Student_Kristina Afrides                               English 1000C Essay Number: Number 2

 

ESSAY COVERSHEET

 

Instructions: For each essay, complete a coversheet after you have written a discovery draft and then submit the coversheet with all subsequent drafts of the essay, revising the coversheet as needed if your approach to the essay changes.  You may write on the back of this sheet if you need more room.

 

1.         In a word or phrase, describe your topic. ______shopaholics____________

 

2.         In a word or phrase, give your working title. ___Shopaholics._

 

3.         Complete the following sentence that tells why you are an insider on this subject; that is, what qualifies you to write on this subject.?

 

            I am an insider on this subject because I am a shopaholic myself as well as some of my closest friends

 

 

4.         In two to four sentences complete the following, which should describe your target audience in specific terms: class, gender, race, age, educational level, geographical location and the like.

 

            My target readers are anyone who is on the path of becoming a shopaholic, or someone who is interested in what I have to say.  Teenagers as well as others may be interested in this subject.

 

 

            I have chosen this specific audience because they would be the most interested in the topic and it might help some people with their habit of shopping.

 

 

5.         Complete the following statements that indicate (a) the purpose that you want to achieve in writing this essay for this specific audience and (b) the response you expect from this audience.        

 

            My purpose in writing this essay is to give attention to something that really seems like an addiction that no one pays attention to.  Also, to help possible shopaholics and prevent them from being in debt by thousands which will eventually happen.

            I hope my audience will respond by being interested and possibly learning something and possibly agreeing with some of my points of view.

 

6.         Complete the following sentence to indicate what value your essay holds for its readers.

 

            My readers will benefit from reading this essay by knowing more about the topic and also possibly saving money if they understand that they have a problem similar to this one.

 

7.         In a word or phrase, identify the role you are playing as the author of this essay:  Are you writing in your role as a university student, new parent, concerned citizen, dedicated worker, or what?

A student and also a concerned friend.

 

1. In a complete sentence, state your thesis.  Be sure that this statement is the same thesis that appears in your essay.

People who are shopaholics will eventually get debt problems if they are not helped, and they should take the time to fix their addiction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Three Questions are:

• Do I speak about too many items and should I focus more on one rather than another?
• Is my grammar well done?
• Are there any other suggestions that you have about my paper?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shopaholics

By: Kristina Afrides

Due: January 10, 2007

 

 

 

 

I am a shopaholic and I am not alone.  When thinking about an alcoholic, we know that it refers to someone who is addicted to alcohol.  I believe that a shopaholic is something similar.  I believe the word “shopaholic” to refer to a person who is somewhat addicted to it, though not necessarily so.  I believe that the main criteria for being a shopaholic is that they shop on a regular basis with little or no regards to how much they spend or buy, and go to shopping in order to make themselves happy, or fill a void.  Not everyone shops to fill a void, so this is somewhat conditional, however I think that a major part of the criteria is that these people spend large sums of money purchasing large sums of items on a regular basis.  Through this project however, I figured out that there is some degree of addiction to shopping and there is definitely some degree of pleasure that comes out of purchasing these items.  I hope that these people realize the damage that their shopping habits could lead to in the future.  Shopping is something that everyone does, but there are some people out there that waste thousands of dollars a year on things that they don’t need and hopefully, this is your wake up call.

There are so many people out there who have problems with spending money that there are television shows that attempt to help end their shopping sprees.  One of these shows is called, “Big Spender.”  This show is based on a man who gives people goals and tips to aid them in ending their debt problems.  On this show, there was a woman who was in debt by thousands, borrowing money from her family, yet had seventeen thousand dollars worth of shoes that she was unwilling to sell.  The man tried to help her by telling her that she needed to sell her shoes.  Her response to this idea was, “Why should I sell my shoes?  If I sell my shoes that I’ve spent seventeen thousand dollars on, all I would have accomplished was making myself shoeless.  What am I going to do, not have shoes?  I would then have to go out and spend another seventeen thousand dollars on replacements.”   I thought that this remark was the perfect way to sum up a shopaholic.  “When throwing out, or selling my things, I must go out, spend the money I have just earned, which was meant for getting me out of debt, to replace the items I’ve gotten rid of, with perhaps more expensive items.”    It is this mentality, the mentality of myself, as well as the mentality of some of the others that I interviewed, that has gotten people into thousands of dollars of debt.  I hoped to learn how each shopaholic is different and how they are the same.  I wanted to compare shopaholics to non‑shopaholics, and women shopaholics to men shopaholics.  I wanted to find out what makes a shopaholic different from a non‑shopaholic and what gender affects when shopping.  Is this one place where men and women are equal, or are women actually the winners of this competition.  I hoped to understand what being a shopaholic entails and what a shopaholic really is.

I asked a series of about forty‑five questions to a total of five people.  I also asked a shortened version to a sixth person.  Along with these six people, there are of course my own opinions reflected in this paper.  I am also a shopaholic and although I did not officially answer the questions, I am another person who feels strongly about this topic.

I asked questions like, “Are you a shopaholic? Why or why not?” “Most of the time, who do you shop for?” “Do you think that shopping might hint at certain sexual preferences?” “The stereotype of shopaholics are women, do you believe that the stereotype is accurate and it is in fact only women?”  Another questions also asked if they believed that their mood affected their will to shop.  From this also stemmed the very interesting question of whether or not shopping is addictive.  These are some of the types of questions that I used along with many others.

I found all of the answers to my questions to be very interesting.  Some were funny while other were extremely helpful in telling me what shopaholics are like.  For example, when asking if their mood affected their will to shop, one of my answers was as straight forward as, “No, if I’m happy, it makes me happier, and if I’m depressed, then I’m a depressed girl with a new Gucci bag.”  Everyone else had the same general answer that if they were down, it would make them happy.  I began to understand shopping in a new way.  I got the idea for the question, “Would you say that shopping is addictive?”  While everyone answered no to this question, I began to wonder if they were in denial.  I had to ask myself while trying to understand why shopaholics become shopaholics, “Is shopping like drugs?”  I began to think that shopping was like a very expensive drug addiction that people couldn’t get enough of.  The high that people seemed to get that took them from depressed to feeling good seemed similar to the high you might get with a drug.  Everyone I interviewed said that when depressed, getting something new made them happy.  But this high is different. Instead of making you feel good, shopping makes people feel good about themselves.  It’s something like a psychological dependence.  Shopping causes no physical addiction but it creates a rather strong emotional need.  Eventually your brain craves the new things that you could purchase.  I believe that along with the self‑consciousness and the popularity issues that grow with the years, come the need to feel good about yourself.

What I found interesting and ironic, was that some of the extreme shopaholics were spending as much money as tuition for a year in a CUNY college, on simple luxuries like purses.  But these problems do not end with a simple bag or a pair of shoes, they get pushed with each new purchase.  For some, these problems, that were once just something that was considered normal, escalate into debt problems in the thousands.  Maybe the easiest way to understand shopaholics is to put it in terms of coffee.  Each shopaholic who was a girl, and even one non‑shopaholic, said that shopping went with Starbucks.  What are you to expect from someone who spends almost five dollars on a simple cup of coffee.

But when is it that these problems start?  My personal opinion is that they start at a young age when simple toys are their passion.  The problem gets bigger as the child gets older.  When older, the child begins to understand about style and accessories.  With this understanding, comes the need for more expensive tastes.  Eventually, problems at school with popularity, or self‑consciousness, leads to even more expensive taste, maybe event to the extent of brand names.  Once there, the problems begin.  Once paying those high prices for a shirt, or a pair of pants, which at this point are probably still paid for by the parents, money eventually becomes nothing, with a more and more diminishing value.  The money means nothing because up until present, everything has been handed to the child.  Clothes just become something pretty, not something that needs to be worked for.  No child ever sees it in the sense that it’s something they can’t afford because this money has no value.  This value can be restored when they begin to work but all the people I interviewed people are still not as good at budgeting themselves.

I have also found a problem of what I call, “Would if I could, shopaholics.”    These are the people who would be a part of the shopaholic category if they had the money.  Their parents never bought them the expensive things to begin with.  Because of this, value is kept throughout, yet there is still a need for new things.  These are normally the people who go on to become shopaholics who depend on sales.  Their problem never gets as bad because those same products are not hundreds of dollars each.  These people shop on budgets, but I would not quite take them off of the shopaholic list.  These people, like everyone, have a different kind of indulgence.  Instead of the shopaholic that always buys expensive things like brand names, they are the shopaholics that buy many less expensive and non‑brand name indulgences.  If you look at quantity rather than quality and price, these people are just as bad.  The only true way to prevent someone from becoming a shopaholic, in my opinion, is for parents to say no to their children more so during their childhood.  If they never get used to life in which they always get something new, they will never crave something new.

One major question is at what point do these people stop assuming that their parents will bail them out?  The major problem with shopaholics is that their belief that someone will always bail them out, is never grown out of.  They never grow out of it because every time they’re in debt, their parents always bail them out.  Eventually, they expect it.  Their second problem is the way they look at money.  For some, one hundred dollars is hard to come by and is valued.  For shopaholics, one hundred dollars is valued as much as a dollar bill, and parents are the insurance policy.

In some interviews, I realized that it was not necessarily the person who was not a shopaholic, but rather their funds did not allow for it.  One of the people I interviewed answered almost every question like shopaholics before them answered the questions, the only difference was that they couldn’t afford it.  Because of this, I wonder if we are all shopaholics and instead of two simple categories of shopaholic and non‑shopaholic, there are simply different extremes of shopaholics which can be measured by need.  Need is what separates the extremes from the less extremes.  Everyone buys things that they don’t need, but as the percentage that is needed goes down, the shopaholic rises towards extreme.

My other very interesting observation was how much stereotyping is a part of this topic.  Both of the guys that I interviewed denied being shopaholics, yet answered every question in a way that made them seem like a shopaholic.  This led me to question, why?  I finally understand it as a one worded answer‑“stereotype.”  Although when giving an answer that is thought through, the answer was always no, the question always comes up, “If a guy shops, is he gay?”  I wondered if the reason that these men didn’t want to admit that they were shopaholics was because of the inevitable question that would follow.  The stereotype of shopaholics is women, and, along with that, the stereotype of gays is that they are shopaholics.  Suddenly these two pieces began to fit together, but then why didn’t they answer the question, “Does it hint at a certain sexual preference?” with, “yes?”  maybe they were afraid that it would then be assumed that they were homophobic.

I found it quite interesting that both of the people who denied being shopaholics had characteristics that clearly placed them under the shopaholic category.  One male shopaholic actually contradicted himself in the very next question.  My first question to this male shopaholic was, “Are you a shopaholic? Why or why not?”  His response was, “No-usually my purchases are planned out ahead of time, for a long time.”  My next question was, “How often do you buy things/shop?”  His response to this question was, “Two to three times a week.”  I thought this was the perfect way to prove that he was in fact a true shopaholic.  Not only had he answered with the same general answer to the “how often question” as all of the other shopaholics, but he hadn’t even really given a solid answer as to why he was not a shopaholic.  This became something that led me to inquire whether or not men admit to something that is characterized with women.

When doing this paper I realized that shopaholics and non-shopaholics both had a few questions that they answered uniformly.  For example, shopaholics all said that they went shopping more than once a week.  I had one person, who interestingly enough refused to admit to being a shopaholic, say that he shopped two to three times a week.  One shopaholic said that the longest they’ve gone without shopping was about a week.  I noticed that all of the shopaholics answered generally the same. None of the shopaholics said that they could last for more than a week without shopping.  I realized that perhaps this is one thing that categorizes a shopaholic.  In this case, if these people can’t go without shopping for even a week, it backs up my theory that shopping becomes addictive.

I also realized another similarity.  All shopaholics stated that when shopping for others, if they found something they liked, they would buy it.  Interestingly, all of the shopaholics and non-shopaholics said that the ratio of things they bought themselves versus what they bought others, was at least two to one.  I thought that this was an interesting similarity between these two categories.  This led me to believe that maybe these two categories are not as different as some believe them to be.  It also made me wonder if there is really no such thing as a non-shopaholic.

I wondered if it’s stationed only in our country.  I wondered if it really is the way one person said it was, “Shopping is the American way.”  I couldn’t get to anyone who was from a different part of the world but it did strike me as an interesting question.  Is this shopaholic problem stationed in America because it really is the “American way?” It was then that I thought of places like France which are also big shopping countries. Maybe it all depends on the economy of the place you were born.  Maybe, if you are born in a place with a bad economy, this problem in unheard of.  The American way includes buying tons of things that people don’t need.  There are poor people in our country, why is it that we are so frivolous when shopping?  I really do believe that it is the state of the country that decides whether or not we spend a lot. 

My question is, “why do people from the United States buy so much?”  My guess is that most Americans are taught to buy.  We have many commercials that all encourage us to buy the newest things.  Our country watches a lot of television, and inevitably we see all of these commercials that beat it into our heads that last week’s model of whatever we have is old and outdated.  They tell us that without the newer model, we can’t do the following.  People then go out, spend more money on a product that they already have but in a previous model.  The perfect example of this is the iPod.  How many people have more than one iPod?  Why?  You have a whole list of people who had the iPod mini or the nano and they wanted the video iPod so that they can watch videos.  They never bother to think how this product might harm them. When listening to these songs, or watching videos, their focus on the world and possible dangers around them decreases.  People want the best, but at what cost?  If the cost of a life because you didn’t pay attention while crossing the street, isn’t a high enough cost to stop purchasing these products, why would any amount of money be too high?

When learning that no cost is actually too much for these people, you begin to wonder how far they’ll go to get these products.  Would they take money out of the bank, borrow, beg, or even steal?  Interestingly, none of the people I asked were willing to admit that they’ve stolen things they wanted.  I’ve witnessed some of these people steal and yet when asked this question, they weren’t willing to admit it.  Most said if anything, they would ask their parents but what happens to these people when they get to be too old to ask their parents.  Will we be dealing with people who have no money in the bank, or people in jail because they wanted something?  How can we be sure that this problem won’t land them in a huge crisis one day?  What is the future for these shopaholics?