WALK-OF-SHAME SHOPPING
BY JESSI KLEIN
We girls pretend to like clothesshopping for a lot of reasons, but really, the truth is that we shop to look cute so that we can get laid. There, I said it. The thing about this is that it sucks. Aside from making me spend too much money, this also creates too much pressure and too much competition and it makes me feel bad about myself. I hate this kind of shopping, even though I occasionally have to do it. The only kind of shopping I like is the kind André Leon Talley doesn't fax about. It's the kind you do the morning after you get laid--walk-of-shame shopping.
I found this out about four years ago, when my long-term college boyfriend--the guy I lost my virginity to--and I finally broke up in a barn blaze of angst. Until then I had never been a big shopper. Getting guys to like me had usually involved relying on my personality, and having a personality in high school was exhausting. I didn't appreciate it until my mid-twenties, when I found myself suddenly single and in desperate need of some immediate male company. Even then I had my doubts about my ability to close the deal. My first instinct--and I'm ashamed to admit this--was that if I was going to find a new boyfriend, I needed to buy some sort of sparkly stuff. Or something.
Unlike men, who seem confident from birth that they can wear mesh Jets tank tops and still find action, women, for a variety of reasons, feel like unless we walk into a party wearing the latest variation on the sequin-top-tight-jeans-$250-heels sexy uniform, we will not be able to compete with our more sartorially well-equipped sisters. I'd always thought I was above this kind of thinking but as I unhappily found out, I was not. Shopping is awful, I decided.
Or so I thought until it all actually worked, and I did get laid, and I found myself waking up at some dude's house on a Thursday morning late for work. There was no way I could show up to my office in the same clothes I'd worn the day before: My closest coworkers are like a second family and are capable of noticing whether or not I've flossed. I would be mocked and interrogated or, even worse, mockingly interrogated. And so I found myself praying, as I approached the Gap on 57th and Eighth--across the street from my office--that it would be open. And it was. And it was good. Since that one memorable morning, I've been back to my trusty shame-Gap countless times. My post-sex/pre-work shopping experience has become almost as fun a part of dating as the sex itself--sometimes even more so. What better guilt-free excuse is there for buying yourself a little somethin'-somethin' than de-slutting before work?
There are so many things I love about walk-of-shame shopping. First off, when your only goal is to step out of your skank clothes, anything that even vaguely fits will do. Because these clothes only have to work for the day, they can and should be cheap and disposable.
Second, there's an externally imposed time limit on the whole process. Business is business, and there can be none of the usual fiddle-faddling about for hours as you decide between which of the eight colors of tank top looks best with your skin tone (pink, by the way, is usually the answer). I'm in and out of there in less than 12 minutes, not counting the extra two for sheepishly changing in the dressing room into what I've just purchased.
Last and most important, if I'm shame shopping, I'm probably feeling pretty good about what I look like. All the worry about the hotness of my outfit has been assuaged, at least for a little while, by remembering that when a guy really thinks you're hot, he just wants your clothes off. Plunking down $9.99 for tank tops at 9:30 a.m., I can't help but think of SJP lip-synching to that song in the Gap ad--"I Enjoy Being a Girl." This is probably not what the marketing execs had in mind, but screw 'em.
Jessi Klein is a development executive at Comedy Central and frequent commentator on VH1.
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