I have two peeves.

Well, I think we all know that I have more than two peeves: the list is exhaustive and exhausting. People who toss their cigarettes and/or gum out their car windows; women who leave pee on public toilet seats, etc.

But at this time of year, I have two key peeves.

First Peeve: the car commercials that suggest that getting a car as a gift is the highest expression of love.

Don’t get me wrong; if my parents somehow decided to gift me with a car, that would be awesomeness squared. But only because we could use a newer car right about now, but can’t swing the payments. If my husband went out and spent how much money or incurred how much debt on something like that without consulting with me, I have to confess that my first reaction would be one of horror and then anger, as I considered the payment on that thing and how he went out and spent that kind of money without consulting with me first, as this far exceeds our limit of “no consultation required” spending. If I wanted to sift through my reactions further, I’d also find my conflicted feelings about getting what is really just an appliance for a Christmas present.

To me, a car is just transportation. I want reliability; I want good gas mileage; I want a place to plug in my iPod. Other than that, it’s just a car. It doesn’t say anything about my personality, my status, or my worth as a human being. My car ranks higher than my washing machine in my regard only because my washing machine doesn’t handle iPods very well.

An acquaintance was giving me grief about how my 2003 Honda Accord doesn’t have any personality. My reply? “Hey, MY personality came factory installed. I didn’t have to buy one.”

Second Peeve: jewelry commercials that suggest that my husband doesn’t love me if he doesn’t a) buy me jewelry or b) buy it at a particular store.

What this suggests about women is heinous: that we can be bought off with jewelry. That the ability to buy jewelry is all we look for in a man. And it doesn’t help a thing that for many women, I think that it’s true. I’ve seen, firsthand, too many women make compromises with philandering or abusive husbands after the guy tossed in a diamond grenade to end the hostilities. Or a cruise missile (to the Caribbean, that is). I’ve heard too many women announce that they wouldn’t even consider a marriage proposal without a ring being proffered.

It’s appalling. To buy into this mythos just perpetuates the now-hopefully-obsolete notion that a woman needs a man to survive, rather than what I would hope would have replaced it: the notion that a woman needs a partner to enrich her life, not her pocketbook.