The Gap really isn't such a bad place. It is not the great Satan. It sells flat and patterned shirts. I don't know where it stands in relation to sweatshop use, so I would be willing to be persuaded by a member of Students Against Sweatshops who might be able to speak to that matter.
A company's production method is not the reason that most cool kids refuse to shop there. And it's not the money, either. Many of the same kids who won't let Abercrombie & Fitch fabric grace their hides will pay whatever it takes for a vintage jacket to make it into their closet.
Hand-me-downs are hip. "Poor" is the look. A friend was wearing a CB winter jacket the other day, the type my 29-year-old sister wore in grammar school.
It's not just clothes, either. I went to Wegmans yesterday to pick up a birthday card; strike one in the eyes of the anti-consumer, because Wegmans doesn't exactly have basement prices. When I found the Card-for-Every-Occasion aisle, my own anti-consumer instinct kicked me. Not literally, moron.
"What the hell are you doing?" I demanded of myself. "Write it on a sheet of notebook paper and tell him why you're too good for Hallmark."
"I'm right," I thought. "What am I thinking?"
What was I thinking? Why was I thinking it, and which part of myself am I referring to now? That's called an "ambiguous pronoun," or so I was once told.
I didn't want to be that guy that gets an unfunny card and signed it, allowing some third-rate cartoonist to do the talking for me. I also didn't want to be that friend who picks out a sappy, "Happy Birthday, to a special friend who's always been there, through the good times and bad, the hot soups and cold, the raining claw hammers and the growing lilies" card. That'd be even worse, because it'd be an attempt at expressing a genuine tie with an insincere message.
If I was going to buy a card - a sizeable "if" - it had to be simple in a sophisticated way. The right card needed an elegant picture on the front, with a bright white background and a blank interior. It needed to show that I was not one to be easily duped by social norms and capitalist dictations of how I should express my caring for another.
Then I realized that this part of me didn't know anything. It didn't know up from down, probably because of the inter-dimensional confusion inherent to its natural state of multi-presence. There's nothing wrong with allowing a company to add to your friendly message. People aren't shallow or corporately dependent just because they don't buy their cards second-hand at Amvets.
The same goes for clothing, cars, haircuts and caskets. It's understandable that some people don't want to be buried in a linen cloth, no matter how much it will save their kin, even if I would feel selfish and silly doing otherwise.
There's nothing wrong with spending money if and when you have it. There's no point in self-inflicted poverty or minimalism aside from taking a holier than thou sort of stand.
People shouldn't need money to be happy, and I'm a staunch supporter of that, but there's nothing wrong with using money to make things better or nicer where it can. There's nothing noble or cool about sleeping on friends' couches because you're too proud to ask the parents you've alienated for rent money.
Being without the money to buy more desirable items and meals is not a state to be envied or strived for or mimicked. The people doing their best and living that life must be insulted by those who want to look and act more like them and pretend to suffer.
Stop turning socks into gloves when you have a brand-new pair of mittens in your bottom drawer. Posers. Poverty's not a joke. And take a shower.
Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Messina, from the RMBERS' Instagram page
