Sometimes I joke with my husband about how he has four pairs of shoes in our closet: his fall and winter shoes, his spring and summer shoes, his running shoes, and his biking shoes. When one of these gets worn into shreds, which they do each year, he buys new ones to replace them. But he never has more than those four. I have approximately seventeen pairs of boots and sandals and wedges and heels. I probably also only need four, but I’ll dance on the blacktop with anyone who tries to take them away. And, still, I comb for more.
Do you know Old Gringo boots? If not, I might have changed your life just now. You are about to go broke. I have three pairs. After every purchase, I came home and announced to my family that now I would be complete. I would finally be happy. It was a joke. I was kidding. But there was a small prick of hope inside me each time I bought that new pair.
Lots of men shop. I don’t mean to suggest they don’t. But let’s face it: shopping is a woman’s thing. Bitches gonna shop, it’s just what we do. And, yet, the more I talk to people, the more I find that it’s not that simple. Women’s relationships to shopping can be intensely complicated. Because the entire shopping industry is geared toward women. Those marketing people know what they’re doing.
When I walk into the makeup counter section of Nordstroms or Saks, I get a tickle in my throat. The colors! The textures! Even those little boxes the mascara comes in! Sometimes I don’t throw them out. They’re so damn pretty with their sleek black gloss and scripted font. I’m the biggest pushover for that kind of marketing. I can’t help it. Something new feels so good and solid in my hands. It’s so lovely and untouched, like a hope.
There’s something stitched within the world of shopping and buying. Shopping isn’t just about the worth and value of the things we buy. It’s about our own worth, our own value. Just the act of shopping makes us feel good. The things we buy are costumes. They are disguises. They are evidence of who we might become, if we were someone else. Better, perhaps. Or at least different.
As women, we tend to underestimate ourselves. We believe that we are less than, and nothing is more heavily marketed toward women than things that will make us better. The implication is that we aren’t okay, that we will never be okay. But the right face cream, the right scarf, the right set of plates will perhaps make us better. We will improve, if we just had that thing.
The stories in this collection take us through various takes on this notion. Mel Wells attempts to fill her loss through stealing. Kristin Thiel recovers from a similar sort of loss through a single pair of sneakers. Robin Romm sorts through the extensive items her mother bought after she dies too young, too soon, from cancer. The sorting is also a sorting of her grief, a realization that the things her mother bought were a way to stay “tethered to the physical world.” The writers here buy clothes. For Emily Chenoweth and Monica Drake, one sweater, one blouse, could modify everything. Susan Senator and Randon Billings Noble contemplate the ways in which the experience of shopping alters when our bodies change. The writers also buy kitchen items, dishtowels, mattresses, tools, cars. The things these writers buy take on illumination through their words. A mattress isn’t just a place for Rachel Sontag to sleep; it’s the home she can’t seem to create. The Kitchen Aid isn’t just a tool Candace Walsh can use to make baked goods; it represents the ways in which she has finally found her true self.
Some writers see humor. Traci Foust, who hates shopping, raises three sons who love shopping in ways she can’t fathom. Ophira Eisenberg tries to come to terms with the fact that she buys shoes she can’t afford for a dinner at the White House. Other essays, like Abby Mims’ about her dying mother’s relationship to clothes, are heart wrenching. Jennifer Finney Boylan’s essay about how life with her family continues with ordinariness and love since her transition from a man to a woman expands our understanding.
All of the essays show that shopping is about much more than we realize. These women illustrate that when we are overwhelmed with work, or more commonly, when our bank accounts are dangerously low, our minds often turn to shopping. Because that new sweater or plush towel or suede boots, with its sweet tag dangling, is a promise for redemption.