Strawberry Shortcake and Technological Determinism
The Luddite Message of "Makeover Madness"
One of the most challenging parts of parenting is reading the inane books your children bring home from the library, particularly the licensed books. I’m convinced that 90% of them are written by algorithm. So you can imagine my surprise when my daughter brought me Strawberry Shortcake’s Makeover Madness and I discovered a compelling critique of technology, depiction of alienation, and expression of community as a space of healing.
Before I go any further, I would just like to say that my idea of the Strawberry Shortcake franchise is the 1980s Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak.
What a dastardly man. Anyway.
Tea and Dignity at the Beauty Salon
Our story begins with Lemon Meringue at work in her beauty salon. Every friend in the village visits her salon, getting their hair and nails done while being served tea, eating, and socializing. It is a communal space and a space for Lemon to work with dignity. She is excellent at what she does and she sees the immediate fruit of her labor. And there is no indication that the tea is a kind of value-add or corny sales tactic. It is gratuitous. She does it because she cares for her neighbors.
The conflict arises as soon as you turn the page: because she is so invested in serving her neighbors with excellence, she messes up all their hair. “There’s just so much to do!” She laments. Although her intentions were good, she did not set human limits on her work, we might say.
But she is not deterred. She fixes their hair, and that could have been the end of the book, but here she makes what I think is her fatal mistake: when all her friends go out for a picnic, she stays behind to give her salon “a bit of a makeover.” Rather than re-adjust her expectations about what she can accomplish, she begins looking for a way to work more efficiently. And of course, in a technological society, there is always a more efficient system.
The Salon-o-Matic
After reading what must be a salon trade magazine, she discovers a new product called a Salon-o-Matic, which can perfectly perform manicures and pedicures, and style hair faster that Lemon can. It works, “like magic,” which is always the false promise of technology.
As with most technology adoption (think about your first experience with self-checkout), her friends are initially skeptical and worried. But once they try it, they are thrilled. It is magical. It is so magical that no one needs the salon anymore.
Soon after, Lemon calls her friends, asking if they need to have their hair or nails touched up, but the Salon-o-Matic has done its job too well. It has effectively replaced her.
Strawberry Shortcake—like the good friend she is—drops by to check on Lemon. And Lemon laments, “I don’t have anything to do. . . The Salon-o-Matic did all my work for me.” Thus the alienation and ennui begins.
Lemon Becomes Alienated from Her Labor
The promise of efficiency and technology is that it will free us from our toil, but it also can free us from meaningful work. By caring for her neighbors, Lemon was loving them and making their neighborhood a bit more beautiful. Granted, there was probably some vanity involved, but the basic principle stands.
Lemon now goes on a quest for meaning. How can she replace the purpose she once had by serving her friends? She begins by helping Strawberry in her café, making smoothies, presumably out of strawberries. Which is cannibalism. Anyway, she’s bad at making smoothies. The dignity she felt in her labor came from the excellence she achieved. Also, Strawberry doesn’t actually need her. It was only out of pity that she offered to let her help. There is no meaning in undignified, unnecessary, poorly done labor.
Next she visits Plum’s dance class studio. But the same problem occurs. Their village does not need another dance teacher. She returns home in despair and begins packing to move the “Big Bitty City.” Technology has shut her out of the local community, so her only hope for meaningful work, she thinks, is to move to a big city where there is greater need. What she doesn’t realize is that there will also be greater competition and she will have no community to support her.
Thankfully, her community intervenes. Orange and Blueberry catch her packing and inform her that they want her to stay. But she heads for the bus anyway.
Realizing that the Salon-o-Matic is the source of Lemon’s alienation, her friends mess up their hair, run to the bus stop, and tell her that the machine malfunctioned. They choose the security and health of the community over the convenience of technology.
Agreeing Not To Do All That She Can Do
Immediately Lemon feels better. She jumps into action and fixes their hair. Afterward her friends confess their lie. But rather than accept her friend’s gesture, Lemon voices a kind of techno-determinism: “Well, if the Salon-o-Matic really works, then I’m not needed here anymore.” In other words, if the technology exists, and it is more efficient, then you are obligated to choose it over me.
What finally changes Lemon’s mind is when Strawberry Shortcake explains how inhuman the machine is. The machine is more efficient, but it cannot compliment the friends, it cannot laugh and participate in conversations, it cannot be “a shoulder to cry on” and “it doesn’t give hugs.” Note the emphasis on the human body.
It turns out that the salon was not merely a place to get your hair and nails done. It was a place for human connection, for neighborliness, for—dare I say it?—love! The commercial and practical were not the most important ends of the space.
Strawberry concludes by announcing, “That machine could never replace you!” And Lemon sends it back. In the words of Jacques Ellul, Lemon “agree[d] not to do all [s]he [was] capable of.”
What Did We Learn?
What can we learn from this masterpiece of licensed children’s fiction?
We do not have to accept all technological innovation. Presumably, in Big Bitty City Salon-o-Matics are in every salon. But in your house, your space, you may “agree not to do all that you are capable of”—what Ellul calls the “ethics of non-power.”
Community is more important than efficiency and is often at odds with efficiency.
Dignified work is often at odds with efficiency.
Commercialized spaces can also be spaces where real human interactions take place, especially when there are small, non-corporate spaces.
Some forms of despair and depression come from a lack of purpose.
Sometimes the drive to escape a hometown is driven by a lack of meaningful jobs.
Communities cannot address meaningless by patronizing people with busy work. Work for work’s sake does not resolve the problem.
Strawberry Shortcake is a cannibal.
Very cool story and interpretation of it.
Love the biblical imagination at work. I'm currently reading Recovering the Lost Art of Reading by Leland Ryken and Glenda Faye Mathes, and they've defined literature as, "a concrete, interpretive presentation of human experience in an artistic form."
With this definition, would you say Makeover Madness is...literature?
(only half-playing here, but a fun question nonetheless!)