By: Rob Hiaasen


illustration by David Plunkert


Why Shop?

What kind of treasonous question is that? Are we not hunters and gatherers? Are we not anthropologically predisposed to picking up a little something at Lowe’s or Best Buy even though our budgets are on the skids? Think about the GDP and unemployment. It’s our patriotic duty to go macro and funnel money into the economy—especially this month, shopping’s holiest time of the year. Then again, perhaps it’s our civic duty to curtail our discretionary spending or, if we can’t control ourselves, at least challenge ourselves to give more to charity or toward political action. Buy fewer gift cards this season and spend the money on a soup kitchen, elephant sanctuary, or some other philanthropic cause.

Or maybe we should extend the spirit of “Buy Nothing Day,” an international protest against consumerism held at the end of November. Giving the gift of nothing might be the perfect antidote for what has been dubbed affluenza, a socially transmitted disease brought on by gorging on stuff.

Hold everything. When did shopping become so fraught with economic and moral consequences?

Since shopping turned deadly when a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death last year during Black Friday, the ritualistic shopping frenzy held the day after Thanksgiving. Since the Dow, which plummeted last year, became our national EKG. Since unemployment hit double digits. In the old days—circa 2006—shopping seemed so simple and carefree. We bought and bought and went into debt and debt. Now the primal act of shopping comes with political, psychological, and, yes, ethical baggage (not to mention it always seems to cost money).

Baltimore anthropologist Robbie Blinkoff, who has made a study of consumerism and the psyche of the modern spender, says that this change is nothing short of a cultural crisis. Last fall, his Context-Based Research Group studied spending habits and consumer attitudes in five cities, including Baltimore. The interviews and research revealed a tectonic shift in our consumptive ways. The American Dream was dead; people could no longer afford to lash their aspirations to a bigger house, a new car, a fat 401K. Blinkoff frames the issue as a before-and-after question:

Why shop then? “I shop, therefore I am.”

Why shop now? “I shop because I live in a consumer society and I need stuff, but it doesn’t define me.”

“It’s a coming of age,” Blinkoff says. “People are understanding their lives as consumers.”

This movement began last year, when the economy was in full meltdown. The Context researchers parsed this coming-of-age process into five grief-like stages, as “Homo Economicus”—a creature “consumed by consumerism”—was miraculously transformed into the more enlightened “Grounded Consumer,” who lives within his or her means and understands the concepts of debt and savings. In the third stage of this transformation, the shopper moves from “Me” to “We” consumerism, Blinkoff says, which emphasizes family and community relationships rather than just satisfies personal material whims. In the fourth stage, consumers begin to “un-stuff” their lives by selling off or giving away excess possessions.

And how will these evolved beings behave when the mall opens on Black Friday?

“December will be fascinating,” Blinkoff says. “People will be separating out their consumer side from their human side. They will stand back and say, ‘That is my consumer behavior. I understand it, and I can control it.’”

So much for impulse buying. Shopping just isn’t the spontaneous, stress-relieving, status-building experience it once was. When times are good, “we get a little lazy and fat. We were living too high on the hog,” says Pam Danziger, who wrote Why People Buy Things They Don’t Need, among other books on consumerism. Danziger runs Unity Marketing, a consulting firm in Pennsylvania that specializes in tracking luxury consumers’ trends. According to her research, discretionary spending is not only down, but shopping behavior has also changed. Home-related purchases are up, given that we are spending more time there and not spending as much money on restaurants or entertainment. Hobby stores are enjoying renewed popularity, she says. People are making gifts. (See page 63.) “Tough times make you reevaluate your priorities. We are buying things we need, not things we desire.”

But surely there’s something she pines for that she doesn’t need. “I want to buy a nice refrigerator,” Danziger admits. “I don’t have to go the Sub-Zero route. But a 36-inch fridge would be nice.” Not that buying a 36-inch fridge would make her happy. “Happier,” she says, “for a moment or two.”

During the boom years, a number of observers noted how the American overindulgence in material goods seemed to make us less, not more, fulfilled. “A host of careful studies suggest that across-the-board increases in our stocks of material goods produce virtually no measurable gains in our psychological or physical well-being,” Cornell University economist Robert H. Frank wrote in his 2000 book, Luxury Fever: Money and Happiness in an Era of Excess. “Bigger houses and faster cars, it seems, don’t make us any happier.”

Given the corrective powers of the economy, will the New Frugality last? Or will the big spender re-emerge when happy days are here again?



Along with its other charms, the TV drama Mad Men allows time-traveling viewers to bask in the consumerism of the early 1960s. Materialism never looked hipper. Fans of the show remember ad exec Don Draper coming home one day with the ultimate attaboy—a fat-bumpered Cadillac Coupe de Ville. The purchase was a family event, a rite of professional passage. Today, Draper might come home from the hardware store with some new brass switchplates for the living room if he’s feeling financially frisky. Should he open his morning newspaper—excuse us, his laptop—he’d see such headlines as “Spend Less on a Bottle of Wine” and, brace yourself, Don, “The Fall of McMansions.” Present-time advertising revenues might send him over the edge.

Forget the Cadillac: Automotive sales are one of the recession’s more high-profile victims. Some consumers are even said to be re-thinking whether they need the darn things at all, what with bike commuting, car-sharing, and, God forbid, public transportation available. You call this America?

“Frugality is chic,” insists Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff, who has written extensively about the economic crisis. “A lot of what we bought was to keep up with the Joneses, but now we aren’t doing that, and it’s a relief.”

The chic frugal shopper will have lots of company this holiday season. According to the National Retail Federation, more than 84 percent of those polled said they would spend less money this holiday season than they did last year. More than 70 percent of consumers said they will shop at discounters. Coupon-carrying hunters and gatherers will be out in full force, and they will not be denied their brand of retail therapy.

“I get a high out of finding a bargain. I’m addicted to it,” says Lori Ferrogine, who works for an Internet consulting company in Annapolis. She has no plans to kick that addiction: She frequents consignment shops and eBay, and she’s a fan of Plato’s Closet, a nationwide chain of retail stores that sell “gently used clothing.” She can feel like a million bucks in gently used clothes. “I like fashion. I like shoes and accessories and handbags,” Ferrogine says, “but I would not spend thousands of dollars on these items.”

If she did, would that make her a bad person?

“If we’re talking about optional spending, I think you have to consider the moral obligations,” says Randy Cohen, who writes the column “The Ethicist” for the New York Times. From his Manhattan post, Cohen doesn’t have to look far to see morally suspect displays of materialism. He mentions the Bentley he just saw parked on West 46th Street (“Why not put a sign on your back that says, ‘More Money than Brains’?”) and the ad in his newspaper for $1,300 women’s boots. “If I bought those boots, I’d feel like a bad person.” But because he traffics in ethics (which often requires a cooling-off period before rendering judgment), Cohen checks himself before actually weighing in on the spending habits of others.

“I’m not preaching an austere lifestyle. I’m not austere. I live in New York City in my comfortable apartment. Could I spend less money and use it for social good? Absolutely.” It’s a question readers often send him these days: Given financial pressures, what is someone’s obligation to charitable giving? Maybe, as Cohen says, the owner of the Bentley gives millions to charity. Maybe, in fact, he does have more brains than money.

“What I am preaching is hedonism,” Cohen says. “The point of ethics is to maximize human happiness, and it’s a dubious way of living to think shopping turns out to make you happy. Unless you want to get me a gift.” He takes a 39 regular in a suit, he adds, something in a charcoal.

Even ethicists get to joke, but Cohen does raise another point. Sometimes we buy things to look good. Call us shallow, call us human. Sometimes a person has to rebel against economic forces that are beyond them.

“I usually keep my sprees to under $200,” says Adam Callaway, a single 27-year-old in Baltimore. “I’m on a tight budget. But shopping makes you look like you don’t care about the economy.”

Callaway, director of development for the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation, faced a true shopper’s test this fall. “I was meeting a girl for drinks. I had some jeans on, but they were wrinkled,” he says. The woman was running late, so there was time. Suddenly a motivated buyer, Callaway hit up the nearest J. Crew for new jeans and a couple of shirts, including a purple dress shirt, although he already had a purple dress shirt. And how many purple dress shirts does one need? But that wasn’t the time for soul-searching questions. It was the time for emergency shopping.

“I shop to buy things to make me look better, and I hope that translates into success in business,” he says. “You carry a little more of that swagger.”

Again, the man is single and 27. He’s allowed to think in terms of swagger. Plus, it helps to generate some of that swagger when you’re scrimping the rest of the time and eating mac and cheese three times a week, as Callaway does.

But has the economy really made him a fundamentally changed consumer? Many people who lived through the Great Depression maintained their frugal ways throughout their lives. But this is just a recession, not a depression, says Frank, the Cornell economist. “You can see lifelong changes in a protracted downturn. I don’t think we are going to see that from this one,” he says. When income starts growing again, so will consumption. And the top consumers will again spend money, which will put pressure on people below to spend, he says. “It always depends on the context of where you live. People start asking themselves, ‘Is our house big enough?’ ‘Is our job interview suit nice enough?’”

In other words, the Joneses will be back in town soon, and you better keep up, folks. “It seems like a psychological frailty, but if you don’t, it’s your kids with the below-average school,” Frank says.

For Callaway, he doesn’t have to worry about schools just yet. But he wouldn’t mind a break from the daily procession of news stories about the country’s economic woes.

“When the economic environment is no longer shoved down our throats daily,” he predicts, “then people will forget about frugality.”



So, why shop?

As with other psychological and economic questions, there is rarely one incandescent answer that emerges from the fog of thought. Five years ago Patricia Dalton, a clinical psychologist in Washington, D.C., wrote in the Washington Post about the toll of materialist excess—rich kids shoplifting clothes, adults driven to bankruptcy by an addiction to “comfort shopping,” families torn asunder in the frenzy to maintain the accoutrements of the earn-and-spend lifestyle. She now thinks something has indeed changed.

“We’re learning to say no to ourselves, which we have found hard to do in American culture,” Dalton says. “We have some concept now of what is enough.” It’s a concept reinforced by her nephew. When he was 6 years old, he was asked what toys he wanted for Christmas. He told his aunt he had all the toys he needed. “Maybe we all do and don’t know it,” she says.

But allow us one toy this holiday season.

The plucky, four-stringed ukulele has become an unlikely feel-good purchase in these hard times. Billionaire Warren Buffett extols the “miracles of the ukulele” and can be seen playing the electric uke on YouTube (he taught Bill Gates how to play). Ukulele sales are up across the country. They are cheap (you can buy one for around $30) and relatively easy to master. Even in the hands of amateurs, the ukulele insists on producing a happy sound.

If you’re on Robbie Blinkoff’s street in Rodgers Forge on certain evenings, you might hear the sound of a ukulele playing  “Ode to Joy.” Toddlers, accompanied by their parents, have been known to waddle toward the siren call of the uke. Before the hometown crowd, Blinkoff plays with equal parts passion and splendid mediocrity. This is his reprieve from the fear and anxiety of a year spent worrying about money. People don’t want to feel that way anymore, he says. He’s prepared to add to his five documented stages of the grounded consumer.

“The sixth stage is joy, “ Blinkoff says. “You have to be open to experiencing joy and understand it takes work and time—and faith, as well."

—Rob Hiaasen wrote about teenage conducting prodigy Ilyich Rivas in last month’s Urbanite.



  On the air: More about consumerism on The Marc Steiner Show, WEAA 88.9 FM, on December 10.








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