SHOPPING GENE

Hollister: is it a store or is it a bar?


Grace is a girly girl. I am not. Me having a girly girl is a little like the ex-hippie Keatons having the neo-conservative Alex. It is a funny fit. She likes perfume and makeup and shopping and her bathroom is completely full of bottles of mysterious girl stuff. She does her nails every Friday night and has (at last count) 35 bottles of nail polish.

I on the other hand wash my hair with whatever brand of shampoo is on sale. I do not like perfume and only wear makeup because without it you would not know I had a mouth or eyes. I do not like chocolate or high heels and I hate the show Sex and the City. I am in charge of the remote. (I may be a dude). Oh, and I really really hate to shop for clothing.

But Grace is a real girl and she looooves to shop. For her 14th birthday she requested no gifts but that the money we would have spent on gifts go toward a shopping spree. She knows I not only dislike shopping but I am incapable of shopping for ANYTHING for more than one hour. At that point I simply stop where I am, put down anything I'm holding and say, "I'm finished," and leave the store.

Which is why she was going to have her shopping spree with her friend Lauren who likes to shop. But alas, they were unable to work out the logistics and Grace was anxious to get to the mall so she had to go with me. I told her we could go for as long as she wanted as long as I had frequent breaks.

Off to Woodfield Mall we went. Okay, I have to say that shopping for clothing for teenaged girls has changed just a bit since I used to go to Livonia Mall with Jenny Stabenau and shop at Marianne's.

First of all there are these uber-hip trendy stores with blasting loud music that sounds like a soundtrack for a migraine. And they have sprayed nauseatingly stinky perfume around to create an atmosphere. And worst of all for an old person like me, in one of them called Hollister (a brand name some girls like to wear on their asses with their Uggs) it is DARK! I mean dark like a bar. When we stumbled into that store the greeter who was dressed like a pole dancer approached us to tell us about the specials. I asked her for a cosmo. She pretended she didn't hear me and told us the shorts were buy one get one free. I peered into the darkness. Where are the shorts? Grace showed me the shelf where they were, lit by a tiny bulb like the one over your stove. I held a pair up. "Oh look Grace, isn't this cute? They have shorts for toddlers here too!" She rolled her eyes.

After two minutes of Hollister I declared I could not take it and made her leave. We found another store called Aeropostle. That one was much better. Well lit. Not so loud. But it was weird because there were guys everywhere. Not guys who have been dragged to shop with their girlfriends but guys (presumably straight) shopping for themselves! Yes, half the store was for girls and the other half for guys. And then there were guys working there! Oh my how the world has changed. A young man asked if we needed help finding a size. Thank God Jeff wasn't there because I know he would have insisted that he had to hand over his man-card right then and there.

Yes things have changed since I went shopping as a teen. Of course that was so long ago we used to just go down to the general store and order us some new clothes from the Sears catalog. No, seriously, it was so long ago that girls shopped in girl stores and guys, well they didn't shop. I don't know how they got clothing at all come to think of it because I never saw them in stores.

Now there are just as many guys as girls shopping. And recession? What recession? Apparently in the teen market there is none. We actually had to wait in line to try on clothing at every store then WAIT IN A LONGER LINE TO BUY THE CLOTHING! At least the clothing is cheap. Here's to a global market.

Anyway, all in all I have to declare the shopping spree a success. Grace got a ton of clothing, I was able to be a supportive shopping buddy for over three and half hours which is like a world record for me.

And I only needed one root-beer break.