mmmm shopping
2004-09-26

Finally, finally, finally I went shopping this weekend. I have read various self-help books in my time as well as many, many issues of GlamourCosmoMarieClaire, so I know that part of "self-care" is shopping (along with bubble baths and watching your favorite tv show! Self-care is dull, y'all! And possibly the cause of vaginal infection, if you buy the wrong kind of bubble bath). And I also always feel a bit sick reading this, as after all this is advocating consumption as a cure for depression, thus sinking you farther into the capitalist machine. Et cetera.

But let me tell you, it really does make you feel better. It's a very stupid, transitory type of happiness but it is there. The excitement of pulling something off the rack, of finally finding something that fits (and I'm a busty, short-legged little woman, so the excitement is well-earned), and putting it back up on the hook in the dressing room, knowing you're going to take it home - well, it's nice.

I really do get wrapped up in it, too. I tried on one shirt, and I immediately bonded with the damn thing. It started to mesh with my ratty old jeans (I routinely wear my ugliest clothes out shopping, probably so I can rejoice even more in the newness of my purchases). I could visualize our future together! If this shirt had legs, we would run together through a sunny field, laughing (although the shirt would have to have a mouth for that, and that's just too fucked up).

It's moments like that that make all the times I try on a trumpet skirt and think that I look like the Venus of Willendorf worthwhile. Also all the times I realize that I'm slowly getting myself into a crushing debt that my income can in no way erase!