A Girl...

Conscious Consumption

So, last weekend we went to the mall and biked across the Golden Gate Bridge. One of these excursions lasted eight full hours and made my legs tired and my head ache, and the other involved bikes and the Golden Gate Bridge. Consumerism = a serious workout.

A new mall opened up right next to an existing mall in downtown SF and I was curious to check out the architecture; word had it that the original dome was beautifully restored, and whoop, there it is.

We didn't need to shop for anything specific, so we planned to just pop in, pop out, maybe catch a matinee. The downside: It was opening weekend and the place was packed. We stood in a line for coffee for about twenty minutes. The whole experience was not unlike the familiar Christmas frenzy, minus the delightful holiday panic about what to get the guy/girl/cat who has everything, and also minus one (1) creepy Santa. The upside: It was opening weekend and there were sales and promotions galore. We got a little caught up in the excitement vortex and didn't fight too hard to get out. Simon entered to win a free surfboard (he didn't get it) and while we were waiting for directions to the fine jewlery section, the ladies at the cosmetics counter forced upon us handfuls of lotion packets and eye cream tubes and special antioxidant powder that looked just like the "foiling" eyeshadows in the Bare Escentuals store, into which Simon stuck his finger (the shadow, not the store). There was a jazz trio playing in Bloomingdale's, a fatigued breakdancer on a podium near the escalator, and models "working out" in the storefront window of a fitnesswear shop. Fashion design students had a little show of their creations inspired by the dome, which was one part cool and one part ridiculous.

Whereas fighting our way through the mall took some wily tooth-and-nail tactics that recalled my time in 'Nam (Emily, I finally made it to an H&M and lo, it was insane), the Bloomingdale's experience was surreally serene. While Simon had the entire Hugo Boss department searching the stock room for a size 42 $1,700 checked suit that looked fantastic but certainly not $1,700 fantastic, I measured the spacing between the hangars on the racks and wondered what kind of tool they used to get them so exact. Was it a custom block specially designed in a lab for optimum retail effectiveness, or was it just a plain old ruler? Did these employees make more money than I, a college-educated former brainiac with skill and talent and a sunny disposition? While Simon was strutting around in a $1,500 coat that made him look like a Nazi skinhead, I was picking my jaw off the floor having found a gray 100% cotton T-shirt, asking price $185. It was just a T-shirt. (Kate wrote a good entry about this very thing today and nicely pinned down many of my own thoughts.)

Long lines and all, though, it apparently wasn't crowded enough or morally reprehensible enough to make us leave early, and we didn't extract ourselves until around 9 p.m., laden with several bags of merch, having taken advantage of some killer deals (40% off at the sportswear store = new shoes for everyone!). We mostly just gawked, though--at the people and the products--and despite the grotesque materialism of the whole affair, there was an element of reassurance in being able to point to a $300 pair of cashmere socks or to a girl sporting a big gold belt like she'd just won the heavyweight championship, and seeing Simon wrinkle his nose with just the right levels of amusement and disgust. He has his indulgences (instruments) and I have mine (camera equipment), but we're on the same page when it comes to conspicuous consumption. Are you up on your Veblen?

I mentioned earlier that we were looking for the fine jewelry section, and that's because Simon delights in punctuating his life with small doses of "playing rich." One symptom of that is dragging me into Tiffany's or Harrod's, finding the sparklingest piece of hardware, placing it upon my body(or worse, having someone else place it upon my body), and then asking, "How does it feel to have $60,000 around your neck?" You can actually see my skin chameleon to the pattern of the carpet as I try my darnedest to become invisible. I am inevitably wearing dirty tennis shoes and raccooning mascara, and my fingernails are 40/60 bitten/unbitten; I am so obvious. I wonder if part of the reason Simon likes to take me along is to hear me curse in an upscale establishment. "Six thousand dollars for a goddamn ring? You must be fucking kidding me." There shall be no doubt about my classiness now, oh hell no.

"When is the wedding?" a lovely sales associate with a pencil-thin moustache asked us as he handed over a 2k princess-cut solitaire ensconced in platinum. "Uh...2025, har har," I said, hoping that Simon wouldn't take offense even though I'm constantly bothering him about the state of my ovaries and how it influences The Timeline. So no, we weren't really looking at engagement rings, and yes, that's okay. Besides, it seems we still have some figuring out to do on that subject anyway. (Simon doesn't want to bow down before the evil diamond industry and I can't in full honesty say I'd be okay without a sparkly to call my very own (albeit a very small one is preferable). I figure I only need one really nice piece of jewlery to see me through to the bitter end, and I'd rather it be an engagement ring than anything else. And a diamond--it matches everything. And it's so sparkly. And if I didn't have one, I'd probably always be a little sad about it. And did I mention the sparkly? I would love to be one of those women who would be happy with a simple silver band, an elopement, and an adopted child or two, but it's just not me and I know that deeply because I've thought about that stuff a lot. Anyway, NOT GETTING ENGAGED YET, but I really liked that one with the five stones in a straight line, if you could take them down several karat notches.)

At the end of the day, after all the glitz and gawking and gourmet cream puffs (whose idea was it to use "beard" in the name of a food vendor?), the only thing it takes to put a smile on my face is watching Simon try on pre-distressed leather biker jackets at Old Navy while they are still tied to the security system. He thought it was real funny to take slow-motion leaps in every direction away from the rack and then bounce back with theatrical style, a cartoonish look of surprise on his face. When the alarm went off and the employee came to unhook him, I wandered to the sale section and found him a purple button-down shirt for $17. You can't do that at Bloomies.

Us reflected in the underside of an escalator.