Club Bebe

I am not a Bebe type. I like Niketown. I think athletic gear offers just the right image combination of strength and sex appeal, and I can trust that an $80 gym pant is going to hold its spandex and, hence, my ass, just fine without looking trashy or sloppy. That's a good friend for a girl to have.

However, life cannot be spent in gym clothes. Life really cannot really be spent wearing the same default thing all the time. So when I had an opportunity to travel along with a true, dedicated clothing consumer over the age of 40, I agreed. I wanted to learn something. This woman always looked great. This woman always turned men's heads. This woman was always smiling. It made me nuts, but it was true. It made me want to hate her, but I couldn't. She was to teach me in a series of lessons learned by accompanying her to some high end malls. My only job to observe and learn. It didn't matter that she had more money than god, and I had $4.50 left on my debit card. Somehow, she would help me.

For some reason, on our first trip out I wore a yellow polo shirt. I never wear polo shirts. I never wear yellow. It was as if I wanted to fail. I feel like a man in a cotton three buttoner. Suddenly I was partially invisible and completely uncomfortable. Meanwhile, my teacher wore diamonds, wedged-heeled sandals, and cleavage. Her long blond hair was perfect and her skin was flawless. She moved about the handbag section scanning and eyeing up $900 Chanels and $800 Cole Haans. After twenty minutes I started looking at handbags too. At twenty-one minutes I began thinking I could justify a purse that was designed to be dated in half a season and more expensive than my first house. "If I would buy that purse, I could stuff my yellow polo shirt in it and things would seriously start to improve," I thought.

At twenty-two minutes, my teacher took an abrupt turn towards the shoe department. She needed more sparkley wedgie sandals, it seemed. All of them. I kept finding the shoes with the solid toes and the heels and the black and, well, the work shoe. I could wear my pumps to the beach, to the bars, to the gym. I obviously had no imagination. I lived in a safe zone. In this, her land of Blahniks, I migrated towards Hush Puppies and the Easy Spirit slip on.

to be con't . . .