Anne Lagamayo, 18, is a freshman at UP, Diliman. She loves reading and can spend hours in a bookstore without buying a single book. She has a weakness for shopping, and can’’t spend hours at a mall or tiangge without buying a single article of clothing. Her writing experiences include a semester of creative writing, writing for her school’s literary magazine and "tons of unfinished files" in her laptop.
From the moment I started reading Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella, I found a kindred spirit in the main character Becky Bloomwood. We both have it all – the superior reasoning skill to justify every single purchase, the secure thought that spending in a foreign country isn’t really spending, and the uncanny ability to vanquish the existence of bills by keeping them in the bottom cabinet drawer. In her many shopping sprees, Becky lives by the philosophy "buy now, think about the ugly red marks on credit card statements later." I have a somewhat similar creed: Buy now. Period.
The first time I got my credit card, my mother told me it was an extension of hers, and that I was to use it for emergencies only. The fact that she didn’t have a steely glint in her eye or used the word "strictly" made me think that she was giving me the secret thumbs up. Besides, she wasn’t really clear on what "emergencies" meant. What, like Topshop emergencies? I decided to take the card for a test run, and spent a day at Shangri-La Plaza shopping – without a single centavo on me. Until now – like some of my other friends who are new to this whole credit card thing – I have this disorder called creditcardophobia (the distinct fear that your credit card will be declined every time it is swiped.) In every shop I bought in, I held on tightly to my bag and hoped to God the receipt would pop out of the cashier. My card didn’t get declined; in fact, I bought everything I wanted without a fuss. That is, until my mother saw the bill and yelled the exact definition of "emergency."
Becky also has this strange capacity for getting into trouble. In the novel, she applies for a job at a bank, and thinks of pretending to be able to speak Dutch, because in her borderline psychotic reasoning, she thinks: Who would know how to speak Dutch anyway? A whole boardroom of men, apparently. I was laughing hysterically when I read this part, but not when I did my own résumé fraud. I wanted to apply for a summer job, but they only accepted teenagers under 16. I was already 17 and badly in need of cash after my mother banned my credit card spending. In my borderline psychotic reasoning, I thought: Who would know that I was two years off the maximum age limit? I was short, anyway. But things have a funny way of happening, and when they interviewed me, they told me they knew an acquaintance of mine from my school who was three years younger and applying for the same spot. They asked me about her and, laughingly, told me that they’d ask her about me, too. Oh, the horror! I smiled politely and dashed out after the interview, fully expecting them to come running after me with handcuffs and German Shepherds.
Becky, aside from her numerous flaws and shopping disorders, has a compulsion that keeps her from giving away anything she owns. It doesn’t matter if it’s an old wooden bowl or 40 picture frames. She just can’t stand to declutter her closet. (I also saw this on Oprah once – people who refuse to throw away their old pizza boxes and all. How strange!) But when Becky finds herself in debt, when she loses her boyfriend Luke, she decides to sell everything in her closet. Everything, from her expensive, once-worn Vera Wang gown to her precious Denny and George scarf. Just like the time I took out T-shirts I hardly wore, too-tight jeans I bought because I insisted that I would lose weight, and hoards of stuffed toys to sell in an ukay-ukay.
Life à la Shopaholic isn’t all about Becky’s outrageous shopping. What I also found in Becky is spontaneity and independence. A sense of fun and mischief that takes her from London to Manhattan, a character that makes millionaire entrepreneur Luke Brandon fall in love with her in the first place and take her on a honeymoon around the world (after having two weddings, of course.) But the strength of her character comes with her paying off her debts by herself – she has Luke and her millionaire best friend Suzie, but she doesn’t ask for their help or a loan. I’d like to think that if, at some point in my life, it came to that, I would do the same thing she did.
If my life were a book, it would be the one found in the pages of Confessions of a Shopaholic. Not in the Self-Help section where everything and everyone seems to be in control and they always have the right answers, or even in the Children’s section, where people dream up of ways to go on awe-inspiring adventures in faraway lands. Real life is much more of an adventure, thank you, although I’d prefer it to be shelved in the Fiction section, much like Becky’s life: problematic enough to be like everyday life and yet humorously adventurous enough to be very unreal.