Why is it??

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amamxr

amamxr

Member
Aug 21, 2006
5,290
46
#1
I was talking with a friend the other day and posed this question to her.
Why is it that we are never satisfied?. We purchase what we think is the handbag of our dreams and when it arrives we are elated and say wow- I love it I am done no more purchases for me.

The next day you find yourself back in the search for another one. Why?
Is it the:
Challenge , the search and conquer?
The rush of clicking the buy it button, the anticipation of the delivery?
When will it get here, how will it get here and will it get here in one piece?
The adrenaline of opening up that box carrying the bag....

At what point does the handbag rush stop for you and you are ready for your next conquest???:hysteric:
 
#2
I have to say I love the hunt! I love looking at different bags, and looking at the Visual Aids and what other people have to say, and making my wish list, and editing the wish list, and then finding THAT bag that totally fits my needs (of the moment!). And the anticipation of waiting to get it when you've finally chosen...and the new bag smell...oooh....it's WONDERFUL!
 
#4
I love the hunt also! Plus the excitement that you feel of having something new! TPf has been hard on my wallet because I see all these new beautiful bags that everyone has and I feel I just have to have some of them!
 
#5
"Hunt" may be a misnomer -- thousands of years ago, before the advent of agriculture, while the role of men may have been to hunt, the role of women was to search for food and materials (gathering) that may have been hard to find (plants, roots, etc). Some say that this is the reason that some women get such a thrill from shopping and buying, and why some women take pleasure in just "browsing".
 
#6
my mother thinks it's an unhealthy obsession. lately i have been inclined to agree. i personally think it's the rush of winning or buying something and the anticipation of getting it. then once you have it the rush is gone and it's on to the next...
 
#7
ilikepenguins said:
I have to say I love the hunt! I love looking at different bags, and looking at the Visual Aids and what other people have to say, and making my wish list, and editing the wish list, and then finding THAT bag that totally fits my needs (of the moment!). And the anticipation of waiting to get it when you've finally chosen...and the new bag smell...oooh....it's WONDERFUL!
Click to expand...

LOL
kind of like going after that man... as long as there is a hunt everything is good. When the hunt ends you have to get something that is hard to find :)
 
#8
I am going to go out on a limb here (and hopefully not piss anyone off whilst doing so...) but I think we keep looking because we are trying to fill a void in our lives. Personally, I am on the surface very happy and content. Great husband, three healthy kids, no money concerns, great family... but underneath, I am desperately lonely for the friends I lost when I got married and had kids. My life is consumed by my family and I very rarely do anything for myself, or with my old friends. We've drifted apart and I don't have any girlfriends that I see or talk to on a regular basis anymore.

Okay, maybe it's just me. But I think everyone has something in their lives that they are missing or that they can't buy - like a bag. I fill my void with beautiful things.

Of course, this probably doesn't apply to everyone - so please no flaming!!! Just a thought.:shrugs:
 
#9
whistlerchic said:
I am going to go out on a limb here (and hopefully not piss anyone off whilst doing so...) but I think we keep looking because we are trying to fill a void in our lives. Personally, I am on the surface very happy and content. Great husband, three healthy kids, no money concerns, great family... but underneath, I am desperately lonely for the friends I lost when I got married and had kids. My life is consumed by my family and I very rarely do anything for myself, or with my old friends. We've drifted apart and I don't have any girlfriends that I see or talk to on a regular basis anymore.

Okay, maybe it's just me. But I think everyone has something in their lives that they are missing or that they can't buy - like a bag. I fill my void with beautiful things.

Of course, this probably doesn't apply to everyone - so please no flaming!!! Just a thought.:shrugs:
Click to expand...

No flaming required or needed. Your post speaks from the heart and I admire you for that. I will be your cyber friend!! now stop buying handbags !! lol..

I often think- do we just like to enjoy beautiful things, covet them and share them with people who are just as obsessed as we are?.

Could there be that many lonely people out there as you say filling the void with handbags? Certainly a handbag can not be a friend, it doesn't speak to us, but what does it exactly do for us?
 
#10
Well, I don't know if all the lonely people are filling their void with handbags, it's certainly an expensive little obsession! But I do think that most people are lonelier than they let on. We all have something we've "lost", you know?

Handbags? Well, it's better for you than drugs, lol! But it all falls into the 'retail therapy' hole. I don't know what it is, but if it brings you some happiness, and it's not driving you into uncontrollable debt, what is the harm? I know that these "things" aren't replacing the friends that I have lost, but they brighten my day a little... I don't know! They just do!

Thanks for understanding!! BTW, GORGEOUS Kelly!
 
#11
When I've taught about the history of advertising and consumer culture, this question has come up regularly. Students in my classes learn about consumerism (in America) as an ideology... That is to say that there are a set of beliefs people have with regard to consumerism. These beliefs can be conflated with the political, but most often the ideology functions to make the social construction of consumer desire appear to be "natural" or a matter of course. People learn via ads and pop cultural texts at a very young age (especially in capitalist countries) that buying provides a solution to whatever problems they may have. The history of advertising in America in particular evidences this quite neatly, as early ads were much more linear and direct in their selling strategies: "have a problem? we have the solution!"

But that promise of the consumer fix can never truly be fulfilled, otherwise the economy would suffer. That's why in their famous essay, "The Culture Industry," Horkheimer and Adorno write that there's an intractable resilience of the ideology of consumerism. The culture industry's ability to co-opt and commodify almost anything you can think of exhibits this resilience. Bottled water is a good example because it rose as a consumer product in the lifetimes of most of my students. You can also see it when perfectly working or satisfactory products get updated. But rather than that new stain remover solving our need to remove stains, we learn that the product has been updated since our original purchasing and is now "New and Improved" or that there's an entirely different newer product that will work even better. It enables an endless cycle of buying.

Concurrently, rather than the purchase of a new bag solving our desire for a bag, we figure out that it's not our "IT" bag anymore or that it isn't going to solve our bag-related, style-related, or wardrobe-related problems, whatever they may be. Part of why contemporary scholars have theorized that post-modernity leads to a perceived disposibility of culture and of all material goods also relates with this ideology of consumerism.

People who say 'vote with your dollar' evidence how powerful the ideology has become. Instead of conceiving of that type of power (voting) as exercising citizenship in a democracy, it gets reconfigured to become consumer politics. And when you vote with your dollar, you're already saying something about the power of people who do not have as many dollars with which to use on this type of "voting." The hierarchy of who 'counts' under consumer politics hinges upon socio-economic class status. This does get complicated when the credit/debt economy gets thrown into the mix (as people can now vote with symbolic dollars they might not actually possess), but it remains that there is a distinct hierarchy of "citizens" when consumerism is the way human agency (with regard to politics, voting, etc.) can be expressed in a society. This too is a product of the ideology of consumerism.
 
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#13
whistlerchic said:
I am going to go out on a limb here (and hopefully not piss anyone off whilst doing so...) but I think we keep looking because we are trying to fill a void in our lives. Personally, I am on the surface very happy and content. Great husband, three healthy kids, no money concerns, great family... but underneath, I am desperately lonely for the friends I lost when I got married and had kids. My life is consumed by my family and I very rarely do anything for myself, or with my old friends. We've drifted apart and I don't have any girlfriends that I see or talk to on a regular basis anymore.

Okay, maybe it's just me. But I think everyone has something in their lives that they are missing or that they can't buy - like a bag. I fill my void with beautiful things.

Of course, this probably doesn't apply to everyone - so please no flaming!!! Just a thought.:shrugs:
Click to expand...

I really appreciate your honest response . I moved to a place where all I have done is work and it has been hard to make new friendships. For me, I think I have been trying to fill the void of not having the friendships I used to have, and of course buying bags does not work in filling that void.
 
#14
i 100% agree that it fills a void. you think "well, i will certainly be happy now that i have xx" and then it comes and you realize, wow, that did NOT make me happy like i thought bit would. maybe i should buy yyy. and so on.
 
#15
I've heard that any kind of shopping can be a true addiction, and once something new is purchased the "high" lasts about two weeks before it subsides and then the obsession for something new kicks in again. That seems to be about right to me. I hate it and love it.
 
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