Victim or Victimizer

I have always maintained that dreams represent unconscious anxieties. Yesterday I dreamt about shoes. Day before I dreamt about clothes. Two days of transitory shopaholism can be the cause of much anxiety in my life. And I am not alone. I share the fate suffered by the million and more victims of modern society, the half referred to by its other half as the fairer sex. Its just one of the plights the man bestows and the woman bears. It’s called ‘fashion’. A woman’s clothes and shoes are a small part of it and relentlessly run into a long list nonetheless:
1. Casual wear for friendly outings.
2. Casual wear for family outings
3. Casual wear for casual Fridays at office.
4. Casual wear for Sundays at home.
5. Day wear for an afternoon date
6. Evening wear for a dinner date
7. Hi- fashion wear for a club outing
8. Sports wear for gym
9. Different sportswear for badminton and tennis
10. Formal wear for work
11. Light formal wear for general family functions
12. Heavy formal wear for the ‘heavier’ family functions
13. Night wear for sleep
14. The aforementioned categories are mutually exclusive and repetition of outfits can be fatal.
And then we come to the shoes:
1. Formal shoes for office
2. Heels for the dates
3. Sports shoes for the gym
4. A different pair for tennis
5. Flats for shopping
6. Ballerinas for the denims
7. Strap-ups for the skirts
8. Morjaris for Indian wear
9. Comfy wear for travel
10. Footwear for home and for the frequent visits to the neighborhood kirana store
11. And make that at least two pairs of each… coz a colour mis-match is an unforgivable crime.
And the list doesn’t end with the 20 pairs of shoes and 52 pairs of dresses. It includes repetition of the shopping exercise every quarter of a year and extends to what we wear in our ears, our necks, our hands, our fingers, our hair and a rare unconventional area of decoration sometimes. We are artists at work, constantly renovating with every changing fashion season. We invest time, money and patience and sacrifice our peace of mind to the end of being perceived as modern. The trick, we say, is to look like a winner- one, we know, works with men. And the trick is not secret. There’s an entire industry built on its foundation and every move is out in the open. Yet, men succumb to its charms. Substance-over-form is the loser’s maxim, belonging to the dud who can’t get the babe and the achievers in the conquest are a marketer’s dream. Whatever happened to the natural order of the male attracting the female, we love playing the reversed game, and with flair.
No woman would say it easy being a woman. But it’s definitely a lot of fun.