Worth-its and less-sos

Inspired by Miss Self-Important's post on game-changers, but with guiltily-confessed prices in CAD:

Obviously:

Acca Kappa lip balm: I bought a cheap but gorgeous chapstick in a Naples pharmacy, only to discover, using it back home, that it's the only effective one in Toronto winter. Sold here? Of course not. But online, yes. Not super expensive *but* you need to reach $100 for free shipping and even stocking up on lip balm, this is difficult to arrive at, and took me about a year to decide was worth the splurge. Which led me to...

Acca Kappa hair brush: My first time owning a non-garbage hair brush and it doesn't pull out my hair when I use it, so I guess this is why people own such things.

Blundstone boots: Yes, everyone has them. There's a reason. Not having to think about which shoes to wear from October to May is... I mean a past version of myself would find this intolerably bleak, but the one that's taking a baby and a poodle out for afternoon walks and needs something slip-on and all-weather that looks good enough is a fan. And $200 seems reasonable for shoes that eliminate the need for any others.

La Roche Posay Toleraine face moisturizer: The only reliably skin-improving product I've found.

Durumi jeans: Exactly one pair fit nicely Before and continues to fit well enough After. If you're in Toronto you want to go to Queen and Spadina and buy a bunch of Korean clothing at that store.

Maybe?

Here, the commonalities appear to be that I never quite came around to cost:

Want Les Essentiels bag: I wear it every day, it's gorgeous, and it was something like 50% off. It was still too expensive, and I feel bad just throwing it under the stroller, which I vowed I wouldn't do but where else exactly do I think I'm putting it? The $40 USD camouflage zip tote bag from LL Bean was (is) more suited to my lifestyle and nearly as chic.

Gel manicure: I went and got one a couple months after giving birth. It looked amazing! What a miracle beauty treatment, where you can do absolutely whatever and your nail polish doesn't chip! But I can't imagine doing it again because it cost more than my haircuts. If I were a proverbial rich man, though, I might do this on a regular basis.

Moose Knuckles coat: Yes, you need something along these lines here, as I learned five (!) years ago, when I got this. But it still strikes me as having been (again, despite a discount, and despite the years of use at this point) unfathomably expensive ($700 or so), and I'm not thrilled to have a fur-trimmed coat, although I guess ask me again when it's negative-degrees Fahrenheit and I have the hood up. 

Balayage: While my hair now looks (to my own subjective tastes) fabulous, it took two salons and three bleachings to get there. It's almost less the time and money than the months going around with hair that just looked off. My natural color is vastly better than the orange that results from nearly any attempt at changing it.

Christophe Robin superfancy hair cream: I think it was something like $40 USD? Purchased because I'd been to a Christophe Robin pop-up in Tribeca once, where I got a free blow-out and got swept up in the moment and inadvertently learned that highest-end hair products are great. But are they that great? Or, rather, that necessary in Toronto's non-frizz-inducing climate?

Frank Costanza blazer: So stylish! But even if it could be worn even under the huge winter coat, do I do this? No I do not.

Nah:

The "nah" category for me is pretty much stuff I like the idea of but do not actually use, but failed to Know Myself and bought all the same, such as....

Eye shadow. Feels like a thing to own, looks nice, but it gets like four uses a year. See also: mascara, blush stick, brightly-colored lipstick.

Serum: A fleeting experiment with skincare in the form of one $24 bottle of something meant to de-age may have led to a weird skin reaction initially and has probably not done anything, but for cost-per-use reasons I'm still using it, I don't know.

Skirts, non-summer dresses. I like the idea but it's not really chasing-near-toddler-compatible.

Blouses; any shirt that isn't a t-shirt or tank top. I always look awkward in these. I wish I didn't but I've made peace with not being Alexa Chung.

...as well as items that are lovely in theory but useless in Toronto's all-or-nothing, scorching-or-freezing climate:

Suede knee-high boots. (If it's cold enough for these, it's too snowy/slushy/salty for them.)

All mid-weight coats (as in the ones that would be winter coats in not-Canada, but are not parkas). One I already owned, but another I bought, naive, soon after moving here.

In defense of paying a ton to get your nails done

When I was 11 - and I remember the age exactly, because of friend-group fluctuations and which friend this was - my best friend at the time got a gift certificate for mani-pedis, and brought me along. It was... fine? But the pedicure was plainly not for me - too ticklish. Also the whole thing seemed a bit too much like going to the dentist.

In grad school I got a grand total of 3 manicures, one with pedicure. The two manicure-onlies were pick-me-ups of some sort. The first was the French variety, and I remember it as looking great (which I knew even then to be a basic thing to think - a basic style to have requested to begin with) and being impossible to replicate at home. The mani-pedi was when I got married, and again, pedicure, not for me.

But this notion of The Manicure lingered as the ultimate frivolous indulgence. You can, after all, just paint your own nails! (Which I do!) Any bottle of nail polish, even a fancy one, is going to cost so much less than a manicure. I'd both congratulate myself for savvily avoiding this unnecessary expenditure, and feel a certain degree of envy of peers who clearly took themselves seriously enough (Because You're Worth It TM) to think their looks (and their careers?) were worth investing in, in this way.

Aaaand then there was the big exposé about nail salons - how exploitative and toxic most of these places are. At just the historical moment when scorn for sex work (and often, by extension, the people - the men - who patron sex workers) became problematic, the Woman Who Gets Her Nails Done became emblematic of consumerist insensitivity. It all seemed a little hmm. Like perhaps the motivating force here wasn't so much a goal of a safer and less exploitative norm in the nail salon industry, but rather a world where women feel that much more terrible about primping and not primping. (Because it always cuts in both directions.)

Then, back in Toronto, I started noticing a whole new nail-art world. Students at the university where I teach would have these elaborate nails, sometimes with rhinestones (?) embedded in them. It looked neat and fun and... especially impossible to replicate at home. And not all chipped off, like my own DIY polish attempts inevitably were. (I'm decent a painting my own nails, but less so with not absentmindedly fussing with the results during a meeting.) I decided that I would, as a sort of end-of-year reward, go get my nails done, probably at a fabulous-looking place I'd seen on Instagram, on Dundas West. It would be a whole outing, once it was warm out. I would get the famous gel nails, the ones where the polish doesn't chip. With some sort of nail art, because that was clearly what this place is known for.

Then I learned I was pregnant and it didn't fit with my panicked first-trimester mode, when I wasn't even having any coffee, to do this, plus I wasn't awake enough.

Then it was later in pregnancy and I was too tired in a different way, and concerned that there's something where during childbirth they need to measure your blood oxygen so I couldn't get polish that wouldn't come off easily, and if this was just going to be regular nail polish I should just do this on my own.

Then it was the first six weeks, when I was doing fine as it goes, which is to say, only mildly incapacitated, and also had to feed too often to commit to more than brief poodle-walks.

Then it was too cold.

And then somehow, it seemed... possible? But, expensive. Could I justify this? I felt confident the salon was a Good One but not that I, personally, had any business spending over $50 plus tax and tip on my nails.

I don't know what the ultimate catalyst was, but after many visits to, then away from, the booking site, which requires credit card info and everything, I took the plunge.

The outing itself was decadent if not all-out relaxing. (Subway to streetcar-replacement bus, yeah.) But the salon - Naked Beauty Bar - was spectacular. As were - and are, a week and a half later - the results. Actually getting my nails done in this manner - where a manicurist does all sorts of things to your nails and cuticles and all of that takes longer than the polish itself - shouldn't have appealed to me, because aw shucks I'm too low-maintenance for that but given my state of haggard frazzledness upon arrival (or given that I am not in fact too low-maintenance for that), it was just lovely.

Then I picked up tacos to bring home from Good Hombres, home of many a satisfied third-trimester craving, but apparently just as good after the taco fixation had subsided. The whole thing improved my mood tremendously. With tip it was, I believe, $78. Not including the tacos. Frivolous, yes. Shocking, as in, I'm re-startling myself as I type this. But worth it.

A handbag post

There's this blogger cliché, or was when there were still bloggers: The apology-for-not-blogging. I've been so busy!, he says, he humblebrags, to the impatient horde... and his three readers (two of whom are immediate family members; the third is a long-forgotten ex) shrug and go about their days.

Well, my three readers, soon to be fewer still: Behold, the story of the least practical purchase ever made:

The backstory:

Long, long ago, when I lived in Frahnce, I spent far too many euros (for a grad student) on a bag. It was - it is! - gorgeous. Valérie Salacroux, you are a genius. And then wear, tear, and then-puppy poodle combined forces to make the bag... not what it once was. I went on to spend far too many dollars (US) on bag repair - in addition to an earlier repair job that added a discreet snap, so that the bag would stay closed. That helped for about five minutes, but now it's about back to where it was.

Slightly less long ago, while visiting my in-laws in the country that's not actually a failed state but never mind about that for the time being, we're talking about handbags... Anyway, in Antwerp, I spent a less-ridiculous number of euros on another bag. It was, I realized in retrospect, probably 'inspired' by a (more?) designer one, but it felt very glamorous to buy a bag in Antwerp. In any case, it had - has - two design flaws. Flaw 1, the easily-ignored: the hardware peeled or something, and looks as if it's rusted, even though I don't think that's it. Flaw 2, the crucial one: It has snaps, all right, but they take forever to align properly, so the bag is always flapping around open. Not ideal.

All of which left me in a place of quasi-needing a bag. A small, non-teaching bag; the big, laptop-and-papers-fitting one I've got covered.

The story:

I looked and looked and looked, which is to say, for however many minutes before realizing I was basically asleep, I scrolled around on the Matt & Nat website. Canada effectively has two bag brands - Matt & Nat for (vegan-leather) purses and such, Herschel for backpacks - so even though I'm still miffed at the former for that ad they had up a while back, looking for an unpaid copywriter, I had to admit that they make nice, reasonably-priced stuff, and... somehow, nothing in their current selection seemed quite right. One had potential, but didn't seem like it would close securely, and more to the point, I just wasn't excited about it. Valérie Salacroux I also considered, but those bags cost a lot more still than they did 100 years ago when I bought mine (but are, I suspect, still a good buy for the quality), plus the specific style I liked is - not surprisingly, given that it isn't 2010 anymore - no longer available.

And then, somehow, I remembered that there was a bag I'd always wanted. A hot pink one from the Cambridge Satchel Company. Or, if not that bag specifically, that brand. And sure enough, their website brought me to a bag that was gorgeous in a totally unanticipated way. Not what I would have said I was looking for, but also exactly what I needed - crossbody and with a definite clasp. Plus, free shipping! And, oh, some extra 10% off, for no apparent reason!

Now, I normally ponder purchases. For a long time. I spent a whole lot of living in suburban NJ unsure of whether it really made sense to get a car, and a lot of my first Canadian winter stubbornly resisting getting a proper winter coat. There's a $9 scarf I contemplated for a good long while as well. But this time, I was just like, this is the bag, and ordered it right away. I mean, what if it sold out???

The I-am-an-idiot part:

No sooner had an exciting email arrived about how the bag would be delivered the following day than... a second email, or maybe a voicemail, telling me that I would owe over $80 (Canadian but still) in duty. Duty! I may think of Canada as basically Britain, but the powers-that-be that handle irresponsibly-international handbag-shopping do not. (The government here is like, you will buy a Matt & Nat purse, or you'll pay.) But I figured, so, be it - if this will last me as long as the French one - both in terms of durability and in terms of Kondo-esque joy-sparking, it's worth it. (So much guilt.)

And then I opened the box, and there it was! Perfection. With a catch: My wallet's too big for it. Worse: it's the wallet I just bought - well, early fall, I think, but that's two minutes ago in wallet-years. I mean, it fits, but it's a challenge, and once you include keys and a phone (which... how to avoid this?), it was far too tight a squeeze.

The guilt. The guilt!

After several unsuccessful attempts in Chinatown (which has a corner on the neat $1 coin purse market - as in, the purses cost $1, although I suppose they'd also hold $1 coins) and the Kensington Market (which sold... a mini version of the Matt & Nat wallet I bought in the fall), I wound up with... a Herschel. A men's model, which a saleswoman warned me against (and which, alas, wasn't the shiny-silver model I thought they might sell, and that is indeed still sold, but that has nowhere to put coins and tokens), but sometimes, to have the conventionally-feminine-presenting handbag of your dreams, the only functional wallet small enough to keep in it is a utilitarian (or let's say minimalist-chic) one aimed at dudes.

Guilt/acceptance:

Do I know what all this cost, all added up? That is, the bag and duty, plus the new, otherwise-unnecessary wallet? Plus the shame of it all? I do and I don't; I haven't done the $US to $CAD conversion necessary to put that figure in front of me. But the bag? It's gorgeous, and was, I suspect, entirely worth it.

The shoe-guilt school of criticism

Paulette Perhach's essay about the advisability of a "Fuck Off Fund" is a great read. That much is for sure. As writing, I loved it; read it! As advice? There I'm less convinced.

I mean, as advice, 'save up so you're not dependent on a guy or a specific job' is sound. Sound in the way that a plan for the week that involves jogging at 6 am, a full workday, and socializing over exactly one drink (no more, no less; red wine, for the heart), and then going home and prepping some quinoa, and then not watching any TV at all but actually getting cracking on whichever Great Book might remain on your list, is sound. Do everything right! Who can argue with that? If only it were so simple. If only those pesky desires didn't get in the way. Which reminds me of another Billfold piece, by Nona Willis Aronowitz, about the way that life's tragedies, rather than automatically bringing about perspective, inspire such things as shopping sprees. Can't-take-it-with-you and all that. It isn't just - as Jezebel helpfully YPISes (and I'm not being entirely sarcastic) - that being in a position to save is not universal - if you're impoverished and unemployed, good luck. It's also that... stuff is nice. (Did I recently buy a pair of shoes that are entirely incompatible with Toronto's salted sidewalks, salted until who knows which month but I'm thinking April? Maybe.) As is free time. Perhach advises working full time and having an additional job on weekends, and... while, fine, I do this, I can't fault the people who don't.

It's always the same, right? To lose weight, eat less than you burn. To save money, spend less than you earn. By all means, find new ways to help people with these goals (well, the latter) get there, but at least acknowledge that there are reasons - sensible and less so - why people aren't already doing what they already know they should. It's not generally because the advantages to a different routine haven't occurred to them.

And then there's the more troubling angle, from a feminist perspective - which is sort of the only perspective from which to read something like this. (Other than: as literature. Which I'd recommend.) Are women who, out of financial dependency, put up with sexually harassing bosses and mediocre-turned-abusive boyfriends to be faulted for having not thought to save up enough to get out of whichever situation? The structure of Perhach's essay - two alternate narratives - doesn't outright blame the woman who ends up screwed. It's more, I don't know, that this is an unavoidable conclusion. Of course, how would one offer that same, sound advice without a victim-blamey edge? With disclaimers. And disclaimers are annoying, and pointless, and it's not as if the ideal narrative Perhach offers involves 'win trust fund, have parents who support you until you're elderly.' So maybe just forget my qualms, the qualms of the all-too-fallible (but these are spectacular shoes), and read the thing.

Recentish, splurgish

My ongoing quest to look less like an American slob and more like a... Franco-Japanese non-slob (it's hopeless) doesn't actually require all that much shopping. It's mostly a matter of wearing the better things I own, "better" defined as things with buttons and zippers. Given my work-mostly-from-home, walk-a-dog-through-a-deserted-campus lifestyle, there isn't much incentive. So it's nice to shake things up on occasionally with items I didn't purchase aged 19-21. With that in mind...

-Uniqlo mini pencil skirt. Very similar to the two regular Uniqlo pencil skirts I have from several years ago, except for the fact that it doesn't make me look Hasidic if paired with a long-sleeved shirt. Not that there's anything wrong with that, my (many, no doubt) Hasidic readers. It's just that I don't want to give the wrong impression. Even if that cheese was made with animal rennet, I want in.

-Ballerina earrings in silver from Catbird. Dainty, but neither knuckle-rings nor requiring of odd ear piercings. (Those, btw, can't be counted on to close up. I don't recall how I old I was when I got that double pierce, but it's still at the ready.) They go well with a not quite so recent anymore purchase: this necklace, but in all-silver.

-Thanks to a coupon, the RMS eye shadow in Lunar. It's fantastic except for the part where applying it makes my finger sparkly. This might be higher-maintenance than I can handle on a daily basis.

-One subdivided $10 portion of wild salmon (ahem) from Whole Foods, chosen as a way to not have pasta for every meal, but which the cashier deemed unjustifiable. That's a new one for Whole Foods, being shamed for splurging. And on one ingredient! At least I didn't mention that some was for me, some for my husband, and some for a certain tremendously fancy poodle.

Peasant-chic

After the notorious $89 bra got a hole in it - this before I'd even washed it! and not even somewhere where it might have been pulling! just bad construction (Made in France, I had such high hopes) - I'm extra-reluctant to "invest" in things that can snag. Similarly, I "invested" in a pair of not-the-absolute-cheapest white canvas sneakers (Superga, because those fit and the Converse didn't, even though I liked the Converse more), with the goal not so much to keep them pristine as to have them not full-on drenched in filth. Shortly thereafter, an incident with an especially poodle-friendly (and unfenced/unleashed) golden retriever took care of that. I now have a greenish-brown pair of sneakers. Inevitable, but still, sooner than expected.

The combination of dog-adventures, ubiquitous mud in the "with-it city" I live in, and my capacity to ruin a garment just by looking at it, suggests it's time to go the navy-potato-sack route of head-to-toe denim.

But I'm kind of obsessed with the idea of a Romanian peasant blouse. A white one with blue embroidery. Like Suzanne Pleshette wears on this one episode of "The Bob Newhart Show." Very 1970s. Cultural appropriation? I'm going to say that as someone of 1/4 impoverished-Romanian ancestry (Jewish, but not sure how that impacts the blouse situation - plus the current likeliest contender ships from Israel), I'm if anything culturally appropriating when not wearing such a shirt. However, a shirt along those lines has the impressive potential both to snag and to acquire every stain imaginable. This will now need to be mulled over for a few months, as is my way.

The anti-Paula Deen

Bisou's preparations for squirrel tempura.

"Cooking With Dog" is the new "Into The Gloss" in the WWPD-sphere. Rather than going out and buying things Emily Weiss recommends (or, more to the point, going to the hair salon in Jersey whose expertise is the Republican Candidate's Wife look with a picture of Weiss), I'm now completely under the cult-like influence of Francis and the unnamed Chef. Who is Chef? A small, pretty Japanese woman of indeterminate age. Or maybe this could be determined, if one spent more time looking at her, and less time transfixed by the combination of Japanese meal preparation and World's Calmest Dog (yippy breed category).

Anyway, anything Chef cooks, I want to cook. Which means, alas, that any only-in-Japan cooking implement she uses, I want. And thanks to the newfangled whosawhatsit of online shopping, paired with the fact that none of these things are expensive, it could all be mine. I've lost interest in whichever luminous makeup the minimalist French socialites are wearing, but it's taking all my restraint not to buy a suribachi mortar, a yakitori grill. Whatever that cage-like device was she used to grill fish. Kombu and bonito flakes - that was easy enough (NYU should have just direct-deposited all those years to Sunrise Mart), although I still haven't made dashi. Still in search of a skimmer to remove the foam, although I have no idea what the foam is, nor why one must get rid of it.

Between the deep-fryer I recently bought my husband and the rice-cooker my parents recently surprised us with, we may not have counter-space, but counter-space is overrated. We could, in theory, have all the tempura rice bowls we want.

Thus far, I've only tried the rice-and-non-fried-stuff (specifically, hand rolls). And my respect for Chef is greater than ever, because no food makes my miniature gray poodle lose it like Japanese food. In different variations. I can't figure it out. Is it that she associates soy sauce with chicken, after being given (note the passive voice - I will admit nothing) lots of chicken that had been marinated in that sauce? Is it the nori, and its admitted resemblance in smell and texture to certain aquatic not-for-human-consumption dog treats? After plenty of exercise, and at an hour when she usually naps, Bisou gets one whiff of anything Japanese and flips into hyper mode. How does Chef manage it, or does Francis only lose it when she makes, say, pasta with pesto? The lure of the exotic, exotic being relative?

$89

No one can ever accuse me of not conceding out of pride when my commenters are right. You convinced me about the whole bra thing. I had some time to kill in the city today, ended up near the fabulous Journelle, and lo and behold, that thing you all said was out there - flattering and comfortable - exists. Why had I not found it before? Because it costs $89, that's why. But I had no other - to borrow Kei's ever-applicable term - wanties (had tried on and nixed the idea of $90 workout pants - perhaps a better choice for those whose workout isn't jogging through mud, and Sephora, the usual contender, meh) at the moment, and was emerging from a work-hermit period of non-spending, so. No more information - brand, perhaps, but not letter or number - lest this veer off into full-on overshare territory, or attract altogether the wrong audience. My point is simply: You're right, WWPD readers, you're right!

I should say, though, that was a funny bloggy interlude. On this specific topic, I've generally taken the your-gamine-privilege-is-showing stance. As in, chic, boyishly-built women will sniff at the more substantial bras, suggesting flimsy wireless options, which do indeed look more now, but it's like, the only way you can wear those and still look good is if you're built like one of those Birkin offspring. But it is possible - for some! not all! - to wear them and not look good. There's clearly some subset of not-at-all-gamine women for whom those undergarments are unflattering but comfortable. Or so I've heard.

Anyway, during my urban wanderings, I reflected a bit on this question more broadly. Why did I come to my initial conclusion? I figure it was, in part, a questioning-received-wisdom thing. Specifically the kind of received wisdom that pertains to these sort of questions. As in: do you really need to "invest" in accessories? If your skin isn't dry, do you need moisturizer? If your hair isn't greasy, must you wash it every day? If your eyelashes are dark, do you actually benefit from mascara? (False lashes are something else - I've never worn them but they can look fantastic.)

This is partly a cheapness thing (I don't believe in buying things one simply feels one must, without questioning it), but also partly a quasi-feminist one. The amount of grooming-and-spending women are told we need vastly exceeds that which any individual one of us requires to look our best, and indeed, some such interventions (see: skin problems caused by skin products) make us look worse. This notion that femininity means all these rituals that may or may not do anything for you... appeals to some, but not to me. I think it's fine to do whichever things do make a difference - for me, that means throwing $$$ at Japanese hair products; for you it might well mean fancy moisturizer - but I think there's something to be said for being cynical about such things, whenever there's an entire industry asking that you do X.

Slop

To the people on (and sometimes off) the internet who advocate for cooking a big batch of legumes every Sunday and eating that for lunch and dinner the whole week:

Yes, if we're being technical, this is probably the cheapest way to get down your necessary caloric intake using whole, nutritious foods. It is probably quite manageable in terms of time and effort. Your great-grandmother, whom Michael Pollan asks you to emulate, either did this or would have done so if she'd had a freezer. More power to you if this is something you enjoy doing, but what if - and we all have our vices - what if you like food? What if the same lentil slop - even if it's one of the better-seasoned, less piously bland lentil slops - is not something you want to eat ten times in a row?

So it's not that it couldn't be done logistically. The proponents of legume-slop seem to think they're arguing against those who believe a from-scratch meal on a weeknight is impossible, which maybe they are, in which case fine, point taken, possible. And I grant that everything changes when there are kids. (Children, if I understand correctly, suck up so much time and money that one is left with no option but trough-of-beans.*) But for some of us, a big batch of legume-slop sounds like giving up on life. The kind of martyrdom where someone is like, that's it, no new clothes or cosmetics! no meals out!, and this is not because they're actually penniless, or nobly non-wasteful, they're just depressed.

And that's how it seems to go with a lot of the 'simple living' advice. No, our happiness shouldn't depend on material things, on being spoiled modern Westerners who would at the very least like a different vegetable on top of Tuesday's pasta than Monday's. But unhappiness (clinical or mundane) can often express itself as an indifference to stuff, and a kind of forced indifference to stuff can feel kind of gloomy. Stuff is fun! And I'm defining "stuff" broadly to include things like a drink out even if the very same beverage (cocktail, coffee, whatever) would cost less with supermarket ingredients, or the use of primping items (lipstick, mascara, hair product) above and beyond what's needed for hygiene.

And with that, I've given myself an excuse to dissertate tomorrow from the coffee shop (or beer-ice-cream parlor) in town.

*There was a family with seven children - seven! - getting into a van just now in the Whole Foods parking lot. Siblings, it seemed. An impressive grocery bill, I'd imagine.

Manhattan: because I'd never make it as a farmer

-New Brooklyn continues to represent aspirational farming by non-ethnic white people. On that front, we have Swedish Brooklyn obsession, and the expansion of already-suburban New Brooklyn to actual suburbs. (Brooklyn, in case you were concerned, has yet to reach Princeton. Although we are getting a farm-to-table restaurant, and already have a cheerily Park Slope-ish coffee shop.)

-Yesterday, in the tragically non-hip borough of Manhattan, a really long-standing wanty was achieved: galaxy-print leggings. These, I believe, so $20, and the price had thus far been the obstacle. The price I paid, however, was that these leggings were being sold in a store on lower Broadway that I'd have never entered had I not seen them in the window. A store for tween girls and/or club kids, the overlap's substantial. The overlap with what I wear, not so substantial, and limited, I suspect, to these particular leggings. In any case, there were several dressing rooms, each of which contained a clown-car's worth of the popular girls at that age, accompanied by a really enthusiastic mom of one or more of them, who kept bringing her daughter/all the girls more stuff to try on, seemingly unsolicited. It appeared they'd come into the city for this, and had unofficially rented the store for a coming-of-age celebration of some kind. I couldn't decide if the problem was that they were taking forever or if it was that I was shopping at a store whose shopping bag bears the slogan, "Girls Only." But the leggings themselves (to be worn as tights, thank-you-very-much) are spectacular.

-Soba-ya continues to be the center of the universe. Not only because for $14, you can get a "mini" lunch special that's a sashimi bowl, a bowl of handmade-soba-noodle soup (neither "mini"), and various extras (or, for less $, a more sensible amount of food), and it will be all of it amazing, two of the best lunches you've ever eaten, and for the price of a hamburger in Princeton, but also because there, eating alone at the counter with book-and-phone, as I sometimes would to treat myself after an especially long week, was a punk legend/literary sensation.

Cheapness made easy

Ever since Kei invented the idea of a "wanty list," I've used this concept in my own life and spending-or-lack-thereof. At any given time, there's a list in my head of things all of which I'd own if money were no object, but it's kind of more fun staggering them according to my budget (or so we tell ourselves). But even more fun is when a pricey, unrealistic wanty proves undesirable upon in-person examination. Such was the case recently when I decided to see once and for all if A.P.C. jeans are as fabulous as they say. (I did once have a $5 thrifted pair, but they weren't the style I wanted, and at any rate long ago succumbed to the inevitable shredded-inappropriately problem of preowned pants.) 

What instigated this latest revival-of-wanty was, I'd tried on these, also all-cotton, deemed them almost perfect, and started wondering if almost-perfect exists for $112, maybe perfect costs $185. All of this, to be clear, was highly theoretical, what with the actual jeans I wear being a $30 pair from Uniqlo and another $30 pair from Levi's, neither of them purchased within the past year or close. But eh, I've stopped growing, and if I were to find the perfect pair, maybe I'd... try to find them on eBay or something. $185 is almost comically too much for pants. $112 comes close, but these at least claim some labor superiority to the $30 variety to which I'd grown accustomed. 

But what if these A.P.C. ones were the most beautiful jeans ever? I had the compulsion not so much to buy said pants as to know. So I was running errands on campus and figured what they heck. I entered A.P.C., said hello to the guard (because this is Designer) and the various gamine and gamin store employees, making my way to the back of the store, where I confirmed that I was interested in "denim." I first heard the sales pitch for the denim, but had come in knowing what I wanted to see, and off to the dressing room I went. But before this even got to the point of, a) will I fit into these, and b) if so, will they do me any favors, I couldn't help but notice that they were made out of some incredibly thick canvas-type material, like a sail or tarp or something, such that they could basically stand upright on their own. I maybe half-tried them on, before deciding that even if I could get into them and they looked amazing (both unlikely, although sizing up may have dealt with the former), they were just awful. Pretty but awful. Fine, jeans are better if not all-out stretch pants, but they shouldn't be of a texture more suited to the Arms and Armor Division at the Met. 

And I was thrilled. OK, pleased. No $185 jeans, not now, not at some unspecified date three years from now. I not only can't afford them but don't want them. This freed up a slot for another longtime wanty: holographic nail polish.

The NYT endorses your cappuccino habit

As you certainly know, I believe you should drink as many lattes as you can stomach. More accurately: I find cheapness-advice that urges you, Young Person, to cut out macchiatos to be condescending and ridiculous. If you want/need to spend less, the first luxury to skip is whatever isn't giving you much pleasure. If that's getting coffee out, fair enough, but you probably like getting coffee out, thus why you wait in line to do so.*

Well! Via Facebook, there's an op-ed by Helaine Olen providing a sound economic explanation (i.e. not what you were getting from WWPD) for why "expensive cappuccinos" will not be your economic downfall. More accurately: for why you are in such a sink-hole that these are merely expensive caffeinated drops in the bucket.

*I have, as you also know, a theory that coffee and food, but especially coffee, tastes better if prepared by a what-is-the-PC-term-for-hipster-when-you-don't-mean-anything-negative-by-it. My life's ambition is to get a flat white from this man.

Confessions of a woods-hermit

-We're all going to get the super-flu. Even those of us who got flu shots months ago. I'm going to make use of the lack of commute and the fact that my husband (who works with other people, as opposed to writes a dissertation on the couch) is away, and hermit it up a storm for the next few days. I'm not usually so germophobic, but I've read that this thing puts you out for three weeks. No thanks. Problem: groceries. Solution: the apocalypse mac'n'cheese I bought when holed up because of Sandy.

-Hermit-workout of running with poodle in the woods was, predictably, not quite enough exercise for the twelve-pound animal, but probably too much for the significantly larger one. Listened to Tom Ashbrook interview a bunch of people about online dating and monogamy. Racy and easy-to-follow enough to make me almost forget that I was jogging. I wanted desperately to give a history-of-marriage and common-sense lesson to the guy who called in and said internet dating is a problem because it messes with "natural selection," but pre-recorded public-radio podcasts don't have that function.

-Best Styles story ever: outrageously expensive clothing specially designed for sitting and doing nothing. Lululemon is described in it as the "relatively affordable" option, which will be my only hint as to how expensive we're talking. OK, never mind, can't resist: Donna Karan's selling sweatpants for $995. Of course, stories like this always impact readers (this reader) in the same way: first it's all, 'but who would spend a thousand dollars on sweatpants?' which quickly transitions to 'so maybe I'm not unreasonable for considering buying myself properly-fitting jeans that cost more than $100 as a reward for having passed my road test.' Considering, and this is very much contingent on my leaving the woods and trying said jeans on.

-I know I was going to boycott Into The Gloss, what with its borderline-pro-ana turn, but then they go and have a "top shelf" with a Hemingway heiress who says the following: "I’ve never used deodorant; my mother doesn’t use it, either. I don’t smell, so I don’t want to use anything. And sometimes my B.O. is kind of floral, I don’t know why. [Laughs]." It takes all my restraint not to speculate on this woman's self-awareness regarding the odor of her other bodily excretions.

Son of Simon

The French version of Keds is now sold in the States at a not-unreasonable price. This was no doubt the quickest I'd ever gone from seeing a (PR-ish) post on a fashion blog to whipping out the credit card. But in my tepid defense, I'd been planning on getting the Keds version (navy slip-ons both), which are $40 to the Bensimons' $45, but I already know which size I take in the latter, and that they're comfortable, and really can go in the laundry. (Unlike the Converse I definitively ruined that way.) I hesitated on the Keds because they just weren't fabulous, whereas these are, as much as any canvas sneakers could be. It's less an impulse buy than an overly-researched one, which, now that I think of it, might be worse.

Poodles and cashmere UPDATED

Dear Bisou,

What was it that made you decide that pulling sweaters out of a drawer and shredding them is now your thing? Were you inspired by the fact that this particular sweater was new (as in, as of a couple days ago, worn once), cashmere, and, while discounted at Uniqlo, still $70 so not exactly cheap? A really gorgeous, well-fitting, wear-it-for-years-type, super-professional-looking camel crewneck. First-world-problems, fine, but this is enough of my budget that I'm not sure it's the best example. (I'm on a bit of a cheapness kick, if not lockdown, until I know exactly what it is I'll be doing after grad school. With exceptions for certain things that contribute to my polished-grown-woman-ness. See: another tub of the Japanese deep-conditioner, and some better-quality - but still $9 - clear nail polish. See: that damn sweater.) But yes, there are greater problems, I myself have greater things to contend with, so by all means, Bisou, have at it. (Like all dog owners, I've Googled "can dogs eat [every possible thing that humans can eat that's fallen on the floor, or that might have, and more]." So let's add cashmere to the list.)

But why, Bisou, why? Is the lesson you're trying to teach me that I need to be neater (i.e. no part of anything poking out of a drawer even a little bit, and anything of any value kept higher than even I can reach), that I should have been more the humble grad student and contented myself with the pilling, worn-out sweaters I already owned? Both, I think. Also confirmation of what I'm always saying, that paying more for better quality almost invariably means one ends up with these precious, delicate, snag-and-stain-ready materials. A sweatshirt, for example, would still be intact. I can't imagine this is a dog-training message, as this is not something you'd done before, and you're not exactly charging after any drawers and/or sweaters right now.

Can't-be-annoyed-at-you-because-you're-a-dog,
Phoebe

UPDATE

As feared/predicted, repairing this would cost more than the sweater itself. I think this is where I learn how to turn what's left of the sweater into a scarf, or poodle-toy, or who knows.

Highly recommended

Because WWPD is not a forum to discuss grad-student angst - and the grad students are angsty! - I will instead make some beautification recommendations. Because WWPD is not in fact a beauty blog, none of these places, alas, send me anything for free.

-Bourjois, it turns out, makes a glitter eyeliner almost identical to the Hard Candy one I was obsessed with in high school and college, and that now seems to be unavailable. (The Walmart version seems different, at least going by the website.) The Bourjois one's a tiny bit less glittery, which is for the best, but also has the fine glitter particles, which you need for the effect to work properly, and a better, more grown-up makeup texture. About 8 euros at the Zaventem Duty-Free, which is of course a place convenient to us all, or $12 on ebay.

-Shiseido's Japanese line includes a miracle deep-conditioner that's slightly less expensive at Sunrise Mart. You know when hair starts to look/feel like straw, and you probably should get a haircut, but that's $60 (if you're lucky) and an hour you don't want to spend? The best way I can describe this product is, it gives the impression of recently-trimmed hair. I fell asleep with wet hair and woke up with tendril-y waves, nothing nest-like. And the "mask" smells perfectly reasonable, inoffensive-conditioner scent, not (this was what happened the last time I strayed from the usual) like artificial grape.

-This one's a re-recommend: Uslu Airlines nail polish in "ultra light rose." I put this on exactly a week ago, travelled (economy, carry-on only) across the Atlantic and back, and it remains almost as good as new. No base coat, top coat. Not expertly applied I assure. If this stuff were available in the States, professional nail salons would promptly go out of business.

Loyalty points

Sometime soon, a post on meritocracy, aristocracy, and the Stuyvesant cheating scandal. Till then:

A few days ago was a real festival of cheapness-studied-and-deliberately-ignored. Rain boots, lipstick, and neither the cheapest version around. While both were replacement purchases, and the former arguably necessity, I will focus not on financial justification but aesthetic explanation. The rain boots are muted olive green, and somewhat equestrian, and make me feel like a Swiss or Northern Italian socialite. Yup, even on NJ Transit. They fit perfectly, even the calves, which is not something to sneeze at when it comes to rubber boots, which of course have no give whatsoever. Paired with this other recent acquisition, I could be the very height of glam and practicality. (Must I keep repeating that it's possible to love shoes but not stilettos?)

With the lipstick, meanwhile, I wanted a sheer bubblegum pink, mod but not chalky, pale but not pastel, and no shimmer, to replace a too-light, too-shimmery, and almost-finished tube of Korres. (Requisite Alexa Chung example of what I was looking for.) This is surprisingly difficult to track down. Bubblegum is usually too opaque, too purple, or - worse - in the form of lip gloss. This one seems to be doing the trick. Perfect with a subtle liquid-eyeliner cat-eye - this will do.

Which brings me - alas - to a cheapness-studies note: if you sign up for a Sephora loyalty card (ducks head), they tell you how many points you have at checkout, thereby reminding you how many dollars you've thrown away on not being thoroughly low-maintenance. I tried to remind myself that in the course of living in the woods and not buying stuff, I'd honest-to-goodness gone through things like lipstick and eyeliner, which I'd never thought possible. That if lipstick is purchased less than once a year, it can totally cost more than $20 and come from some neato Canadian company that specializes in lipstick made from food-grade substances, and not from a dreary, brightly-lit aisle in the Penn Station Duane Reade.

But the points don't lie. "You have X points" means "You spent $X at Sephora since picking up that card, more than you donated to the Obama campaign, money that you could have at the very least put in your savings account, you frivolous, vapid fool.'" I think I'd prefer a stamp-card system, like in a coffee shop, so that once you've bought X items and gotten something free, you'd be back to square one.

Nails and intersectionality

Bisou - who, let it be known, is fine now - timed her worst-yet gastrointestinal woes for just as my husband had to leave to go give a talk elsewhere in Germany. After schlepping a queasy poodle via tram to a not-quite-English-speaking (but oh so effective - what was in that shot?) veterinary office, then spending a day feeding her this special anti-upset-stomach food six times as instructed, and giving her electrolyte powder mixed with water via oral syringe throughout the day, and otherwise watching her intently and taking her on many short walks during which I did nothing but make sure she didn't eat anything bad off the ground (the likely cause of the initial problem), and examining her every movement and sound to make sure she wasn't about to start throwing up again, and getting some work done in the breaks between this, I felt some kind of reward was in order. But what?

I decided the time had come to rationalize a purchase I'd previously deemed ridiculous. 19 euros later, and I have the perfect sheer bubblegum pink, glossy and not peeling immediately despite lack of base or top coat. This pointless expenditure fits with my overall cheapness philosophy, which is to only buy things I've been thinking about for a while. (A pair of ballet flats will maybe require six months to track down, and another six to decide to purchase.) But this isn't about cheapness. It's about nails. Why is nail polish the ultimate treat?

Tracie Egan Morrissey of Jezebel recently argued that the nail industry is a form of female empowerment:

When historically female-centric practices—like cooking, baking, hair styling, clothing design, etc.—have been legitimized into celebrated careers, men typically end up being the stars who dominate those industries. Look at Emeril Lagasse or the Cake Boss guy or Vidal Sassoon or Karl Lagerfeld. Whenever there is money to be made or creativity to be applauded, men have managed to establish themselves as the authority on things that women had been doing thanklessly for centuries. That is, until nail art, the increasingly-popular, rapidly-expanding field that has almost exclusively remained all-girl.

She also notes - and this seems more relevant - that nail artifice "might just be the only form of primping and grooming that isn't rooted in making oneself more appealing to men or exploiting women's insecurities." True enough. Other beautification can be justified as being about snagging or keeping a mate. Nail polish... not really. Maybe slightly - how you wear your nails might indicate your subculture, and numerous choices might turn certain men off. And the choice to do something rather than nothing indicates conventional femininity (yes, even if your nails are blue - remember the gender-bending implications if a man does the same), which is of course a loaded thing to indicate when it comes to male-female relations. But overall, point taken.

It seems even relevant, though, that the more complicated your nails, the more of a statement you're making about your willingness to scrub the kitchen floor, or to bake bread from scratch. It's telling men (or, in this case, miniature poodles) that you take care of yourself, and aren't looking to pick up after them. Which could be why it's so appealing as an antidote to stressful domestic tasks.

"Nail art," though, is its own thing within the nail industry: designs on the nail itself, as opposed to simply painting all the nails one shade. Readers already know that I'm ambivalent about this phenomenon. (If painting your ring finger to highlight your engagement ring is problematic, where to begin with doing so in such a way as to match your iPhone case.) Glitter, metallic, neon, holographic, yes. Shatter or magnetic, whatever that is, no. I appreciate - yeah, I'll admit it - some French manicures, as well as the more socially-acceptable adventurous takes, but because I don't get professional manicures, my own nails tend to be painted a solid color or not at all. I have no interest in using my nails as a canvas.

In terms of why that is, I suspect it's for the same reason as why I don't like patterns or designs on clothing, either, but there's a whole politics to this question as well. As Jezebel commenters and others point out, "nail art" used to be derided as something done by working-class women (with possible racial connotations, although it depends where you grew up), and it's only now that fashion editors are giving rich white women permission to join in the fun. Granted, the new "nail art" is generally done on short, natural nails, but call it "Japanese," and even long acrylics can become part of socialite pampering.

Nails-as-a-canvas seems like a fine example of something some in the upper- and lower-classes share, but that isn't ever going to fly for the middle classes. If you're someone who needs to look appropriate for work, and who has so internalized bourgeois office-attire aesthetics as to only find work-appropriate styles attractive, you're not pressing on three-inch leopard-print nails. If you feel that you're a paycheck or two away from getting a job as a cashier, you may be less inclined to re-appropriate a style commonly associated with women in that profession. Super-complicated nails on a rich woman announce a kind of invincibility; on a woman on the other end of the spectrum, resignation or simply acceptance that no interviews for higher-brow jobs are forthcoming.

WWPD Guides: Beauty

Beauty - as in makeup, skin creams, and so on - is strangely compelling. But why? Is it just because relative to clothing, makeup is cheap, or is it more that one can more readily purchase a Chanel lipstick than a Chanel anything else? Is "beauty" - or "vanity" for that matter - for women thrilled with how they look, who want to spend as much time as possible gazing into a mirror, or for self-haters? Is Into the Gloss is actually a drug?

On some level, we all understand that how you look is for the most part a matter of your features, your age, and your overall well-being. If you don't look like this already, which I guarantee you don't, no revitalizing eye serum will make the difference. But wouldn't it be neat if, with the right selection of products, you could, at least on special occasions? It's now more possible than ever before to read about what various glamorous women goop onto themselves, and no matter how many times you repeat to yourself that correlation is not causation, you will wonder if maybe that Bioderma Créaline is all it's cracked up to be. You'll wonder this without even knowing what the product ostensibly does.

When it comes to beauty, there are two competing myths.  The first, the one promoted by the industry itself, is that products or procedures work miracles. The second is that beautification either does nothing (and is a plot to sell you stuff you don't need) or is in fact counterproductive. The liberation-from-beauty philosophy holds that if you stop blow-drying your hair, if you stop wearing concealer, this will make you not a frizzier, more blemished version of your usual, but will reveal once and for all your gorgeous natural hair texture and impeccable skin. When the truth is that sometimes, liberation might just mean accepting to look less conventionally attractive, and giving up whichever advantages that had provided.

So, onto the Official WWPD Guide, beauty edition. There are no hard-and-fast rules as to which forms of artifice are worth the bother, as this will depend on your own features, preferences, schedule, budget, and so on. But some general principles may help:

-There is a temptation to divide beautification rituals into self-hatred (bad) and self-expression (good). Yes to royal-blue eye shadow, say, but down with foundation. When what we should really do is separate out procedures that require general anesthesia, tens of thousands of dollars, risk of death, things of that nature, and have a separate conversation about those. When it comes to makeup, it's not always possible to say what's "fun" and what's "correction." For example, where does eyeliner fall? At what point does looking more awake become looking rock'n'roll? But as a rule, if the damage is $25 handed over to Sephora, this is relatively no big deal compared with $2,500 ($25,000?) handed over to someone who's cutting you open gratuitously. It's not that this removes ambiguity - where does Botox fall? chemical hair-straightening? - but it frames the discussion more productively.

-When it comes to deciding what you need/want to do, skin-care-wise, do not invent problems. There's this thing one reads about, "taking really good care of your skin," which evidently means purchasing thousands of dollars worth of serums. Isn't that some snazzy packaging? But try to resist. If the skin around your eyes is fine, you don't need eye cream. If your skin isn't dry, no moisturizer. Do you bathe regularly? Then skip the special "face wash" - you're presumably washing your face when you wash the rest of yourself, and if not, you're doing it wrong.

Meanwhile, if you have an actual dermatological condition, what you need is a dermatologist, not an equally expensive guessing game on a far-more-expensive trip to Frahnce.

-The big thing now in the beauty industry is "natural" products. As with organic food, it's a hippie interest gone mainstream. It's no longer about using one product as toothpaste, shampoo, and kitchen-cleaner, but the usual division of labor (one cream for the eyes, one for the neck...), minus whichever taboo ingredients, or with a leafy design. There will be an emphasis on "purity" - whether it refers to your health or the environment, subliminally it's all meant to stand in for the "purity" of your skin once whichever wrinkles or zits are removed. Leading to approaches like this: "[...] I got really scared of all the toxic things that are in beauty products. I mean, I smoke, I drink, I’m not a vegan, I eat like a French person, so pretty healthy, but with ice cream and candy."

While it's possible we are all being slowly killed by the butylacetoformadocyanides in our insufficiently organic eyeliner, the way to deal with that possibility isn't to collect a wide range of "natural" brands, but rather to simply use fewer products. Because let's be serious - do we have any idea if whatever replaces parabens is any better? Rather than scrutinizing the ingredients of what you do slather on, slather less stuff on. If you're wearing a toner and a serum and a primer and a day cream and invigorating oils and a tinted moisturizer and only after all that, you start applying your makeup, you may want to slow down. This will be better for your skin, your health, your wallet, and the environment, everything but the profits of the skin-cream industry. Your skin does not need to be "fed."

-That there is such a thing as marketing doesn't mean products never work as promised. I wanted to believe it, but no. Somewhere along the line, I tried this shampoo and conditioner, and realized my mistake. Oh, and if you're one of those pale women who gets a lot of 'you look tired', concealer and eyeliner, yes. Maybe blush, but don't overdo that. An absolutist stance against the Sephora Industrial Complex ends up being a bit self-defeating if you have some relatively contained routine without which you would look and feel worse.

-Mascara, however, is the single most overrated product. Yes, I have the drugstore Maybelline, and yes, out of some kind of ritual, I will wear it if I want to look my best. But if you have anything but pale blond lashes (and the product is of course marketed to women of all complexions), it's a bit like wearing foundation on unblemished skin - no one is going to see a difference. Putting waxy goo on your lashes does not make them any longer. The ads are showing you fake lashes. You will forget to remove the mascara and wake up the next day with under-eye circles. You will need special eye-makeup-remover to get the stuff off. If it rains (or worse, snows), you will immediately need to take cover. It's a gigantic pain in the neck for something that does approximately nothing unless, again, your eyelashes are near-translucent.

-There ought to be such a thing as enough when it comes to nail polish, but if you're someone who wants some, you want more. (Owning one bottle of clear, or a red from a decade ago, doesn't count.) That you already own beige doesn't mean you don't urgently need a sheer off-white. That you've got an orange-red doesn't mean you don't need a dark-red one ala "Vamp." That's just how it is. If you cared enough to buy the muted purple-pink, you will need a bubble-gum shade, as well as a pale-pink pastel, and why not a neon pink while you're at it. You can buy all the Opi and Essie you want, and still rationalize it by noting that you'd spend so much more if you got professional manicures. (It helps, with this rationalization, not to get professional manicures.) But you should still take it easy - $8 times infinity can add up.

On running shoes

Alice Waters wouldn't approve, but the wisest purchase I've made in a long time was a pair of... Nike sneakers. They're gorgeous (Europeans, don't judge), combining neon yellow-green (like the Cambridge satchel) with reflective-tape-material. 

There's this thing with running shoes, where you're supposed to consult an expert and get the very shoe that is the only one you could possibly run in without injuring yourself such that you will never walk again. These will inevitably be the ugliest marshmallows ever made, but if you're a serious runner, you wouldn't concern yourself with aesthetics. (Sure, you may run on average two to four miles at a time, and not every day or close, but who doesn't want to be serious?) You must not be cynical and consider that maybe the salesperson has been instructed to direct gullible customers like you away from the more attractive, better-selling pairs. (Does anyone not learn that the puffiest white ones with lilac details are the way to go?) Never mind that the science of running sneakers a) changes daily and b) is more relevant to athletes than to occasional joggers. This is science, and continued walking ability isn't something to sneeze at.

Whatever the case, this time around, I took the usual approach to shoes, adding a bit of jogging-in-place, and lo and behold, the sneakers that looked the best also fit if anything more comfortably than the monstrosities I'd once been told were all I could wear, and have allowed me to jog for 25 consecutive minutes without complaint. What stopped me from going further was my own desire to come back to the apartment and eat an Austrian soft pretzel, or maybe that the small dog alongside me had had enough. Not the sneakers.