The Carrie Bradshaw Effect

Things are about to get real around here today.  So, if you can't handle some rawrealdigganess, you can go ahead and skip over to the next article in your reader.  So, I have been doing a lot of reflecting as of late, which is why I have been a little MIA around here.  I have thought a lot about where I want to go with this blog.  How my style and priorities are evolving and how that will shape my grown-up self as well as my place in the interwebs and amongst the style blogging community.  I have never been in this thing to be the most popular, most stylish, or most kisseveryonesassiest.  I am in this blogging thing to be authentic to me, share my interest, and make some friends along the way.  I feel as though I have accomplished those milestones in a big way.  Y'all come around, we have story time, you say nice things, and most of the time laugh.  Hooray.  Good job.  Britney Spears sparkle princess awards to us all.  Here is where things get real:

Any of us in mine, Beyonce, and Britney's age bracket (1981 was a good year for fabulousness, what can I say?) are part of the Carrie Bradshaw generation.  We were taught at an impressionable age what Manolo Blahniks, Halston, and cosmos were and why they are so important to a woman's life.  We were taught that you put your sweaters in the oven because you don't cook.  We were taught that you should never be caught dead in flats, and that you should buy Vogue instead of food because it nourishes you more.  We were also taught that you should run around the city like a crazy person looking for the love of your life, no matter how shitty he treated you.  

Does this resonate with any of you?  I have been known to say "I will buy a pair of shoes before I buy food".  I have been called "The Carrie Bradshaw" of multiple workplaces.  I never wear the same thing in the same way twice, yet I have a closet full of notadamned thing to wear.  I have no idea what the amount of money it is that I have spent on shoes and clothes over the past decade, but I can guarantee you that it is probably close to the total of my current salary.  I have run around like a crazy person for the wrong guy who treated me like pure shit.  These are all truths about myself that I am absolutely not proud of, however, I was consoled by one thing:  Carrie Bradshaw did it, and she wound up in Heaven on 5th. 

Do you know how absolutely ridiculous, reckless, and stupid that is?  The only financial investments to the point of being 31 in my life are hanging in my closet.  That is just dumb and irresponsible.  I feel terribly guilty as a style blogger that I have contributed to this sense of entitlement, faux fabulousness, and lack of true confidence to other women.  I don't want to be that person who enables someone else to stumble or be irresponsible with their money.  I read a lot of blogs and look at people who lived in small towns two years ago, wearing mostly Forever 21 and vintage finds, who are now running around San Francisco in a $3,000 dress and Prada shoes that look like a match box car.  I will never be that girl, however, the mentality was still the same for me.  "The season is changing, I need to go out and spend at least a G to get fitted."  You know what Kanye calls that?  Hood Rich. "Can't pay the bills but got the new Jordans"  Which comes around full circle to Carrie.  She had to borrow money from her best friend so that she didn't lose her apartment after she broke up with Aiden.  DUMB.  

This mentality is not responsible in the least.  Here are the facts: Women spend $80,000 in clothing in their lifetime.  85% of that winds up in the trash or at Goodwill.  Guess what, if your apartment building caught fire, you would no longer have anything.  Absolutely nothing to show for your hard work...oh, and PdotS, your faux self worth just burned to the ground...so there is that.  Look, I grew up with not a lot of material possessions but was showered with love.  That didn't make up for the fact that once I started making money, I wanted to Carrie Bradshaw my closet away.  STACKED from top to bottom of pure awesomeness.  That isn't to say that I spend a lot of money on clothes...I buy a lot of things, but nothing expensive.  The most expensive things that I have in my closet were given to me as gifts.  But having places like Forever31 around, I accumulate a lot.  Make sense?

Here is where things get better.  I found my Big.  I tell him when he is being stubborn, and he tells me when I am being a pain in the ass...Which is about 99.9% of the time.  We have worked through a lot, but one of them is the way that I think about money.  Sure I can buy clothes, but then that means we can't have a nice dinner out.  And no, reading Vogue instead of eating dinner is not ok! He has helped me to realize these things.  So, I went shopping last week and got a few things to start the Fall off.  I told him this and he made me a bet...That bet was that I couldn't spend money on clothes until the new year.  If I buy any clothes during that time period, I owe him $1,000.  Not to be anyone to enter into agreements without loopholes I got the caveat that the only new things that I would get are off of credits that I earn on Poshmark off of sold clothes (sorry, we are both Sicilian, so haggling with us is like hanging out at a gypsy market).  The goal is to show that I have self control and that my Carrie Bradshaw mentality is now a Mrs. John James Preston mentality.  Thinking of the bigger picture rather than the latest oxblood leather dress that I want so badly, but can really wait until January to have it.

So, here we go.  No shopping for me until January 1.  That means, I need y'all to buy my crap off Poshmark because your girl needs a couple of sweaters.  And to be honest, I would never renounce Carrie as my patron saint... I will always be brave enough to rock a tutu in public.  "The tux may say Preston, but the headpiece is all Bradshaw". 

The Best Things In Life Are Free.

Angie