There are certain things that, as a woman, I sometimes find it hard to admit to in front of other women. Things I keep hidden inside me like a dark, shameful secret, until I can hold them in no longer and out they pour, usually as part of a rambling tirade against the Establishment, social conditioning and the impossibility of managing unreasonable expectations. A kind of unprompted cross between confession, an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and a session with my psychologist.
But generally in the middle of a coffee shop. With me gesticulating wildly and looking like a bit of a lunatic. Naturally.
So, with willful defiance, I am saying this loud and proud. In an article that may never be read by anyone I actually know. I really don’t enjoy shopping.
I know that this shouldn’t be a big deal. In an ideal world, we should all be able to pursue what makes us happy, and avoid what doesn’t, without stigma or judgment. Just ask the world’s stamp collectors. Or, I don’t know, furries.
But when a friend suggests a shopping trip as a means of female bonding, and somewhere inside a little part of me curls up in a corner and starts crying, I feel guilty. Like I’m somehow betraying the sisterhood, or at least my friend’s good intentions. So before I know what’s happening, I find myself in the middle of a high street/shopping mall/enormous brightly lit clothing store, all my escape routes guarded by scarily efficient-looking salespeople, wondering when Tim Robbins is going to appear to help me tunnel my way out.
They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result each time. And when it comes to shopping, that is exactly what happens to me. I am the rat that doesn’t learn how to navigate the maze and never gets the cheese.
Because I do enjoy owning nice things. When it comes to wearing beautiful clothes, I might as well still be five years old. Except that instead of wearing my mum’s old skirts as fairy wings, I now wear cocktail dresses and secretly pretend I’m Ava Gardner.
But the problem is that in order to have the nice things, I have to undertake a process that, all too often, fills me with despair and self-loathing. Not to mention a feeling of ill-directed rage against the world in general.
And by refusing to adequately prepare for this, I only make things worse for myself. Somehow my mind refuses to fully retain how unpleasant I find many shopping experiences, recollecting instead rare and precious lazy weekday afternoons when I browsed unhurried and un-harangued through vintage shops, or a chance trip with a friend whose remarkable eye for what looks good meant she would just hand me clothes to try on, or the time I stumbled upon a perfectly-fitting dress in a tiny shop on a cobbled street on holiday in a small Spanish town.
Maybe this time, I tell myself, maybe my trip to H&M will be just like one of those shopping trips. Or like visiting a bookshop – where I could happily spend hours at a time. Maybe clothes shopping is like eating olives, or kale – you force yourself to do it for a while out of necessity, and then one day you start to enjoy it, even crave it.
Except I don’t think anyone actually enjoys kale. That’s just a myth, probably put forth by climate-change deniers or other equally spurious sources (see what I mean about the anti-Establishment rants?).
And honestly, even allowing for the great and glorious diversity of human experience, and the fact that we all have our own unique needs and preferences, I find it incredibly difficult to understand how anyone enjoys the kind of experience we go through when buying new clothes.
Which, for me, is something like this:
1. Enter shop. Jump backward as you are immediately assailed by blinding lights, deafening music and rows of clothes that, to your untrained eye, look virtually identical to all the clothes you have seen that day. Try to resist image of self as a factory farmed chicken, slave to market forces beyond your control or understanding.
2. Attempt to move through shop slowly, stealthily and unobtrusively, because you know you need time and space to make any kind of selection and you don’t want to attract the attention of an overly-solicitous shop assistant.
3. Fail miserably in this attempt and turn around to find said shop assistant behind you, smiling and eager to help.
4. Try to explain that you would really prefer to just look on your own and that you will ask if you need help. Try very hard to strike a balance between being polite but firm. Fail, and realise the friendly shop assistant now probably hates you.
5. Realise the friendly shop assistant also probably thinks you are trying to steal something and is still watching you like a hawk. Burn with the injustice of it all.
6. Focus very hard on keeping a clear mind. Select some clothes to take into the changing rooms. Remind yourself to be realistic – the slinky black backless dress that looks so good on the mannequin over there almost certainly won’t look that way on you. You also came in here to buy a suit for a work event. Tell yourself to keep your eye on the prize and feel like an idiot.
7. Enter changing rooms with armful of clothes (you couldn’t resist the slinky black dress after all, could you?), hoping you’ve got the right sizes and that something – anything – looks good.
8. All the sizes are wrong and nothing fits. Slinky black number makes you look like you are trying to be Kim Kardashian. Harsh lighting reveals everything you dislike about your body. Feel betrayed.
9. Watch the changing room walls pulsate with house music turned up to top volume. Consider asking someone why they have decided this is likely to make people more inclined to purchase items when all it makes you want to do is run out of the shop and never look back. Realise this will make you sound geriatric.
10. Sink into an awful spiral of philosophical brooding about aging, time, mass consumption and globalisation. Question all life choices. Notice disturbing parallels with Scrooge. Flee from shop, bah-humbugging all over the place.
Good times all round.
In moments of desperation, I often return to advice given to me by a beautiful blonde Kiwi cousin, who used to love shopping sprees: “Lucy, if it isn’t screaming ‘Buy me!’, don’t buy it.”
Being the over-thinker I am, I like to interpret this primarily in an abstract way, as a general life motto – of the ‘don’t commit to anything if you aren’t certain about it’ type. Occasionally, however I do find myself in shops looking quizzically at clothes wondering if what I’m hearing are screams of ‘Buy me!’.
Although, frankly, the clothes could just as easily be screaming ‘Get your hands off me!’ or ‘Run! Save yourself!’ and I would be none the wiser. And probably just as traumatised by the whole experience.
