Do You Have Shopping Bulimia?

By Robert Paul Reyes

With the exception of a few metrosexuals with a penchant for man bags and other accessories, guys are practical when it comes to clothes. We don't accessorize, the only accessory we may have is a snot rag in our back pant's pocket.

When a dude needs a shirt, he simply tells his girlfriend or wife: Yo, I'm going to the department store to buy a new shirt.

A lady will tell her girlfriends, never her husband: I just gotta have that new Anne Klein blouse, the silver one with the embedded pearls that I saw at Macy's.

To a guy a shirt is a shirt is a shirt and he will wear it with any pair of pants; to a gal a blouse must be the right designer brand and it can only be worn with a certain dress and only at a particular time of the year.

Guys almost never buy clothes for a special occasion, whatever isn't in the hamper is what a man will put on for a party or special celebration. A woman absolutely, positively, has to buy an entire new outfit for any party or special event.

That's why it's the fair sex that is susceptible to the odious practice of buying clothes for a special occasion and then returning them on the next day. This disease is known as shopping bulimia, it afflicts 90% of the female population. If you have a skin rash from tags rubbing against your skin -- you have shopping bulimia. This symptom could be eliminated if the tags were removed, but that would make it more difficult to get a refund.

My friend works in a department store, and she's learned never to confront a woman afflicted with shopping bulimia. She once asked this prima donna why she returned clothes two or three times a month, and the lady gave her an earful about a "woman's prerogative to change her mind" with a few expletives thrown in for good measure.

The only known cure for shopping bulimia is for a woman never to celebrate birthdays, weddings, baby showers, promotions, graduations, first communions, anniversaries -- basically never to attend a party or celebration of any kind.

Robert Paul Reyes is a NewsBlaze writer on Politics, Pop Culture and Pointless Pontificating. Contact him by writing to NewsBlaze.