Retail Therapy Gone Bad

Can one be a socialist and also love shopping? More pressingly, can I be a socialist and continue to love shopping?

Before I answer, allow me to explain why I'm suddenly asking these questions. Until this particular point in life, I have taken great comfort in shopping. The women in my family--generations of them--have led me to believe, by example, that New Shiny Things make Everything better. This Everything can be anything: a burst of low self-esteem, a hard day at work/school, and/or miscellaneous personal catastrophes. Buying clothing, in particular, is a great comfort: when shit goes bad, my forebears argue, retreat into the material. The simple beauty of textiles--even those crafted into mass-produced garments by underpaid sweatshop workers in economically bankrupt countries around the world--lifts the spirits, making life livable again. What can't you accomplish when you look and feel fabulous?

For years now, I've been aware of the many problematic aspects of everything I just wrote. Psychologically, shopping is a cop-out. The gratification is short-lived, and you're left with the same problems you started with, except now you have no money. Philosophically, the connections between gender and consumption are troubling: women feel better after buying girlie stuff because our culture has wired us to feel better when we look pretty, ie, when we meet mainly patriarchal, bourgeois expectations for our appearance and behavior. And corporations have made billions off of the female desire to conform, linking our psycho-social-sexual development to the market.

I've been aware of this, but I've accepted these contradictions with the ubiquitous cop-out of my generation: "At least I admit it." As I gaze longingly at retail displays, I think smugly, "At least I know what's really going on." Astonishingly, my academic approach to feminine consumption also allows me to feel superior to other female shoppers. Listening to their inane conversations in the fitting room, I sneer and snicker, meanwhile giving in to the same unaccountable desire for the skirt that is, in their words, "OMIGOD, just SO CUTE."

Yes, I have been a hypocrite. But I am so damn comfortable in my hypocrisy, I don't want to reconcile anything. I'd rather be shopping.

Or would I? The problem is, I don't really enjoy shopping anymore. I used to be able to shop in disgusting, florescently lit, suburban environs for hours without wanting to vomit. Now I can't even approach a mall or "towne center" without choking back the remnants of lunch. Why? Well, this brings me to yet another contradiction: shopping makes me hate the masses. Behavior in busy retail spaces--screaming children, price-grubbing, long lines, personal-space violations--makes me crazy. Today, Mike and I had to buy some things at the Waterfront, and it drove us to drink (which is always easy to do at retail centers--booze is always close by). It also drove my seminarian husband to blaspheme: "Jeezes fuck," Mike yelled as yet another cell-phone driver cut him off in the parking lot.

While Mike isn't a socialist per say, he and I both stick up for the masses, being products of their number. Shopping, however, makes us project the problems of capitalism onto the very people it victimizes. It's hard to remember to blame the system when every shopper in Target is annoying as hell.

But, at other times, I can clearly see the capitalist tableaux for what it is. About a month ago, Mike and I went to Ross Park Mall to buy a gift for his mom. It'd been a while since I'd ventured into a mall, and quite a bit longer since I'd indulged in "upscale shopping." Ross Park, we soon found out, had been upscaled: the petit-bourgeois women and girls of the North Hills--with their dazed men in tow--scampered eagerly in and out of Nordstrom, Louis Vuitton, and Tiffany's. Mike and I, genuinely afraid, retreated into JCPenney, where we quickly bought the gift. "Let's get the hell out of here," Mike said, nearly running toward the exit. Once in the car, we both agreed that we were disgusted at the vulgar display behind us. The excess, the naivete, the unsatiable desire for the material--it was all too much. But most of all, it was the unveiled truth of the spectacle that disturbed us. We're all so SCREWED by the illusion of material comfort. It's why we're all slaves to the items that give us this comfort--and why, in my opinion, Americans put up with bullshit like "trickle-down" economics, for-profit wars, and miscellanous government corruption. What does it matter, if you have the new Louis Vuitton it-bag?

Wow.

To return to my question. Do I need to return to my question? I think the answer is quite clear. The love of shopping or the socialism has to go, because they can't--at least, for me--co-exist. And, at this point, it ain't gonna be the socialism. Once you look into the abyss, there's no turning back.