lagusta.com - shopping

"shopping is the chief use of the american imagination...it's our primary creative act."
- alice fulton

i don’t know who alice fulton is and i don’t remember where i found this quote, but i’m beginning to think this is true. I am lucky to be in a world blessedly unmarked (to a certain extent) by the overwhelming consumerism that is swallowing up the rest of the world. Sometimes, i get a taste of what most of America cares about, and it seems they mostly care about shopping.

Ok, right off i should say that i’m not some jain monk living with only a begging bowl and a broom to sweep off my chair so i don’t sit on bugs. I own a ton of shit.

A house full of shit, actually, and i’m only 23. most of it just came to me in lovely random ways, but still, i must admit that i like to shop sometimes. Most of the time i just want to get home and make some food, but some of the time i get all excited and jumpy thinking that maybe if i’m just persistent enough i can buy a pair of jeans that actually fits and then finally i will be elevated to some level i have never been able to attain before. i am not above the shopping world, i understand its pull and whine.

But i almost never shop, and although i understand the need to shop, i don’t quite get why so many people are so intent on actually doing it. I have an issue with money where i make myself feel guilty about every cent i spend, so whenever i’m tempted to buy something i weigh it out in my head a million times and always decide i don’t really need it, it’s just not worth the money. It’s more than money, though, because if i was a millionaire i wouldn’t spend my days shopping. it’s about the pride that comes from not having more than you need and using everything you have. And it’s about consciously realizing that you have been trained to want this and that, to want everything you see and more that you can’t even imagine.

I recently did a private cooking job for 6 women -- nice women, liberal and creative nyc professionals. In their forties, probably. They talked a lot about shopping. I couldn’t believe it -- i can’t remember one single conversation i’ve ever had about shopping that wasn’t about trying to resist the desire to shop. They talked about their favorite stores, stores that had gone out of business and stores that had opened. Which locations of which chains are the best. Which stores are so good that you have to go even though they are in dreaded NJ. They talked on and on in this common language of shopping and i was amazed -- they were so animated

and engaged and spirited. All about where to get the best kid’s bed or bra or curtains. I don’t want kids and i don’t wear a bra unless i’m going to be somewhere cold and i don’t care about curtains. I made their dinner and listened.

I thought of my friend wendy, who makes a lot of her clothes and decided a while ago to make all of her own laundry detergent. She is a real inspiration to me to make my own clothes, and she’s always got a lot of fascinating house-projects going on, especially now that she just bought a house. Just about everything in her life is personalized in some way -- homemade or tailored for her or remade by her. She always passes off these projects as though they are silly, something to fill up the days before she decides what she’s going to do with the important part of her life. To me these things are the important parts of life, but sometimes i catch myself doing the same thing -- passing off my own small accomplishments in the area of non-consumerism as silly and slightly eccentric, too, and i shouldn’t do that.

My seemingly small efforts are amazing -- they are the things of which revolutions are made. It’s so easy to stuff your easy-to-care-for bland GAP weekend clothes and Ann Taylor weekday suits into the new washer and add some Tide. Laundry is such a chore, you think. I am so busy and this is such a menial thing. But when we take

the time to connect ourselves to that process -- by truly knowing and caring for the clothes we love because we lovingly made them or found them in crowded racks at a thrift store, or by making our own detergent or consciously using an earth-friendly bought one -- we see how connected everything is to everything else, and how the key to a conscious, fulfilling life is sometimes just "touching the process," as carol adams says.

So this is why i think shopping is directly responsible for the spiritual hole in the heart of America today -- it distances us from anything real. It’s clichéd and obvious to point out that a lot of people -- women especially, of course -- use shopping as a way to fix anything that’s wrong. It’s become a big sitcom joke: there’s no heartache so big that it can’t fit into a nice new Louis Vuitton bag and be tucked neatly away. Shopping tries to convince us that it exists and that it does have some relation to the real world -- i bought this bag, it is mine, this is a good thing, i feel good -- but it is actually just an aberration from anything truly real and the more we do it the more we lose touch with the real world of flabby stomachs and laundry and authenticity.

***

So i have this new job in a juice bar. It’s a silly job, mindless work that keeps my hands busy, and i like being busy and on my feet and being around fruit and juicers and blenders. The woman who owns it owns 2 other juice bars, and i wanted to work in the one in the east village, but she only had an opening at the one in a diesel clothing store at 60th and Lexington. So i work in the diesel store with kids that are so fucking cool you know some lizardy diesel dude trawled the city tapping random hipsters on the shoulder and asking if they wanted an easy job with nice perks. The people that shop in this store -- tourists, teenage girls with their mothers or girlfriends, faux-arty nyc idiots looking to buy any kind of coolness -- look so hungry. I watch their eyes as they frantically dart around, scanning the place for more, more, more, for whatever they can grab that’s new and risklessly edgy. The women are usually relentlessly toned with the kind of flat stomachs that speak to me only of denial.

But I have conflicted feelings when i’m at diesel. Today it wasn’t busy so i sat on my stool and looked at everyone and got self-conscious. A

hipster employee dude passed looking quite cool in a black t-shirt and jeans, and i thought "if i only had just one nice black t-shirt and a pair of nice, tightish jeans, i would look great too." I get a little discount on their crap. After work i found the nice black t-shirts -- $39! For a simple black t-shirt. And their jeans are all trendily "distressed" and are over a hundred. I know what would happen, anyway. I would go home and retry on the shirt and in 5 minutes it would be covered in cat hair that would never fully come off. I would love the jeans for a few days or weeks, then something would happen and i would decide they look strange, like all jeans look strange on me.

but even knowing this i still felt so frumpy today. I used to have wildly beautifully colored hair, mermaid hair, punky pink hair, lovely purple hair with bright blue streaks. Unlike most of the idiots you see around with dyed hair, mine looked good. I really knew how to dye it. But naturally my hair is dark, dark brown.. I haven’t seen it for about 6 years, and finally i got so tired of bleaching my hair and it started to fall out in clumps in protest, so i’ve been laying low, just throwing on some black henna every couple of months. I used to really depend on my hair to consciously mark myself as different from a crowd. maybe this is wrong, maybe it’s silly, but i don’t want mainstream people to think i’m like them, not even for a minute. Without my

colored hair (black doesn’t make much of a statement, especially in nyc) sometimes i feel like i fit in -- blend in -- too much. So today at diesel a woman asked me which had better stores -- 5th ave or Madison ave? i looked at her for a long time, and almost said "st. marks place in the east village," but finally said that i had no idea, if i had money to be shopping at either i wouldn’t be working in a juice bar. But then i felt bad so i said probably 5th ave. she thanked me and gave me a dollar tip, and i felt profoundly sad. someone had mistaken me for someone who shops!

having mermaid hair cuts through so much crap. People don’t bother to try to be friends with you, people don’t ask you where to shop. It shouldn’t be that way, i know. I know very well that by saying that one with progressive views needs to have a certain "look" in order to express their views to the world i am just as bad as a fashion magazine that says that in order to show the world that she’s pretty a woman needs to shave her legs and show some cleavage. But i admire progressive people who don’t feel they need to prove anything -- like the bloodroot women. Of course, the bloodroot women are queens of their own castle where everyone knows how rad they are and i have to walk down park avenue three times a week, past women in prada sunglasses and alligator mules, carrying miniature dogs in little wicker baskets (i thought that such women were exaggerations,

but then i saw them). When things get to that level of cartoonish hell, is it that terrible to want the world to know that you are not part of that system?

***

today, sitting on the stool in the juice bar ("live juice at diesel," it's called, in a snazzy modern font), I realized that even if i wanted to look like the faux-low-maintenance-secretly-high-maintenance sales girls in the store (or for that matter, the women who carry dogs around the city in wicker baskets), i couldn’t. i almost could, but in the end i couldn’t pull it off.

So. All of this righteous anger, all of this hatred of consumerism, the attempt to buy coolness, the reappropriation and commodification of anything bohemian by the plebian masses -- when it comes down to it, maybe i am angry just because i will never have the opportunity to either deny or participate in this loathsome culture? Maybe i am so concerned with class lately because i walk by those shops on 5th ave and Madison ave and i know that even if i wanted to i could never buy anything in them?

Today i walked by takashimaya, the beautiful, beautiful store whose housewares are always mentioned in foodporn magazines.

I always want to go in there and just browse, but i know that i will feel silly and the clerks will ignore me. today i thought about going in and feigning interest in the most expensive thing there, just to see what the salespeople would say. Then i thought about how self-satisfied i would be if i bought it, and they saw that secretly, the little girl in a ratty headrag and ill-fitting pants was loaded. Why did this thought make me so happy? It’s driving me crazy.

Anyway, anyway, i really think that none of this is the case. Deep down i honestly am mad at, as i said above, consumerism, the attempt to buy coolness, the reappropriation and commodification of anything bohemian by the plebian masses. If i had the money i wouldn’t spend it there. when i calm down and really think about it i know that. Well, maybe a little at takashimaya, but none at diesel. I don’t want a lot of things, but i do want the things i have to be nice, and i guess that’s not an evil desire.

***

Children. i think that’s a new thing: the commercialization of childhood. i personally can’t stand the little whiners, but i have noticed a ton of child-size crap out there lately. it seems childhood is just another opportunity for ads -- i read that spending by 4-12 year olds nearly

tripled from 1991 to1997. obviously, the more kids buy the less they learn and think for themselves. This new generation of snotrags is already fatter than their idiot parents are, and i guess they are more stupid as well.

It goes beyond clothes and kids. At my old office job almost everyone ate out every day. I was stunned. People at my level -- almost as low as you can get -- ate take out every meal. I know they couldn’t afford it. They wonder why they feel so empty and nothing seems to be fun or satisfying, but they never look right in front of them, at their plates or their shoes. They think about finding true love or a perfect job. Or the perfect store.

At least a hundred conventionally beautiful girls walk past my little juice stand every diesel day. They wear tank tops, halter tops, tight t-shirts, short skirts and sorority pants. I watch as the security guards and other males watch them walk by. They stare at them unapologetically. These stepford wives stare at other versions of themselves unapologetically, too, to see if someone else has a better, tighter halter top or sorority pants with a wider flare. Every once in a while someone comes in who doesn’t look like that. Well, actually there an ok number of women who don’t look like that, but most of them subscribe to some other "look," so it’s just the same. But every once in a while (maybe once a day) i see someone

with no look whatsoever. Someone new. Someone whose life is not already written all over themselves, a tale so boring it is sure to be made into a major motion picture any minute. In the real world, i see many people like this and i know many people like this, but in diesel i am lucky to see one a day, and i get to watch other people’s reaction to him or her. Let’s say it’s a her. A lot of people ignore her or look at her like she’s silly, but a lot watch her, too, not in a hostle or annoyed way, but in an interested way. They can tell there is something interesting about her -- maybe she doesn’t have that hungry look like almost everyone else in the store.

My hypothesis about the shopping culture is that people are only trapped in it because it and many things connected to it (tv, times square, etc) have temporarily made themselves unable to imagine anything beyond it. But things are getting to be so incredibly, ludicrously, laughably, insane out there in the shopping world that people are getting tired. They are tired of always looking for something new and they are tired of always thinking they should be looking for something new. So, this is the time for people without a look, for people who are just themselves and who are angry or creative or interesting or idealistic or all of these things to really

assert themselves unapologetically and show people that there is another way to live. we can imagine new ways of being. It is not too late, we are not too jaded or sour to teach others that there are alternative ways of living.

aug 2001

new! may 2003!

let's continue the conversation. a lagusta.com reader from england had this to say about this essay:

"I thought your rant about cosumerism and the diesel shop was really interesting. My take on it is that they get you young. One is sucked in as a teenager when self-confidence is at a premium and the paranoia never leaves one; fitting in is the only option.
But the corollaries of this are horrific. One of my old schoolmates told me when I saw him at Christmas that he had reached the stage in life where he has started to wear Ralph Lauren. I boggled. When they've got your internal they've got you.

... I just wanted you to know that my own take on consumerism is that society sets people up oddly, with conflicting, competing, possibly mutually-exclusive goals. Almost everyone I know is engaged in trying to find a well-paying, cool, interesting, slightly arty job. Chilling out, and working 50 hours a week. Detoxing. It's almost as if nothing is done for pleasure, but is instead merely to complete another side of a profile of the person they should be.

The question of sustainability, which is the real seat of my hatred of consumerism, is going to get bigger. I want people to be able to see what they're doing, to know how they connect to the web of life. I want to know how to raise consciousness, how to explain to people what I think and have real communcation from them to me and from me to them."

Till You Drop	"shopping is the chief use of the american imagination...it's our primary creative act." - alice fulton i don’t know who alice fulton is and i don’t remember where i found this quote, but i’m beginning to think this is true. I am lucky to be in a world blessedly unmarked (to a certain extent) by the overwhelming consumerism that is swallowing up the rest of the world. Sometimes, i get a taste of what most of America cares about, and it seems they mostly care about shopping. Ok, right off i should say that i’m not some jain monk living with only a begging bowl and a broom to sweep off my chair so i don’t sit on bugs. I own a ton of shit. A house full of shit, actually, and i’m only 23. most of it just came to me in lovely random ways, but still, i must admit that i like to shop sometimes. Most of the time i just want to get home and make some food, but some of the time i get all excited and jumpy thinking that maybe if i’m just persistent enough i can buy a pair of jeans that actually fits and then finally i will be elevated to some level i have never been able to attain before. i am not above the shopping world, i understand its pull and whine.
But i almost never shop, and although i understand the need to shop, i don’t quite get why so many people are so intent on actually doing it. I have an issue with money where i make myself feel guilty about every cent i spend, so whenever i’m tempted to buy something i weigh it out in my head a million times and always decide i don’t really need it, it’s just not worth the money. It’s more than money, though, because if i was a millionaire i wouldn’t spend my days shopping. it’s about the pride that comes from not having more than you need and using everything you have. And it’s about consciously realizing that you have been trained to want this and that, to want everything you see and more that you can’t even imagine. I recently did a private cooking job for 6 women -- nice women, liberal and creative nyc professionals. In their forties, probably. They talked a lot about shopping. I couldn’t believe it -- i can’t remember one single conversation i’ve ever had about shopping that wasn’t about trying to resist the desire to shop. They talked about their favorite stores, stores that had gone out of business and stores that had opened. Which locations of which chains are the best. Which stores are so good that you have to go even though they are in dreaded NJ. They talked on and on in this common language of shopping and i was amazed -- they were so animated	and engaged and spirited. All about where to get the best kid’s bed or bra or curtains. I don’t want kids and i don’t wear a bra unless i’m going to be somewhere cold and i don’t care about curtains. I made their dinner and listened. I thought of my friend wendy, who makes a lot of her clothes and decided a while ago to make all of her own laundry detergent. She is a real inspiration to me to make my own clothes, and she’s always got a lot of fascinating house-projects going on, especially now that she just bought a house. Just about everything in her life is personalized in some way -- homemade or tailored for her or remade by her. She always passes off these projects as though they are silly, something to fill up the days before she decides what she’s going to do with the important part of her life. To me these things are the important parts of life, but sometimes i catch myself doing the same thing -- passing off my own small accomplishments in the area of non-consumerism as silly and slightly eccentric, too, and i shouldn’t do that. My seemingly small efforts are amazing -- they are the things of which revolutions are made. It’s so easy to stuff your easy-to-care-for bland GAP weekend clothes and Ann Taylor weekday suits into the new washer and add some Tide. Laundry is such a chore, you think. I am so busy and this is such a menial thing. But when we take
the time to connect ourselves to that process -- by truly knowing and caring for the clothes we love because we lovingly made them or found them in crowded racks at a thrift store, or by making our own detergent or consciously using an earth-friendly bought one -- we see how connected everything is to everything else, and how the key to a conscious, fulfilling life is sometimes just "touching the process," as carol adams says. So this is why i think shopping is directly responsible for the spiritual hole in the heart of America today -- it distances us from anything real. It’s clichéd and obvious to point out that a lot of people -- women especially, of course -- use shopping as a way to fix anything that’s wrong. It’s become a big sitcom joke: there’s no heartache so big that it can’t fit into a nice new Louis Vuitton bag and be tucked neatly away. Shopping tries to convince us that it exists and that it does have some relation to the real world -- i bought this bag, it is mine, this is a good thing, i feel good -- but it is actually just an aberration from anything truly real and the more we do it the more we lose touch with the real world of flabby stomachs and laundry and authenticity. ***	So i have this new job in a juice bar. It’s a silly job, mindless work that keeps my hands busy, and i like being busy and on my feet and being around fruit and juicers and blenders. The woman who owns it owns 2 other juice bars, and i wanted to work in the one in the east village, but she only had an opening at the one in a diesel clothing store at 60th and Lexington. So i work in the diesel store with kids that are so fucking cool you know some lizardy diesel dude trawled the city tapping random hipsters on the shoulder and asking if they wanted an easy job with nice perks. The people that shop in this store -- tourists, teenage girls with their mothers or girlfriends, faux-arty nyc idiots looking to buy any kind of coolness -- look so hungry. I watch their eyes as they frantically dart around, scanning the place for more, more, more, for whatever they can grab that’s new and risklessly edgy. The women are usually relentlessly toned with the kind of flat stomachs that speak to me only of denial. But I have conflicted feelings when i’m at diesel. Today it wasn’t busy so i sat on my stool and looked at everyone and got self-conscious. A
hipster employee dude passed looking quite cool in a black t-shirt and jeans, and i thought "if i only had just one nice black t-shirt and a pair of nice, tightish jeans, i would look great too." I get a little discount on their crap. After work i found the nice black t-shirts -- $39! For a simple black t-shirt. And their jeans are all trendily "distressed" and are over a hundred. I know what would happen, anyway. I would go home and retry on the shirt and in 5 minutes it would be covered in cat hair that would never fully come off. I would love the jeans for a few days or weeks, then something would happen and i would decide they look strange, like all jeans look strange on me. but even knowing this i still felt so frumpy today. I used to have wildly beautifully colored hair, mermaid hair, punky pink hair, lovely purple hair with bright blue streaks. Unlike most of the idiots you see around with dyed hair, mine looked good. I really knew how to dye it. But naturally my hair is dark, dark brown.. I haven’t seen it for about 6 years, and finally i got so tired of bleaching my hair and it started to fall out in clumps in protest, so i’ve been laying low, just throwing on some black henna every couple of months. I used to really depend on my hair to consciously mark myself as different from a crowd. maybe this is wrong, maybe it’s silly, but i don’t want mainstream people to think i’m like them, not even for a minute. Without my	colored hair (black doesn’t make much of a statement, especially in nyc) sometimes i feel like i fit in -- blend in -- too much. So today at diesel a woman asked me which had better stores -- 5th ave or Madison ave? i looked at her for a long time, and almost said "st. marks place in the east village," but finally said that i had no idea, if i had money to be shopping at either i wouldn’t be working in a juice bar. But then i felt bad so i said probably 5th ave. she thanked me and gave me a dollar tip, and i felt profoundly sad. someone had mistaken me for someone who shops! having mermaid hair cuts through so much crap. People don’t bother to try to be friends with you, people don’t ask you where to shop. It shouldn’t be that way, i know. I know very well that by saying that one with progressive views needs to have a certain "look" in order to express their views to the world i am just as bad as a fashion magazine that says that in order to show the world that she’s pretty a woman needs to shave her legs and show some cleavage. But i admire progressive people who don’t feel they need to prove anything -- like the bloodroot women. Of course, the bloodroot women are queens of their own castle where everyone knows how rad they are and i have to walk down park avenue three times a week, past women in prada sunglasses and alligator mules, carrying miniature dogs in little wicker baskets (i thought that such women were exaggerations,
but then i saw them). When things get to that level of cartoonish hell, is it that terrible to want the world to know that you are not part of that system? *** today, sitting on the stool in the juice bar ("live juice at diesel," it's called, in a snazzy modern font), I realized that even if i wanted to look like the faux-low-maintenance-secretly-high-maintenance sales girls in the store (or for that matter, the women who carry dogs around the city in wicker baskets), i couldn’t. i almost could, but in the end i couldn’t pull it off. So. All of this righteous anger, all of this hatred of consumerism, the attempt to buy coolness, the reappropriation and commodification of anything bohemian by the plebian masses -- when it comes down to it, maybe i am angry just because i will never have the opportunity to either deny or participate in this loathsome culture? Maybe i am so concerned with class lately because i walk by those shops on 5th ave and Madison ave and i know that even if i wanted to i could never buy anything in them? Today i walked by takashimaya, the beautiful, beautiful store whose housewares are always mentioned in foodporn magazines.	I always want to go in there and just browse, but i know that i will feel silly and the clerks will ignore me. today i thought about going in and feigning interest in the most expensive thing there, just to see what the salespeople would say. Then i thought about how self-satisfied i would be if i bought it, and they saw that secretly, the little girl in a ratty headrag and ill-fitting pants was loaded. Why did this thought make me so happy? It’s driving me crazy. Anyway, anyway, i really think that none of this is the case. Deep down i honestly am mad at, as i said above, consumerism, the attempt to buy coolness, the reappropriation and commodification of anything bohemian by the plebian masses. If i had the money i wouldn’t spend it there. when i calm down and really think about it i know that. Well, maybe a little at takashimaya, but none at diesel. I don’t want a lot of things, but i do want the things i have to be nice, and i guess that’s not an evil desire. *** Children. i think that’s a new thing: the commercialization of childhood. i personally can’t stand the little whiners, but i have noticed a ton of child-size crap out there lately. it seems childhood is just another opportunity for ads -- i read that spending by 4-12 year olds nearly
tripled from 1991 to1997. obviously, the more kids buy the less they learn and think for themselves. This new generation of snotrags is already fatter than their idiot parents are, and i guess they are more stupid as well. It goes beyond clothes and kids. At my old office job almost everyone ate out every day. I was stunned. People at my level -- almost as low as you can get -- ate take out every meal. I know they couldn’t afford it. They wonder why they feel so empty and nothing seems to be fun or satisfying, but they never look right in front of them, at their plates or their shoes. They think about finding true love or a perfect job. Or the perfect store. At least a hundred conventionally beautiful girls walk past my little juice stand every diesel day. They wear tank tops, halter tops, tight t-shirts, short skirts and sorority pants. I watch as the security guards and other males watch them walk by. They stare at them unapologetically. These stepford wives stare at other versions of themselves unapologetically, too, to see if someone else has a better, tighter halter top or sorority pants with a wider flare. Every once in a while someone comes in who doesn’t look like that. Well, actually there an ok number of women who don’t look like that, but most of them subscribe to some other "look," so it’s just the same. But every once in a while (maybe once a day) i see someone	with no look whatsoever. Someone new. Someone whose life is not already written all over themselves, a tale so boring it is sure to be made into a major motion picture any minute. In the real world, i see many people like this and i know many people like this, but in diesel i am lucky to see one a day, and i get to watch other people’s reaction to him or her. Let’s say it’s a her. A lot of people ignore her or look at her like she’s silly, but a lot watch her, too, not in a hostle or annoyed way, but in an interested way. They can tell there is something interesting about her -- maybe she doesn’t have that hungry look like almost everyone else in the store. My hypothesis about the shopping culture is that people are only trapped in it because it and many things connected to it (tv, times square, etc) have temporarily made themselves unable to imagine anything beyond it. But things are getting to be so incredibly, ludicrously, laughably, insane out there in the shopping world that people are getting tired. They are tired of always looking for something new and they are tired of always thinking they should be looking for something new. So, this is the time for people without a look, for people who are just themselves and who are angry or creative or interesting or idealistic or all of these things to really
assert themselves unapologetically and show people that there is another way to live. we can imagine new ways of being. It is not too late, we are not too jaded or sour to teach others that there are alternative ways of living. aug 2001 new! may 2003! let's continue the conversation. a lagusta.com reader from england had this to say about this essay: "I thought your rant about cosumerism and the diesel shop was really interesting. My take on it is that they get you young. One is sucked in as a teenager when self-confidence is at a premium and the paranoia never leaves one; fitting in is the only option. But the corollaries of this are horrific. One of my old schoolmates told me when I saw him at Christmas that he had reached the stage in life where he has started to wear Ralph Lauren. I boggled. When they've got your internal they've got you.	... I just wanted you to know that my own take on consumerism is that society sets people up oddly, with conflicting, competing, possibly mutually-exclusive goals. Almost everyone I know is engaged in trying to find a well-paying, cool, interesting, slightly arty job. Chilling out, and working 50 hours a week. Detoxing. It's almost as if nothing is done for pleasure, but is instead merely to complete another side of a profile of the person they should be. The question of sustainability, which is the real seat of my hatred of consumerism, is going to get bigger. I want people to be able to see what they're doing, to know how they connect to the web of life. I want to know how to raise consciousness, how to explain to people what I think and have real communcation from them to me and from me to them."