I've never felt okay about purchasing clothes at the bookstore. Yes, it is a matter of pride. Yes, I look down on people who do buy clothes at the bookstore. (Don't worry if you are one of them because I will never know, and thus only look down on you generally and not specifically. This has interesting ramifications, since you now know that I look down on you and I don't. Strange.) Even though I have forbidden myself from buying clothes there, I sometimes walk through the clothes section wistfully fingering shirts and scanning the shoe collection*. On these occasions, I find myself wondering if the other shoppers think I'm actually shopping there, instead of just checking things out. Kind of like scoping the competition.
Why? Why do I feel this way? Even as a freshman, I instictively felt that buying clothes at the bookstore was something one did not do if one wanted to maintain one's oh-tres-cool role in the BYU cosmos. (Fun fact: did you know that the definition of cosmos is not simply a universe, but an ordered or harmonious universe? Making it the perfect word to describe BYU, Thank you dictionary.com for making me smarter one word at a time.) It has nothing to do with the styles of the clothes--ah! Suddenly I know why, and as a reader you should know that this is breaking news type of personal discovery, not some manufactured artificial realization. So here goes: 1. deep down I always pictured the buyers for the bookstore as older, out of touch mormon women who were making purchases based on what their daughters were into; 2. I didn't want to conform to the BYU sanctioned look, thinking that what they buy to sell must be what they hope we will wear....
At least my irrationality is never a surprise to me, having been diagnosed with irrational fears by complete strangers in the past.
*Here I reveal my hypocrisy. Once I bought a pair of magenta slip-ons from the bookstore because they were $15 and I'm a sucker for deals and I was going far away from BYU for the summer...incidentally I mixed up which hand was which and threw my shoes away promptly upon purchase because I thought they were the empty shoebox. Which act put me in the hilarious position of having to fetch my bookstore apparel out of a metal-lidded garbage can. Yuck.
3 comments:
1. i don't shop in the bookstore clothing section either. however, i don't shop there because everything is too expensive for me. there is cheaper stuff to be found in my brother's closet or d.i.
2. when people don't like me i avoid them or try to get them kicked out of my class.
3. my students tell me i'm boring all the time.
that's all
Never once bought clothes from the bookstore. I would be interested to see who does. Love you cath
got to say I've never bought clothes at the BYU bookstore either. in fact, I'm not sure I've ever bought anything at the BYU bookstore - but no, that can't be true. I'm sure I bought non-affiliated candy or something. I HAVE, on the other hand, bought clothing at the U bookstore, although it generally was red and had U of U on it. do you think less of me?
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