So, this is what I did:
Yesterday, I went to Wall*Mart, home to an endless supply of cheap goods, brought to us by greed-infused corporate oppression.
Can you tell this is not going to be a happy story?
OK, so, I was skipping around the aisles with a couple girlfriends of mine, throwing coffee creamer and string cheese into the basket when I got the brilliant idea of heading to the women's clothing section, with the vague notion of buying a red dress to wear on Valentine's Day. Yeah.
The thing about Wall*Mart is that no matter how specific and limited a grocery list you start out with when walking through the automatic doors, you will be convinced to buy something else. The pervasive advertisements and random roll-backs conveniently located in the middle of the aisles, not to mention the sheer fact that Wall*Mart sells items for almost every area of your life, from cosmetics to gardening comes to this: inevitable downfall.
My personal downfall was a certain flowered blue dress, nestled in between trendy printed tees and hoodies. It was really cute, unassuming. It looks like something you'd find at some boutique downtown. The only difference? The same dress downtown would cost somewhere around $30 whereas the Wall*Mart option is available for a mere $12.95. (Or somewhere around there.)
I gingerly plucked the dress from the rack, twirled it around a little. It seemed to smile at me, all friendly, with it's price tag flapping in my face, the numbers in big bold print. I thought to myself, "Hey, it's only $12.95! It would look really good on me... I should buy it!" I asked my good buddy Ariel if buying this dress would make me a horrible person. She said, with a "duh" face, "Of course not. You're in college. This is what you can afford." And really, that's good logic. I mean, if college students shouldn't shop at Wall*Mart, who should? (The answer to this question, I discovered later is that NO ONE should shop at Wall*Mart.)
I bought the dress, took it home and displayed it in my closet. Then, today, which is Sunday, I wore it to church. I've got to tell you guys, it's incredibly difficult to be straight with Jesus when you're wearing a dress from Wall*Mart.
It had been so long since I'd bought clothes from Wall*Mart that I was unprepared for the guilt that sat on my heart all day. For something made out of cotton, my little blue dress sure felt heavy on my bones. I thought about the workers, girls my age, their slender wrists moving back and forth, back and forth, all day long. I thought about them at the end of the day, lying in their beds with their backs aching, feeling like fire. I felt so ashamed of myself.
I think I'm going to keep wearing it, though. It seems like it would be worse, somehow, not to. But I'm done buying clothes at Wall*Mart. Really and truly. Whatever it is you want to buy at Wall*Mart, resist! Between the chronic back pain of some poor girl in China and the price of your peace of mind, I promise you- nothing at Wall*Mart really costs $12.95. Ever.
This has been a public service announcement.
I'm going to put a picture of the blue dress so you can see how deceptively cute it is.
