The Gifting Conundrum

Every now and then, life presents us with certain conundrums – why is Paris Hilton famous, is a zebra black with white stripes or the other way round, and how exactly are condoms tested. I mean, seriously – if, as a condom manufacturer, you want to test out a new condom how exactly do you go about it? Here are some possibilities, although I really have no clue if they are true:

1. Hire people to hang around in your labs and have sex all day, and give you feedback on the condom’s performance. I doubt if this actually happens, though. Otherwise I’m sure it would rival “Travel Show Host” as one of the most-sought-after dream jobs.
2. Have a network of pimps to whom you can periodically hand out condoms and ask them to get the same tested through their contacts.
3. Have a bunch of people as ready research respondents whom you can hand out the condoms to whenever needed. In such a case, what would happen in case said respondent is out of a partner at that point? Would the manufacturer arrange for that too, or would they find another respondent?  

But I digress – this really isn’t about the condoms – the bigger question that I’ve been grappling with is – who is it easier to buy a gift for, a guy or a girl? Somehow, girls always end up complaining how hard it is to decide on a gift for a guy – and guys complain about how difficult it is to buy a gift for a girl. As a guy, it all seems straightforward to me:

There really aren’t too many things that you can gift a guy – a shirt, an aftershave lotion or a book. This is a GOOD thing, not a bad thing. How can you possibly go wrong when the choice is limited to these three?

But with women, it is so much more complicated. There are clothes, there’s jewellery, perfumes, books, a holiday, a spa voucher, cosmetics...the list is endless. And it is almost impossible to choose certain things for women – like clothes, for instance. I dare not pick up clothes for any woman I know, because I really have no clue whether it’ll fit well or not – simply knowing the waist size or shoulder size is never enough, there is this whole question of the right fitting. Even with perfumes, you could go disastrously wrong and gift something which she says is nice and subsequently never uses it. Same with jewellery – I mean, I wouldn’t be able to recognize bad jewellery even if it hit me in the face (which is what I think will be the outcome if I ever did gift jewellery to anyone). I live in perpetual fear of the day I might have to buy an engagement ring – what if I make the wrong choice and the woman is stuck with a ring she doesn’t like for a lifetime? I have seen women have hour-long discussions on what a good ring should look like, whereas if someone asked me what my views on the aesthetics of rings were, I’d be as uncomfortable as a Jihadist who’s been asked to extol the merits of Western culture. Clearly, because there is so much choice, there are so many pitfalls too.

This point is best illustrated when you look at a guy’s bathroom and a girl’s. In a guy’s bathroom, all you’ll see is a bar of soap and a shampoo. And when you walk into a woman’s bathroom, what do you see?

1. 2-3 kinds of soap bars – a regular one, an organic/home-made one and so on.
2. At least 2-3 shower gels, with names like Aloe Vera Skin Solution Aromatic Body Wash, Tropical Sundance Shower Gel with Almond-Lemon Extract, Organic Herbal Natural Super-Indulgent Bathing Gel with granules of Peruvian Turmeric, etc.
3. 3-4 different kinds of shampoos, with descriptors like “For partially damaged yet not truly beyond hope of repair hair”, “hair fall reduction for medium-length coarse hair”, etc.
4. Matching conditioners for the shampoos mentioned in the previous point
5. A body scrub
6. A face wash
7. A face scrub
8. A toner
9. Moisturiser
10. Lotion
11. Morning cream
12. Night cream
13. Evening cream
14. Early-afternoon cream
15. 2-3 Problem-solving products such as anti-acne cream, anti-blackhead ointment, etc.

 

Now you tell me – who is it easier to gift for? Imagine a similar complexity extended to all other aspects of gifting – when you’re buying clothes for a guy, a shirt would do. For a girl, you have to choose between tops, trousers, stoles, scarves, Indian, western, etc. Perhaps the only safe bet here would be flowers!

On the other hand, though, this logic can also work in the opposite direction. For instance, if the guy is a techie-gadget-freak types, how do you decide if the “New PlayStation Portable P-5000 with optional death ray blast” is better or would you rather go for the “Handheld 2^nd Generation X-Box 360 with 10” OLED display, multi-touch interface and in-built coffee-brewing technology”?

Like I mentioned, a conundrum indeed!