Published The Advocate, February 25, 2006


PART of the experience of shopping with my mother was the dressing up as if you were going to church – genuflecting at the holy altar of retail hallelujah. It was never pleasant. Part of it was the ‘Sunday best’ effort but mostly it was the tension of going out in public with your mum, and vice versa. She would smear her spittle on my unruly hair as if my appearance was a conspiracy against her sense of style and decorum, and would issue warnings not to shame the family name or she would disown me. My mother is nearly 80 now and I thought the trauma had passed. Recently I went with her while she bought a pair of shoes. After an hour of trying on different pairs, she departed without buying any. And it all came flooding back. Aaaargh. For my dad, a hardware store was seventh heaven. He would spend hours wandering the aisles to see what’s what, and often came away with a new dooverwacky or a light globe. Our pantry had a special shelf for light globes. The only memory I have of him buying clothes was the day he came home with two white Viscostatic shirts, which he said were wash’n’wear to save mum the ironing. The shirts quickly yellowed with sun and underarm sweat although we lived in Geelong, not noted for its sub-tropical heat. Dad was never again allowed to buy shirts by himself. Tipster Donkey Dan – 'the pensioner’s friend' – loves shopping. He knows the comparative prices of Bismark potatoes across the Coast; he actually reads the can labels to find the country of origin; and he promises to find the best price on any item, guaranteed, even if it costs him $5 in petrol to get there. But even DD draws the line at buying clothes for his wife. He once bought her tennis shoes, which had to be returned because they were the wrong size, wrong colour, wrong pattern – tick the box – and he learned from it. For their recent wedding anniversary, he bought her a lingerie voucher and was smothered in love and kisses. Hmm, tennis shoes and lingerie – does that sound like a fetish to you? Anyway, no man in his right mind would dare buy clothes for a woman. Why put yourself at physical risk in knowing she is now a size 16, no longer a 10, which apparently was declared a state secret some years ago; or exposing the lie that size 16 is not the same in all brands; or choosing a colour that does not match her mood at a given moment? Yet women insist on buying clothes for their menfolk. Shirts the colour of toilet disinfectant, with sleeves too long, and pink ties – pink! – that you are expected to wear in public. Why do they do it? It must be a gender thing. I have a photo of an elderly Aboriginal woman in the Outback, wearing a T-shirt printed with: I Shop Therefore I Am.