or Delta Force operative, or a law enforcement specialist are but a few occupations that appeal to his sense of daring and adventure. Also, it has been reported that McMahon has a secret wish to be a world-champion MMA fighter, or perhaps even replace Jack Bauer, the hero, on the television series 24. Clearly, as a middle-aged man, McMahon longs to regain his youth and prowess, qualities he enjoyed during his past glory years, which are embodied in the chunky ostentatious bezels on his glorious oversized watches. Furthermore, McMahon sees the watch as a bold statement of the masculine role in a technological world that has become “feminized,” made soft with cushions, automatic can openers, coffee makers, etc. McMahon’s alter ego sees himself surviving in the waterfall-soaked crags and crevices of the Tibetan mountains where he builds his own cozy hovel from rocks and drift wood and lives at one with nature. Also, when McMahon walks into any cocktail party, his watch makes it clear to everyone, “I AM LARGE AND IN CHARGE.”
Item 2: A gun-metal gray Nissan Maxima
McMahon’s choices of color and car name are no accident here. The color, bold titanium, also called gun metal gray, reinforces the same masculine aesthetic he asserts with his choice of oversized watches. The car’s name, “Maxima,” suggests sheer heft, bulk, and density, a formidable presence that commands respect when McMahon walks into the classroom. Further, McMahon’s choice of the Maxima makes it clear that he is a person who avoids the status symbols of European cars because, as a man well studied in automobiles, he knows all too well that European cars incur outrageous maintenance costs that are 500% more than Nissan, Infiniti, Lexus, and Acura. McMahon’s car choice strikes a wise balance between high-performance and reliability and McMahon’s prudence and wisdom assert his superior choices over the ignorant masses who would squander their entire incomes on European cars just to satisfy their pathetic egos, which are so desperate for the kind of status and attention they believe European cars afford them. Of course, McMahon knows these misguided souls live in error and folly and as he drives his Maxima he does so with the assurance that he is a man who supremely shrugs off the need for a European status symbol.
Item 3: Vermont Maple Hardwood Flooring Throughout the House
McMahon’s preference for hardwood flooring over carpet is very telling about his interior design aesthetic, namely, that he is a man who prefers cleanliness to the warmth and softness that carpeting provides. “Give me hard, cold flooring that is clean and easy to maintain,” McMahon said in a recent interview. Here we see that McMahon loathes the high-maintenance of carpet and he is incurably disgusted by the way carpet harbors germs, bacteria, mold, dust mites, and other myriad forms of filth. Additionally, McMahon prefers the clean, spare, neutral look of his Vermont maple to what he calls “the Petri dish of infection and disease that roils in every carpet fiber in America.” Clearly, McMahon is a man who is very persnickety and fastidious when it comes to cleanliness and rumors about his preference for hardwood flooring over carpeting evidence that he suffers from hypochondria and general paranoia, but McMahon adamantly and unequivocally denies these claims.
Comments