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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, July 26, 2005

What's to like about shopping?

By Christine Strobel
Advertiser Staff Writer

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I love the many laments of guys who hate to shop.

They invariably involve war stories of how their girlfriends/wives dragged them to the mall and their day off dissolved into a blur of tortures — standing in long lines, holding purses and lying about how an outfit didn't enlarge the posterior.

I love 'em because I know how they feel.

I hope I don't get kicked out of the sisterhood for this, but I really hate shopping.

What woman doesn't love to shop, you ask?

Here's a laundry list of things not to like: Crowds, unsubtle nudging around the sale racks, lines, harsh lights in dressing rooms that make mountains out of moles, and $2 bottles of water when the malls should be handing them out for free to avert a humanitarian disaster.

Topping this stinky pile of funk — debt.

It's bad enough having to scrounge together money for fun stuff, since most of it goes to the mortgage, insurance, a car payment, my new dental bite guard. So there's no way I'm spending $100 on a blouse. Or a Louis Vuitton bag.

(I know, that bag is more like a grand, but for that, I should be able to surf it — and it should have its own outboard motor.)

We're all leveraged up to our scalps. Between that and tax increases every time the City Council takes a seat, prancing around in the latest frock just isn't a priority. My Visa can cool out.

But you can't walk around dressed in rags. About once a year, I summon the strength for an all-out assault on the mall, hoping it'll carry me through for about a year, or at least to that point where people begin to stare in a didn't-you-just-wear-that way.

I did something different this last time, and I strongly recommend it for any woman who similarly hates shopping (the two or three of you out there).

I brought my girlfriends.

Nothing will help you get over that sick feeling of I-can't-believe-how-expensive-everything-is faster than a couple of hot women throwing outfits at you and proclaiming how good you look. Even if it's only to move things along.

My friends tore up shelves. I was in and out of clothes like a runway model during Fashion Week. And when the dust cleared, I'd made some decent purchases, enough to get me through another year or so.

But I knew I had really earned my stripes when I saw my friends crashed out on the boyfriend couch at American Eagle. You know the one in every store where men huddle like refugees from the War of Overused Credit Cards, waiting for their women to lose steam? There they were, on the cusp of a big nap.

Maybe I'm part of the sisterhood after all.