Death by Materialism

OK, so I'm addicted. A relentless magnetic force drives me to yet
another opportunity to hide my own inadequacies. "I shop therefore I
am". I am a clich?, I know. I am searching for the solution to a
never-ending variety of neuroses. Last week it was how to get my man
this week it's how to keep him. Consumerism is the perfect mental
crutch. No Friday night out is ever complete without a previous ritual
of raiding the High Street's answer to Ozbek on wheels. Tell me you are
comfortable approaching Saturday night antics without the buzz of a new
Janet Reger and the Vodka Martinis are on me! Ready to get wazzed on
the slick clicks of thepoppers on your latest Donna Karan jerkin? Let's
go.

Maybe an outright obsession with the concept of newness could explain
this strangest of fetishes. It all began with a pair of fringed cowboy
boots and a hard-core female named Yolanda. The shop was plastered with
shots of anorexic 6-foot blemish-free blondes wearing those very boots.
I felt quite at home, finding I had something in common with the
surrounding centrefolds. One blinding pair of kicking boots.

'Wow!' thought I (cue gullible consumer's brainwave). 'Maybe with the
help of these boots I too could be a Kim-Klone' (Basinger or Novak, I
was not fussed). Yolanda and I were on first-name terms (she was a
Capricorn and I was a consumer) and my left leg now donned a yellow
go-go boot (the cowboy boots had sold out in my size). I had nothing to
go with yellow, show me someone who has, but Yolanda insisted that
yellow really was my colour and go go boots were the new
brogues..

My introduction to consumerism became intoxicating as the piped music
told me just how wonderful I looked. The groove got wider and I slipped
in as Yolanda explained the ever important credit facility. So what if
I never wore the boots? They made two excellent doorstops.

Have you come across the DIY immortality kit? You too can look like a
pre-prubescent teeny for the rest of your natural life. Concoctions of
mosquito puss and the odd revolutionary new organic compound
(hah-sucker!) will make you live for ever. We cannot cure AIDS but with
regular applications of this product we just might be able to prevent
the odd wrinkle. Whatever happened to vaseline, eh?

Last Saturday I was on my third orgasm at a blameless provincial
diffusion store. Clothes that really mattered, the type that took you
anywhere your ambition wanted to go and kicked ass until you got near
the front surrounded me. I stared at my favourite multi-coloured
plastic rectangle as I got high on a whiff of a noxious perfume
70\%abv. With only three hours until I got evicted from this commercial
ecstasy I had to move fast to get my fix. I was not merely 'buying
clothes' tish! Iwas selecting a life, feeling free to try on as many as
my accelerating heart desired. I would keep the ones that kicked. I
found images to pursue careers to the heights of Mount Vesuvius, to
launch Apollo 9, images to survive a coffee morning, and images to
inspire sexual servitude on a global level. I searched hungrily amongst
rails of misc fibres to find myself, before my ritual brunch at
BhS.
Under the direction of an assistant named Tobias I utilised the only
four-letter word tat makes any sense in my life - VISA or bust. It was
over.

I walked out free. Plastic gets more plastic. Just like the rarest
element, plastic has a breaking point. Plastic endures the stresses for
so long and then it snaps - watch it splinter. I threw the unopened
plastic bags on the art deco floor as I laughed?and laughed?and laughed
?and remembered the expired expiry date on the plastic blob. Bye bye
Tobias. I am sick and tried of hearing about the communists, the
lefties and the socialists. It's time for consumers like us to come out
of the changing room, for we shall inherit the china section at Harvey
Nicks. Even if we do have poor credit rating. Rock on.

(c) Lita Doolan 1993