Jaki Jean & The Little Prince & Watches

For some time now, I have opened the New York Times & found an advertisement featuring Antoine de Saint-Exupėry’s The Little Prince.  Only in the ad, unlike the novel there is a plane of the vintage of Saint-Exupėry’s classic crossing the sky.

Engineered for men who dream the dreams others chase.

So, the rebellious feminist in me asked:  Don’t women dream the dreams others chase?

Naturally, I followed the ad’s link to a most extraordinary web site.

The world of IWC watches.  Yes, watches.  Watches designed particularly for men.

For men who don’t need a co-pilot.  I thought to myself, Self, not having a co-pilot is probably not a particularly good idea for a pilot.

The more I explored the IWC site, the more the feminist in Jaki Jean began to roar.

  Here was a company that marketed specifically to men.  Without commodifying the female body.

Instead, IWC commodified a beloved classic. A work of children’s literature. A work whose text & illustrations still speak to readers of all ages seventy years after its original publication.

I don’t remember when I first discovered The Little Prince.  But I remember writing a short story called “Joshua & The Drooping Star,” inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupėry’s classic.

There are, in Jack & Jean’s house where I live, two copies of The Little Prince.  One I bought for my Alpha son Nicholas.  There is no date attached to the inscription:

Dear Nick,

Because you are my prince & because I hope you

are never reduced to losing the child within you.

It is our strength -  and our hope.

All my love,

Mommy

The other copy in Jean & Jack’s house contains a bookplate featuring what I envisioned at the time as a Hobbit.  The binding is finer than the edition I bought Nicholas, from earlier days of publication.  An image of the Little Prince & the book’s title are etched deeply into the binding cover.  The template reads, in lower case because I was going through my e.e.cummings phase:

Ex Libres

jason alexander ettinger

for christmas 1975

The inscription is from a time when I was very much a part of a couple, a participant in the state of matrimony:

dear jason,

this is a very special story. 

we just hope that over the years

as you grow older

and more precious to us, that

this book will come to mean

as much to you as it has

come to mean to us.  it is the

kind of story which can be

read again and again – and

each time you read it,

it will tell you something new.

merry christmas, little one.

we love you,

don and jaki

The more I thought about a corporation usurping a beloved book to market watches exclusively to phallus bearing consumers . . . my outrage escalated.  

I obsessively googled IWC ad campaigns.  And then I found the pièce de résistance – the final piece to turn me against all things IWC Schaffhausen:

Seriously, seriously? Who are these people, these watch makers?  

Hands off our IWC, hands off our watches, hands off our jobs, hands off our property, hands off our schools, hands off government, hands off education, hands off our position as the Ultimate Signifier. 

Exactly in which alternative universe are motorcycles, cigars & really fabulous scotch the exclusive rights of phallus bearers?

I personally have ridden a Harley around Austin, Texas.  While I have not sampled a Havana, I have been offered & declined.  As for Glenmorangie – it was my drink of choice for much of my young adulthood.

But I still explored the whole idea of a beloved children’s classic (which every adult should read) as an advertising medium for watches designed for men.

Of course, the little prince never asks the stranded pilot to draw him a picture of a watch.  A sheep, but not a watch. 

But the IWC website devoted to its “Celebration of The Little Prince’s Finest Hour” has a video of the pilot (absent from the scene) drawing an IWC Le Petit Prince commemorative watch,

And the prince asking for one more.  ( http://www.iwc.com/en/news/iwc-celebrates-the-little-princes-finest-hour/)

After the watched are displayed & the images from the novel fade, the caption reads:

IWC.  ENGINERRED FOR MEN.

AND DREAMERS.

IWC SCHAFFHAUSEN

According to the IWC website, “Since 2006, the Schaffhausen luxury watch manufacturer has maintained a cordial partnership with Saint-Exupéry’s heirs and their charitable organization, the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Youth Foundation.”

Still, I wonder how many little boys across the world, especially in France & the United States, have sat down & read The Little Prince of their own volition. It is not the feminist in me, but the mother of two sons & the woman & the girl who cannot help wonder how many more little girls read this classic & held it dear.  And understood its wonder.

There are, no doubt, women who wear IWC watches.  It is not a watch that one picks up in a department store.  The price tag varies, culminating in six figures.

I don’t know what a classic piece of literature, which has transcended generations of difference for seventy years, has in common with a watch company that advertises to what surely must be an archaic stereotype of the cultural construction of a man.

When I was fifteen, my father gave me a Mickey Mouse watch.  I no longer remember why I wanted one, but it was the sixties & it seemed necessary.

Since that gift, I have worn over forty Mickey Mouse watches.  I still possess the original gift from my father.  For years, when it broke down, I would pay a small fortune to get it repaired, until there were so few people who repaired a wind up watch that I retired it.

While I no longer remember why I wanted that original gift of a Mickey Mouse watch, I do know why I kept wearing it & trying to replace it on my wrist.

It was not about dreaming the dream others chase, or about not needing a co-pilot; or about proving I could ride a motorcycle or smoke a cigar or drink really fine Scotch.  It may have been a bit about touting convention. 

The truth of it is that wearing a Mickey Mouse watch over the last fifty four years is, for me, about memory & connection.  It is about my relationship with my father Jack.  It is about who I am, about how the very best of me was shaped by Jack & Jean.

I cannot imagine any circumstances when I would replace a Mickey with an IWC, even a special edition Pilot Little Prince edition.  Even if I could get beyond the advertising.  It simply would not be the same.