Identity & Me: The Quest to Be 2D

Day One of my first shopping ban - May 14th, 2019 - started badly. I had expected to feel Zen Master pure, worthy and brimming with self-love, so of course the baby had a bad night, I screwed up my knitting pattern (oh, the horror) and I felt wretched, gross and crabby. My adjustment to motherhood had not been smooth, and occasionally I wondered if I could be depressed, but generally chalked it up to being flat-out tired and missing my pre-baby headspace and autonomy, a state I had been self-medicating with those huge shopping sprees on my tablet during the late-night feeds.

It was an eye-opener of a fortnight; I balked and struggled at every turn. I went through my bank statements from January to May and wrote down exactly what I'd spent on frivolous purchases - a deeply upsetting exercise, but a necessary one, after which I had a good cry in the shower and felt deeply ashamed for a long while. I came clean to my partner about the money I had wasted and how tight things now were. It was not a pleasant or a comfortable conversation, but he accepted the news with surprising calmness, though I felt terrible.

And yet, I was heartened. Each time I had previously attempted a shopping ban, by day three or four I'd discovered something I absolutely HAD to have. This time, I'd tried to minimise the amount of time I had to spend battling against myself and cut down on my online browsing. Physical shops, I simply avoided. I had come to see that sometimes in all my obsessive browsing I was merely looking for a fix. Instead of focusing on what I really needed, there were times when I was buying just to have something. To get the buzz that came with typing in my card number.

And the days ticked on by without a slip-up.

The "Trance of Greed"

Thirty days is commonly the minimum length recommended for a shopping ban. Not as dramatic as a year-long challenge, but long enough to reset, to break free just a little from the gilded cage of constant advertising and the unrelenting pursuit of more. Sure enough, by mid-June, I was starting to gain a clarity I had been missing. 

In physical shops, it was usual for me to fall into what I thought of as 'the trance of greed', whereby I became so focused on buying it was impossible for me to concentrate on anything else. If a companion tried to chat with me, I could feel my eyes darting past them, desperate to ensure I wasn't missing something I might want. I could hardly follow a conversation, and at times even became irritated or angry at being distracted from shopping.

With hindsight, the ubiquitousness of technology - and thereby marketing, via email offers, influencers, shoppable Instagram feeds and targeted ads - and its constant presence in my life had led to a constant, low-level trance of greed. When I wasn't shopping I was thinking about shopping, planning purchases, creating moodboards to define my 'style concept' to help me decide what to buy next. I was absorbed by social media, permanently distracted by the shiny and new, reliant on the next thing, or the next, to fix the sense I had that I was lacking in some way. As I stopped shopping, my ability to concentrate increased. I found I was more patient, more alert, more interested, less distracted. It was as though I had been hibernating, and was now emerging into the fresh air.

I discovered that I could like stuff without having a picture of it on a T-shirt (if you are a bit geeky, then you too may know - the lure of merch is strong). Strangers could get to know me by talking to me instead of analysing my outfit! Who knew?

Perpetually Unfinished

I came to realise over those first thirty days that in my endless wardrobe overhauls - which once seemed like a radical, final solution, but had over the years only increased in frequency, ruthlessness and desperation - and futile quest for a 'signature style', I was hunting for a lifestyle category I could just purchase and slot neatly into: Goth, geek, hippie, minimalist, 'quirky' girl... I wanted the safety of a set of rules, limits, guidelines for how I, personally, should dress, look, live, think. Rather than accepting that my personal taste is all over the spectrum, I wanted to be 2D, a fictional character, able to be summed up top-to-toe in a descriptive paragraph. Neat, tidy, unchanging, complete. 

Through this challenge, I've finally had to accept that there is no point at which I will be "finished". It's not the nature of human beings to evolve into a finished product. I will never be static. I will always be a work in progress - changeable, chaotic, paradoxical, a cacophony of tastes and desires and ideas and opinions, unchanging only in their utter inconsistency.

It is very freeing to accept this as fact.

I will never "finish" my wardrobe. There is not one true hairstyle out there waiting for me to discover it. I like new perfume too much to ever have a signature scent.

I am a chameleon, bowling cheerfully from this style to that, trying on new ideas and aspects and silhouettes all the time. And as I go, I find new gems to treasure like a magpie - a Goth rock band with a comedy name, a romance author I used to be too punk rock to dream of reading, a love of chunky knitwear, a perfume that smells like coffee and gunpowder. 

Nobody's tastes fit neatly into one style or subculture or definition. Everyone has "guilty pleasures" that don't fit with the image they have painstakingly created for themselves. But why? You are not a 2D creature. You can accept and like the things that don't fit, the things that are opposites.

Unable to soothe this burgeoning cognitive dissonance in the normal way, it slowly dawned on me that what I really wanted was to break out of the cycle of being a consumer. I wanted my purchases to bring enjoyment, not guilt and financial worry. And I wanted my wardrobe to consume less of my thoughts. I certainly never wanted to experience the trance of greed again.

The Month of Chilling the F Out

Throughout May that year I tried not to overthink what I was wearing, to be present in the moment, to notice how things made me feel. I tried to work through my wardrobe and wear everything - to see what fitted, what was comfortable, what I still liked. I tried to read for pleasure, not simply to tick books off my to-read list. And I tried to emphasise self-care, the idea being that feeling good about myself could come from something other than my looks, my clothing. I realised I barely knew how to pamper myself any more - I'd been so focused on my appearance for so long that sitting in the garden with a cup of tea (as opposed to painting my nails, applying a face mask, or any of the other beauty treatments marketed to women as "relaxing"... When did female leisure time come to revolve purely around making oneself more attractive?) was a revelation.

On Day 20, early June, I broke my browsing ban and immediately bought a pair of jeans that appeared in an ad on a blog I was reading. When they arrived they were too big and I returned them for a refund, feeling somewhat relieved.

Emotionally, I rollercoastered all month between empowered and deprived. I struggled to define myself as a person in any way other than how I looked and dressed, but I noticed that I was becoming more interested in the world around me - in nature, history, travel, folklore, philosophy - things that had fascinated me as a child but simply become of less importance than my appearance as I got older. My previous steady diet of women's magazines, fashion blogs and influencers' feeds had been limiting, designed to keep the focus firmly on the self and its flaws (which with enough time and money, you could fix, of course). 

I found myself chasing memories of my childhood, as though I could tap into pure, unadulterated me by going back far enough. I sorted through old photos and paid a visit to the village where I grew up, but there seemed a vast gulf between who I was and who I had become. I had been swallowed up by trying so hard to be anyone other than who I was, and the way back seemed impossible, unknowable. I wished I had not been so eager to be liked as a young woman, and had guarded that kernel of Essential Me better instead of trying to be rid of it, embarrassed by it. I may not have been any closer to defining who I was, but I did feel more fondly towards that person. 

By the end of the month I felt more purposeful and positive. I was enjoying keeping a journal, and I liked the sense of control over an aspect of my life, the realisation that I didn't have to be a slave to my impulses after all. The knowledge that I didn't LOSE anything by not buying something, that having or not having an item didn't change me as a person, had freed me from the spending trigger of trying to affirm my identity to myself, and not a moment too soon.

Finally, a quick update on where I'm at in my current shopping ban! I can report that after my lipstick blip I have stuck faithfully to the letter of the ban, bringing me to day 26 and going strong. I'm working through To Buy or Not To Buy by April Benson, and wow, it really is WORK. But it feels like I'm going to get out what I put in, so I'm doing all the exercises with gusto! I've also been reading Your Money or Your Life, and frankly I've never felt so pumped and excited reading a book about finances. I'm really looking forward to putting the steps into action and seeing if it's as life-changing as it sounds.