on headbands and materialism

Today, I was quite literally dragged off the couch by my mother (I was taking a lovely siesta) and forced to drive to the mall. According to all media ever (except those pesky quirky nerd girl shows that Zooey Deschanel has had a hand in proliferating), this situation, in combination with the fact that I am a 20 year old girl, is an oxymoron.

Actually, no, not quite an oxymoron, because dictionary.com defines oxymoron as

a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous,seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in “cruel kindness” or “tomake haste slowly.”

and my description above is less of a figure of speech and more of a "situation" (imagine me being sassy and doing air quotes here). But you understand the contrast I am trying to indicate here.

Anyways, I have been feeling very gross about materialism lately. I think it's more general grossness about the blogs that I spend my time reading, ie lifestyle blogs that promote materialism, eg joannagoddard.blogspot.com, ohjoy.blogs.com, pinterest, etc. Basically I am grossed out by the fact that I spend so much time coveting ITEMS, when, instead I should be filling my brain with knowledge and exercising my body. So due to this general feeling of being grossed out by material goods, I have clearly been avoiding most shopping complexes, and as you would probably know, a mall is nothing but a GIANT shopping complex.

Anyways, long story short, I bought some bras and browsed all the stores and it was pretty fun. And then I popped into that devilish, well-scented hell hole named Anthropologie. YEARRRGHHH. I love it, I hate it. It smells so nice and I just want to die in that bobo fantasy world (bobo here meaning bourgeois bohemian.. ick.com). HOWEVER. How can you justify a $28 headband that is literally just a handband with some fabric on it??? I get that people need to make money, but please, I also need to be a sane consumer. But another part of me is like.. it's beautiful, I'm going to cry.

And then I put it on. And I looked like this gorgeous princess with perfect hair. It was ridiculous. I literally looked like an off-duty celebrity caught on my way to the farmer's market. My brain began playing all these scenarios:

Scenario 1: I'm at school, studying in the library and I haven't slept but my hair looks amazing and the headband makes me look cute while everyone around me looks like a turd.

Scenario 2: I'm frolicking off an airplane and rolling my wheelie suitcase through the terminal while everyone around me looks like a turd.

Scenario 3: I'm walking through the mall looking fetch as fuck, while everyone else around me is wearing that hideous fluorescent sweatsuit trash that is called Victoria's Secret Pink (and they are all looking like turds).

HOW CAN I NOT SHELL OUT $28 ON THIS HEADBAND?! It's not just a headband.. it's an EXPERIENCE. It shouts to the world, "I am an interesting girl who put minimal effort into her look, but am still fashion forward member of society and maybe I care about the fate of our country's meat industry!"

Wow.. $28 for that? I mean..

Well I didn't buy it. Because I'm not stupid. But I am still thinking about that headband, so here it is, so you can think about how good you would look in it too: