Must have? Really?

This is what my email inbox looked like one morning in mid-May: ‘must-have’ spring jackets; ‘must-have’ ingredients for youthful looks; and a little further down my emails – ‘must-have’ summer styles. I don’t think I’ve had a ‘must-have’ funeral plan – yet.

Being somewhat of a rebel, this well-worn but psychologically clever cliché tends to have the opposite effect on me. ‘No thanks’, I’ll say inwardly, ‘not if you tell me I need it.’

Perhaps that comes from experience and maturity (without the ingredients to make me look more youthful), but it’s far more difficult for our younger generations who are subject to the same manipulative and enticing advertising that we are, but are less equipped to resist.