I’m still thinking about the fantastic conversation I had a few weeks ago with Christyna Johnson, about the intersections of diet culture and consumerism. I called the episode “Is Not Shopping a Diet?” because No Buy Challenges and other attempts to spend less so often land as straightforward restriction for me: Doomed to fail, rinse/repeat.
But the piece of the conversation that a lot of you had big feelings about was when I explained that sometimes (a lot of times), I buy things to solve a problem in my life.
Christyna kindly but decisively pointed out that some of those problems aren’t real problems. And even when they are, shopping usually isn’t the ONLY solution. After all, it isn’t a solution at all for folks who can’t afford to buy six hair brushes just because their kids keep losing the two they already own.
But many of you were very defensive of my children’s hair brushes, and of my right to manage a very real morning stress point. I get it. This strikes me very much as a “two things can be true at once” moment. But I appreciated Christyna’s prompt to think a little more creatively before panic-filling an Amazon cart with “solutions.” And maybe that process should start with more of us asking: “Is this even a problem that needs solving? Or am I just setting fires in order to put them out?” to quote one commenter’s therapist.
All that being said, I have solved quite a few problems recently with shopping!! Could I have done it another way? Were they even problems to begin with? Am I the entire reason we’ll never solve capitalism?
I’ll tell you what I bought, and you can tell me what you think in the comments.
