Treats

Is there such a thing as women-be-shopping-itis? Is the desire to own things you don’t strictly speaking need, if you’re someone whose funds are finite (and that’s nearly all of us), something you can be shall we say Ozempic’d out of?

When I saw the NYT piece about A.D.H.D. leading women to shop, I had the same reaction George Costanza and Victor Meldrew (and whom amongst us…) does whenever there’s a big story about a medical condition (some of) whose symptoms could be us. I know that this can be a symptom of mania, but also that (she says, from under almost-end-of-long-weekend-after-no-daycare-week mountain of exhaustion) mania is not a problem I have.

While I am not the lady who got herself into “$15,000 in impulse spending debt,” I probably would do whatever Ozempic is for not finding it interesting to see what’s chic and $40 in a vintage clothing shop. (Evidently it is Ozempic itself, huh, too bad I like eating and have no plans to stop doing so.) I’ve had conversations with women—with feminine-presenting, cishet women—who have told me that they’re indifferent to clothes-shopping, and have been like, must be nice.

Because it must! Think of all the increments of $40 they have lying around. Or not—maybe the fact that I enjoy (some) shopping means I don’t do the ugh-whatever-will-do thing of going to Banana Republic or Ann Taylor or whatever it is people who don’t like shopping go to, and wind up having spent $400, everything new and full-priced, on what was essentially a chore. But, probably, probably I would spend less and be a better and more serious person if, if…?

My hunch, although who knows, is that I do not have A.D.H.D. The shopping-specific concern seems to involve a level of impulsiveness not characterized by visiting the same blazer in a nearby vintage store multiple times over the course of weeks before deciding $45 is an acceptable price for it. (A strategy for sufferers is to wait 24 hours before buying something.) But apparently one of its symptoms is interrupting. I have uh done this (podcast listeners have informed), but between the shopping thing and interrupting I’m wondering, is this a cultural thing, at least these two puzzle pieces, and not a medical one? Have I just self-diagnosed as… Fran Fine?

Some commenters, however, raised the points that I totally would have, had I thought of them first. But they did, so take it away, Marie:

Right yes this, of course, of course. When a woman ‘treats herself’ (a woman, some woman, definitely not me, personally), it often ends up being about somehow improving our looks, or that of our homes.

If you were thinking, but what about the men?, then a NYT-commenting chiselled torso had this to say (with its reply intentionally included):

This too! The thing where women need to spend to look good because looking good allows for making money. But! There is also the thing where a woman who enjoys spending (or feels some joyless compulsion to spend) $1900 a month on personal upkeep frames this as a tax on being a woman, which, I mean, come on. Where the threshold lies, though, is not all that simple. Which primping has exactly how much of a positive effect on earnings? Is the $30 lipstick better than the $10, and also is there a dupe for the shade I have in mind?