Shopaholics, Big Spenders and People in Debt, Getting Smacked by Economic Reality

By Anneli Rufus, AlterNet. Posted January 1, 2009.

And now they say we will all have to sacrifice, whosever fault it was. Some of us are better prepared than others. Some of us pick up pennies from the ground.

Another new book addresses being busted flat, but in a quirky sexy way that ends with a luxury-hotel canoodle and is about to be released as a Disney film. It's Sophie Kinsella's novel Confessions of a Shopaholic (Dial, 2008), originally published in Britain in 2000 but reissued to coincide with the film, which premieres in February. And yes, it's zany chick-lit about a disarmingly charming twentysomething whose life is a constant rotation of shopping, as she tells us, for "clothes-makeup-shoes-clothes." Earning only scant wages in financial publishing -- the same field in which Sam MacDonald worked -- Becky Bloomwood is broke. Also like MacDonald, she owes big-time -- around $12,000. And she's broke.

"This bill can't be right," Becky marvels, opening her mail. "This can't be me. I can't possibly have spent all this money." Like MacDonald, she itemizes her recent expenditures: Dinners. Lunches. Gasoline. Wine. Lingerie. Shoes. Shirts. More wine. CDs, and "that skin brusher thing which I must use." She starts dropping unopened bills and bank letters into trash bins: "It's the only way to stop getting stressed out about it. And it really does work … I've already forgotten all about them." And she keeps shopping so doggedly, so fixedly, that were she not fictional, we'd worry. Broke, she buys $90 sweaters. Striding toward the boutique where she plans to buy a $340 scarf, she sees another woman exiting the shop, bag in hand.

"And suddenly everything is swept from my mind. Oh my God: What if she's got my scarf? … My heart starts to beat in panic and … I can barely breathe for fear. What if it's gone? What will I do?"

It isn't gone. Becky buys it, "and I almost want to cry out loud, the moment is so wonderful."

This novel was the first in what has become a best-selling series featuring such sequels as Shopaholic Abroad, Shopaholic Ties the Knot and Shopaholic and Baby. It's much more intelligent than you might expect from zany chick-lit, and that's probably the secret to its success. In Kinsella's hands, sardonic self-awareness and sporadic compassion save Becky from being a mere buffoon. "God, I love new clothes," Becky rhapsodizes. "If everyone could just wear new clothes every day, I reckon depression wouldn't exist anymore."

If this is funny, it's funny because, (a) she isn't us, and (b) she isn't real. Even so, Becky's brokeness and initial refusal to face it are all too real indeed. Like MacDonald, Becky devises a radical budget plan: "What I'll do is, I just won't spend anything. … Frugality. Simplicity. These are my new watchwords. A new, uncluttered, Zenlike life in which I spend nothing. Spend nothing. I mean, when you think about it, how much money do we all waste every day? No wonder I'm in a little bit of debt. And really, it's not my fault. I've merely been succumbing to the Western drag of materialism." Minutes later, she spends $12 on magazines. Her resolve dissolved, she adopts plan B, nicknamed "MMM," for "make more money."

Spoiler alert: It works.

Spoiler alert: This is a romance novel.

The difference between MacDonald's cost-cutting plan and Becky's is that she ditched hers. "I missed things," MacDonald acknowledges, but, "I could only deal with what was directly in front of my face. Forget the hunger. Forget the boredom. … Just stay busy." He didn't grin but he bore it, one day at a time.

Confessions of a Shopaholic exposes the mind of that increasingly stock character, the broke former member of the middle class. Fingering a bathrobe in a department store, fueled by a sense of helplessness that lies somewhere between addiction and drowning, Becky "can hear a little voice at the back of my head, like a radio turned down low. Don't do it. You're in debt. … But quite frankly, what does it matter now? It's too late to make any difference. I'm already in debt; I might as well be more in debt. Almost savagely, I pull the dressing gown down from the rack and put it over my arm." Then a pair of matching slippers: "I'm not done yet." On to another department: "Time for a new duvet set. White, to match my new dressing gown. And a pair of bolster cushions. Every time I add something to my pile, I feel a little whoosh of pleasure, like a firework going off. And for a moment, everything's all right. But then, gradually, the light and sparkles disappear, and I'm left with the cold, dark blackness again. So I look feverishly around for something else." Into her basket go a scented candle, shower gel, potpourri -- "but the whooshes are getting shorter and shorter each time. Why won't the pleasure stay? Why don't I feel happier?"

See more stories tagged with: urban hermit, shopaholic

Anneli Rufus is the author of several books, including Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto.

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