A friend recently told me about a young girl she knows who got a selection of ultra expensive and fancy schmancy stuff for her eleventh birthday. We’re talking designer bags, and a bunch of other shit that I can’t even afford at 30. Well, this reminds me of a story.. Hit the jump to read it.
When I was around 11, my grandmother gave me a gift certificate for the local kid’s clothing store. It was the It place for children’s things — from the affordable to the ultra-expensive. Sure, you had to navigate around the too-helpful older women who would force their expertise on you and fling open the curtain to make sure that your first bra fit just right (which would bare your pre-pubescent chest to the whole store), but they had good stuff.
Even better, I got to go alone. My mom dropped me off and then ran some errands while my clothes-hungry self ran around wild. When she picked me up and we returned home, she wanted to see what I’d gotten. I don’t remember how much was on the certificate, but I remember buying a few things, one of them being $50 jeans.
My mom had a fit — a huge, absolute, anger-filled fit. She marched me right back down to the store, made me return my beloved new jeans, and buy other things. It wasn’t that I needed a ton of clothes and had ignored my needs in order to delight in vanity. She was just adamant that I wouldn’t own and wouldn’t wear $50 jeans.
(Funny, she didn’t see the comedy when she bought an insanely expensive coat from Saks around this time, and only wore it a handful of times — one that now lives in my closet, forgotten oh so quickly by its original owner. And she wonders where I got it from…..)
It scarred me for life — to the point that any jeans above $50 seems extravagant even now. I long for more expensive and sexy selections of denim, but aside from money restraints, I also have that lingering guilt from all of those years ago.
So, my experience made me more thrifty, turning me into the queen of deals, one who agonizes over high-priced things, even when I need them. (It has taken me three years to convince myself that Biotherm products, which work wonders on my skin and fix all its problems, are worth the money.)
But what will happen to these young girls? Will they still have enough money to get them through life? Will they become downtrodden and disappointed when they’re out on their own? Will this make them try to latch onto a man, or woman, who makes lots of cash? Will their godawful sweatpants with “hottie” on their asses lead them to men who won’t take no for an answer? Or, at least rob them of all of their super-pricey finds?
My family was well off, and I was blessed with a lot of luxuries, but one thing I always had, no matter what, was a sense of reality and frugality.
Filed under: Me, Musing | Tagged: fashion, money, spoiled kids
