Opinion - News Analysis   

That buzz from shopping

Barbara Ellen

Many women can feel a little empty at times. Luckily, it's easily cured at the sales.

THEY'VE identified a syndrome called "shopper's rush," which is that thing that makes you run around stores buying hideous sparkly clutch purses you'll never use. Men get "shopper's rush," too, but by and large women get it worse. Right now, a man could walk into any chaotic "end of sales" store and assume the Vikings have dropped by for a spot of rape and pillaging. A woman could walk in and recognise the scene for what it is — a giant replica of her psyche. Not all of her psyche, of course, just the secret part that is always hungry, tired, unloved, hurting.

Sadly, this is also the part of her brain that agreed to credit cards. And where there are credit cards there are credit card bills, to be opened, gasped over, and then squirrelled away in a drawer, as you look furtively around, like a scene from a Hitchcock movie.

Actually, I have no idea what I'm talking about, because — astonishingly — I've never had a credit card and I've never been in debt. Not that this was planned in any way. During my youth I made several increasingly belligerent attempts to get cards only to be rejected because, to quote, "There is an irregularity concerning your address." And so it went on. In the end I gave up, resolved to live within my means, neither a borrower nor a lender be, and all that other stuff that makes you feel like you died already. Putting it into context, I live in London, a place so crazy and cash-strapped that people remortgage when they fancy a Chinese takeaway. Still, here I am, despite my best efforts, with no credit cards, and miraculously debt-free. Actually, I have no illusions about how things would be now had Shadow-Me been allowed all those cards. You have only to look at my attempts to give up smoking to realise I have the iron resolve of a stale cream cracker. Shadow-Me would be in debtor's jail by now, weeping over her children during visiting hours.

You think it couldn't happen to you? Think again. British women, especially young and single, are known to be in worse financial shape than for decades, and it's mainly because of their credit cards.

One suspects it's all about filling the void — for women, shopping is all too frequently a love substitute, even on occasion a life substitute. Thinking along those lines, it could be equally true that people like me, with our thwarted attempts to get credit cards, ended up with an actual life almost against our will. Perhaps that's why when I hear about women in huge debt, I always think, there but for the grace of God go I.

And then wonder if it might have been a lot more fun after all. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Bones of contention
The rake's progress
Behind Bangalore: the long jihad today
Agriculture: striking a balance
How lobbyists poison politics
Atheists seem ready to believe anything
That buzz from shopping
He is right
Examine charges
AMU verdict
Phone tapping

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu