The Visa Diaries

This is an experiment.

Recent events have shown me what a prejudice there exists against people who like to shop. There is a snide and insidious view that we are somehow shallow, self-absorbed bimbettes, just because the giftshop is our favourite part of a museum.

I believe that, to the contrary, shopping is a deeply profound personal and cultural action. With so many people investing so much energy and money into it, how could it be as shallow as everyone seem to think? Shopping is the main way girls growing up these days are taught to express ourselves and deal with the ups and downs of life. Want to show the world you’ve grown up? Buy a sophisticated new suit. Just been dumped by your fella? Some sexy new lingerie will put you back on the horse. Moving to a new city? Bonanza houseware shopping opportunity! Handing over the credit card is an act of hope and of self-definition – it is an existential quest, and I mean to prove that.

Shopping is our modern equivalent of the vision quest. In the old days before we were spoiled by TV and cars, the native Americans would seek answers to the profound questions of life by heading out into the wilderness for days without food or shelter. At some point in their delirium the spirits would speak to them through a totem, like a rock or a bear. We too are seeking answers – how to have the life we want, become happy – and the spirits speak to us through totems. But instead of sitting in a 10-foot circle in the woods chewing on twigs, we head out to the mall. We may have a vague longing for something, not knowing what it is, and just hope that the right special talisman – be it a top or a handbag – will find us along our journey.

I want to know what it is I’m looking for. I want to know more about that vague longing in my chest that propels me on a furious run through town to make it to the specific Zara shop that has a certain top in my size before it closes; that makes me furrow through internet site after internet site looking for a distributor of a new niche cosmetic line; that makes me decide in a split second peering into a well-lit mirror in some new sunglasses that I must splash out a week’s worth of rent to own them. I want to know why these specific items have this power, what spirit is speaking through them, and what it all means.

I don’t know where it will lead, but I am pulling out the old Visa statements and having a good dig through.