Mom called to tell me she read an article in USA Today about a hair band with lasers in Las Vegas that made your hair thicker. “Mom are you day drinking?” I asked.
“People are out in Vegas at a tech convention with all kinds of devices and you put the hair thing on and the lasers shoot out and the FDA says it’s okay, Hol,” she said. Sucker for a hair band and a laser show that I am, I Googled and sure enough, the Consumer Electronics Show, or CES 2016, was indeed in Las Vegas the week of Jan. 6. Mom was talking about an “igrow” helmet, a device reminiscent of a bicycle helmet with infrared or blue light geared to stimulate your hair follicles.
A more thorough version of laser combs already in circulation, the “igrow,” while wearable and tech, is not the same sort of wearable tech you may already own and wear proudly in public. Fitbits and Apple Watches proved in demand to the trained eye, or to be precise, the eye that catches yours looking at the wearable tech worn, because said wearer cannot stop playing with it in public and, “Hey, look how cool I am.” If you’re me, but with cash to burn so not me, my money is on an Opening Ceremony or another designer bracelet disguised as a chic accessory that delivers discretely your messages and appointments to your wrist, which, in my fantasy, you ignore because who has time for such things? As if.
Discretion, after all, is key when the messages are texts from your vagina to alert you via a smart phone app that your menstrual cup, this one the “Looncup” is at capacity and needs to be emptied. That message you should pay attention to probably unless you are completely alone and like doing laundry. If you Google menstrual cup from an iPhone, by the way, as my girlfriend did, auto correct is likely to lead you to “mens trial” instead, apropos of how men would probably describe it anyway, so it all actually works out. Thanks, auto correct!
Lest I digress away from tech and vaginas too soon, another new device, the Babypod, a tiny orbital pink speaker, allows women who have been inseminated artificially to insert it to entertain sperm in utero in hopes of increasing the effectiveness of in vitro fertilization. Babypod is also marketed to pregnant women to introduce music to their fetuses, not through mom’s ears or belly, but directly through her vagina, thus illustrating the true meaning of target audience.
If you don’t have a vagina, or prefer to take your tech aurally and/or visually, you’ll have to settle for an advanced fitness tracker, or a drone or a robot or an extra tricked out gaming system with virtual reality capability, that may obviate the need to ever shave your legs, or beard, or ever go out again. While I couldn’t persuade any friends to talk to me about their adventures in virtual, a physician friend told me she used to use a Fitbit but didn’t see the value of counting her steps since she works out regularly.
“I was obsessing about it telling me how shitty I slept, too,” she said and has switched to tracking her heart rate and calories, as well as checking her messages, on her Apple Watch. An avid skier, she said it saves her from having to reach for her phone on a chairlift or find her phone if she’s at home because she can access apps at a glance via the watch face.
Considering the time it takes to count steps and calories, check a message, check your Looncup or binge watch “Making a Murderer,” it’s a wonder we managed any part of our lives before the wearable tech makers convinced us to monitor our beats, excretions and output. Not to mention that while we’re monitoring ourselves and our stuff, specifically through voice commands in our home entertainment systems and security systems in the cloud, somebody is monitoring us, a fact not lost on a group of moms who sued Mattel for privacy invasion when talking Barbie picked up conversations in the home not meant for public consumption and, boy, is Ken mad.
Of the products at CES 2016 reviewed by various media, the most utilitarian (outside of vagina speakers I mean) is the single flier drone enabled to carry its passenger 23 miles during a single trip. Quite handy for the downtown commute that is only going to get worse this year, according to my Downtown Partnership pal. If the bridge construction made me a mad woman, she said the simultaneous closing and reconstruction of the Convention Center and the Omni Hotels builds, among other projects, will send me over the edge.
Is there an app for that? Nevermind, my vagina is texting. I have to go.
