Shopping; A Man's Perspective

Let me get this straight; I don't enjoy clothes shopping, never have enjoyed it, and probably won't enjoy it any time in the coming future. My idea of clothes shopping is buying clothes for necessity, just to avoid having to walk around naked. Anyhow, with Eid moving closer, more and more women seem to be hitting the shops every day, armed with their cash and credit cards, ready to invade the clothes shops and strip them dry (my wife being one of them). I have so far managed to steer clear away from shopping malls and the whole "shopping fever" since Ramadan started, avoiding any confrontation with wifey as she goes shopping with her friends, family, and so on.

Phew.

But last night was different. After a heavy iftar with the family, and after watching a few TV shows, I got ready to sneak out of the house to avoid yet another night of relentless, ruthless shopping.

"Honey?" She said.

"Dammit!" I thought, as I tried to slip my shoes on and make a run for it. "I need to go shopping today"

"Umm, ok.. Don't you do that with your friends, or sisters, or aunts? (or your cousins, or aunts cousins, or cat, or anyone else in the world except me, I wanted to add, but decided it would be safer to just stop there)", to which I got the answer that somehow everyone else in the world was busy and the only person seemingly free enough to go shopping with was (sigh) me.

So here we are in the parking lot of Bahrain Mall about to walk inside. She's already invaded and conquered Seef Mall, Aali Mall and a few others, so it was Bahrain Mall for today; as it was Gerga'on tonight, it seems that a lot of the festivities have shifted to the mall. There were a few colorful characters in costume, that I think were supposed to represent Disney cartoons:


Thats just distasteful, really. However, children were actually standing next to this guy and taking photos! What a freaky memory to keep. This is the kind of character that can haunt you in your dreams, but this wasn't the worst of it.

There was some sort of dwarf character (as in Snow White & the 7 Dwarfs) giving out balloons to the children, but this guy was even scarier than the Makki Mouse character:


Damn. Anyhow, I managed to delay the misery of shopping for approximately 2 minutes as I stood around taking photos of these freaky, freaky creatures, but I had to face reality and follow my wife from shop to shop as she looked at all sorts of clothes.

Thing I don't understand is how a woman can spend so much time in one shop. Seriously, it's not just my wife; the shopping mall was filled with women, and each one seemed to spend unreasonable amounts of time looking at every single piece of clothing in every single store. How can they keep up their interest for so long?

In my case, after walking into a clothes store, i'm able to keep up my excitement for approximately, ermmm.. 12 seconds.

Funny that. So we're walking around from store to store, the shopping bags are increasing in number, and my credit card starts feeling lighter.. During this whole shopping experience, I came to a number of observations; womens clothes are usually smaller than mens clothes. Seriously, take a look at any t-shirt in the ladies section and compare it to the t-shirts in the men section; they're usually half the size. That should technically mean they use almost half the material to make, and should therefore be cheaper. Why do they cost twice as much as ours? :S My belief is that it's a conspiracy, with clothes companies not even bothering to create a seperate clothes line for women; just using the same clothes the made for kids and labelling them "women" and then charging ridiculous prices for them.

Bluh. Another thing; it seems the newer models and mannequins are trying to promote a "sexier" image, so they just keep them semi (or fully) naked. Ooh err.





While straggling around one of the shops (which are always filled with women, it seems, I was the lonely male there), I spotted another of my kind. He walked in with his woman, and was obviously subject to the same kind of agony I was going through. We glanced eyes for a milli-second. It didn't last long, but there was some assurance there; it's as if we were both telling each other, "hang in there, you're going to make it". Freedom is but a few hours away (it was about half an hour before all the shops closed), and then we can be free to run away to whichever gahwa our heart pleases and hang out with the guys.

Well, a little later the torture was over. The back seat of the car was filled with shopping bags and my wallet seemed much lighter. But hey, it was over. Tommorow, i'm making sure to sneak out a little earlier, or at least find some way of becoming invisible before I get spotted leaving the house.