The Evolutinary Psychology of Shopping

"Here's a woman,
she's shopping again
there's no point
trying to understand this"

When I was riding the bus home one day I saw this quote on a shopping bag someone had. I can't, for the life of me, remember what store the bag was from; I do remember that the words were white and they were imposed over an image of a woman from the shoulders down with a multicolored striped dress. I do remember being disgusted by the quote and I do remember why. I would of course feel more comfortable talking about this if I remembered the brand, but since I don't, and I'm not incriminating anything, I shall progress. 

The company might for all I know be an okay company, though the chances of this being the case I think are slim. (and by okay I mean have Fair Labor certified clothing, have eco-friendly sustainable manufacturing processes, maybe be worker owned, etc.) I know for a fact that it was a big brand located on the Mag Mile. I do remember thinking that it wouldn't have been so bad if it were a company like Patagonia, at least something that I could relate to, but I felt that the words were first both enabling and encouraging mindless consumerism and secondly that they were an opportunistic copout for feckless humans (that most of the time cannot help themselves when it comes to pretty things).

I felt that it was enabling the belief that shopping is an accepted habit that one doesn't have to understand. That the Patagonia retailer tries to be socially responsible is something that I can relate to. In the unlikely event that one of their shopping bags were to feature words such as these I would perceive them as an acknowledgement of peculiar human characteristics. 

Please humor me because most of the time I feel like I'm beating a dead horse by talking about this stuff. Most people know about what is "right" and what is "wrong" so to speak and once they know the difference it feels redundant and preachy to speak about any particular issue. But even though I hate redundancy, I like to write and it is part of my character to write about these things, so I shall continue to do so.