A gleeful indictment of shopping season
Let indulgence and guilt wash over you like a beluga caviar facial.
This is my pretentious dispatch from the mall.
To heck with golden harps, heaven is a stack of new cashmere, good denim, and buttery leather boots, punctuated by something dainty in rose gold and a mist of something that smells like earth. My Valhalla is comfortable aesthetic perfection, tags freshly removed.
There’s a reason we talk about retail therapy. It taps perfectly into the primal drive to hunt and gather. The seeking, finding, and consuming of the shopping experience leaves me spent, satisfied. Depleted by bargain hunting and decision fatigue, my frantic mind is temporarily depleted. For a moment it’s quiet, though soon enough the shame will roll in like heavy fog and I will scold myself for being so basic and for burgling my future. But for a breathless moment, I am calm, accomplished, and distracted by the novelty of the haul.
Picture it. It's Friday after a long week. I’ve dutifully woken with the sun. I’ve exercised and avoided the temptation of the Twitter scroll. I’ve been nice to my coworkers and turned in high-quality deliverables. I did my best, and I need a release. But I quit drinking 5 years ago, so a trip to the department store steps up to fill the void left by a hundred missed happy hours. When the shopgirl greets me like a trusty bartender, we collaborate to do some damage not to my liver, but to my wallet.
Cognitive dissonance abounds. I witness my self-destructive appetite for consumption. So to cope, I lie. I pretend I’m not shopping for myself. I step into an elaborate fantasy in which I’m the personal assistant of some incredibly wealthy woman who tasks me with finding her the best pieces for a luxe upcoming event. This way, I’m not a glutton, simply the dutiful squire to a gorgeous megalomaniac, who just so happens to wear my same size. When I am cowed by an astronomical price tag, I simply channel her and mutter our vague excuse — "Eh we already have something so similar to this," and place the decadent suede pencil skirt back on the rack.
Perhaps, I muse, I am shopping for my future self, who happens to be casually, fabulously wealthy. But with each excursion and each jar of luxe frankincense-scented moisturizer, my present drains a little bit of life out of her. I am feasting on the blood of my future, in the name of looking chic at an upcoming event that is as imaginary as my successful lifestyle brand.
It’s good to be surrounded by curated elegance. Some erudite, data-driven people in a distant branding department boardroom carefully predicted and broadcast my desires to me, and I am putty in their hands. They invite me to touch and try the things they serve up to reach the very essential nature of my carefully constructive demographic profile. My inner Veruca Salt touches everything and barely contains her tantrum. “I want the world!” I may in fact be a bad egg, but outwardly I exhibit restraint, feign sophisticated, picky interest as the galloping greedy gimmies dance in my head.
Perhaps, I consider, this fresh lamb's wool sweater will transport me from my current life to that of the adventurous Canadian isle fisherwoman from the catalog. Those marketing gurus channeled my rebellious spirit into soft muscle tees and high waist leather leggings. They answer my ache for elegance with soft gold hoops and winter layers. I buy their lie of consumerism and, often, I buy the sweater too. It makes me feel temporarily powerful, like the wife of a recently murdered king.
It seems obvious that living out my galleria fantasy is in direct opposition to a destiny of actual wealth, sophistication, and power. In fact, indulging in short-term pleasures like $30 candles creates a state of low-level crisis that contrasts starkly with the calm that flickering lavender flame was designed to impart. Post-shopping panic attacks are real, but at least they come wrapped in merino and silk.
So who cares if the indulgence in retail therapy flies in the face of long term goals? So what, I’m squandering the down payment for my hobby farm, a few head of buffalo, and a custom bungalow with wool insulation, a river stone hearth, and a giant writing desk with a view? Call it millennial disillusionment or abundance mindset, but since I can't feel that reality yet, I grasp for its trappings instead. Rather than stashing $50 to grow the nest egg, I get the cargo pants I'll wear to paint the barn and a beef tallow candle that smells like birch. When the real dream feels out of reach, I choose to play dress-up and dance with the ghost of the future.
Wise words
Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.
Seneca
ICYMI
Last time, I wrote about confronting the inner minotaur to break free of self-imposed stuckness. Out of respect for your inbox and the muses, I do not promise to write each week or every other week or every month but rather I promise to send something only when I have something beautiful to share. Cool?
I'm glaring at you HARD in my new lamb's wool sweater.