Cheap, Not Slutty

Miss Cheapist wears shirt (14.99 from Strawberry Jam), shorts ($14.99 from H&M), & metallic sandals (39.99 sale Ken Cole Reaction).

Once in a while, a woman must contemplate what is appropriate to wear out on a hot, summer day. Miss Cheapist believes that the less you wear, the less you should pay. However, sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between the meaning of "cheap" as inexpensive and its more "street" defintion: "vulgar & worthy of no respect." In this day when women's style seems to straddle the aesthetics of socialite and porn star almost simultaneously, many people will pay top dollar for clothes that may enhance ones physical assets, but remain within confines of good taste. This entry is intended to shatter the myth that cheap means poor quality, or that price is can ever be discerned by those on the outside. With the assistance of photographer Cristie P., Miss Cheapist inventoried the clothing of her colleagues at the annual staff summer party, not surprised to find that many of the women had pulled together terrific outfits between $25-75; a cost that often included their accessories. It has become a common exchange at work to compliment an outfit, only to then learn its unbelieveable price. So, how does one buy cheap without looking cheap?
Cristie (above) always finds dresses and separates at discount stores and vintage shops, and manages to pull everything together into unique ensembles. The dress above was purchased at Rainbow on DeLancey Street for $16.99. In total, her wood accessories cost $10.00, from the same store.
Rule #1 : It's important to wear something that fits. Pay particular attention to proportions, and invest in alterations if neccessary. Rule #2: Hair, makeup and overall fitness help enhance cheap outfits, rather than degrade them.
Erika (above) is also quite talented. Her approach is to regularly scour sale racks at middle-range stores for good finds. At the time of this photo shoot she admitted to paying more than usual for the blue tunic ($49.99), but found the metallic bag for only $10.99 at H&M. Her experience highlights Rule #3: To find these types of bargains one must shop constantly. In shopping constantly, one must be discriminating, as several cheap outfits could amount to one quality piece that you actually invest more in. The money adds up!
In order to maintain this lifestyle, one must have tremendous patience. One must endure large, warehouse-style chain stores that pay little attention to interior design or dusting, and where the clientele is large in number, diverse in background, and extremely agressive about finding what they want. Rule#4: When looking for a bargain, one must give up the fantasy of strolling casually into a boutique, looking at a few pieces and receiving large amounts of attention from staff. Never ask dressing room attendants to find it for you in another size.
Christina (above) is wearing a $24.99 jersey empire waist dress from H&M, and a gorgeous necklace ($9.99) from Forever 21. When asked how she was able to make the necklace look so classy, she replied that it was probably the choice of navy blue for the dress that made it look more appropriate. She was being modest, as it was not the color of her outfit, but the content of her character that made everything look more refined. Rule #5: Even if one shops among the Forever 21 set (literally, those age 21 and below), one should always carry herself with maturity and self-awareness. Even someone wearing couture can suddenly look vulgar if behaving badly.
Nikki (above) has recently indulged in a spree of consumerism, and spent a cool May evening trawling Broadway shops with Miss Cheapist. After months of depriving herself and not shopping for several months, Nikki reveled in buying everything she saw. Unlike others, she was able to engage in carefree spending because it happened so rarely. Her dress cost $14.99 from Rainbow, and flipflops were 2 for $5.00 at Old Navy. Leggings were $9.99 from Rainbow as well. Rule #6: It's fun to shop for bargains with a partner in crime. That person can be a sounding board for whether or not you are pulling off the "cheap, not slutty" look effectively. While Nikki does not always indulge in discount shopping, when she does, her finds are often quite remarkable, and her excitement impressive.
With this said, Miss Cheapist wishes you all some fine summer partying with your new point of view. Send pictures, prices and brands of your cheap, not slutty, outfits and stay posted for more insights on backtomotherland.blogspot.com, barring technology problems in China. Leaving you with this thought...
Final Rule: It's important to mix high-end and low-end pieces to keep people wondering.

Need, Want and Wedding Talk

(what free decorations look like, above, the backyard, complete with crew, below)

Often, need and want are mistaken as the same sentiment. Miss Cheapist has often heard people say, one should spend whatever is needed on a wedding because it "only happens once." This tiny phrase seems to give credence to a year of manic spending and anxiety about a simple performance of love and corresponding free dinner that introduces a couple and their surrounding community to a promised "forever" of marital bliss.

Miss Cheapist, often feeling that little is really worth the listed price, much less the energy needed to achieve true perfection, has advised brides that the little priceless touches like toasts and performances by talented friends, often make weddings unique.

A bride-to-be responded to her wryly, "Really? I thought the things you spent extra money on made it unique." It is this exact feeling that leads couples to go into great debt on investments like bridal "boot camp," party favor schwag, gilded cane chairs and Vera Wang fairy dresses. The unlimited market of wedding magazines, reality shows and romantic comedies has led everyone to believe that if they are spending so much money anyway, they deserve a dream wedding...and it better look good in pictures. Consider the story of S. and her wedding:

S. is a community health clinic manager. Her partner is a not-for-profit event planner and aspiring writer. They were offered the opportunity to have a backyard renovation and free garden wedding if they agreed to have the entire experience filmed for a cable TV reality show about do-it-yourself home improvement. The catch: the couple had six weeks to plan everything and only 40 people could fit into the new back yard. S., eager to clean up her overgrown doggy-run of a backyard for free, and hoping to avoid the overspending of her bride friends, accepted the offer. The benefits seemed impossible to resist. Free wedding, free backyard.

Over the six weeks, S. quickly learned, “nothing in this world is free.” After countless arguments, she decided the constraints of the television network were too great, as were the family pressures. No 4^th generation Chinese American princess with extensive family networks in the Bay Area could get away with a small wedding, free or otherwise. So instead of turning down the television offer, she decided to have two weddings...her fake t.v. wedding and a real one as well. The real one would take place a day after, with 250 guests, in a sun-lit downtown Oakland venue. Note that S. is one of those people who does better when the stakes are higher, conditions are artificially constrained, and when situations demand lowered expectations. Each time her ability to work within these self-imposed parameters helped her overcome an obstacle, her sense of nobility grew. She wasn't just planning a wedding...she had a point to make.

In the end, the two weddings were beautiful. As were her two dresses, two dinners, and two bouquets. Miss Cheapist shot several pictures and enjoyed S.'s gay best man's touching rendition of a Tracy Chapman song, which left the Y-generation sobbing and the elders quite confused. Miss Cheapist felt happy for her friend, who had found someone with the same sense of spontaneity as her, with abundant love to offer. More importantly, he embraced both her class guilt and entitled need to "get something for nuthin." He even cooperated with her in the process! In her pursuit of a free backyard, she probably spent as much as any other cost-aware bride, yet, with a shorter planning period, and probably equivalent stress. In the process, she gained a deeper connection to her own "wants," and learned she was capable of paying a little extra to have it her way. However, she also made wedding planning into a sport, managed to shed unnecessary details, infused the experience with a sense of humor, and also made it available to all of us this month to learn from on national television. Kudos to her for that.

Cheapism and Race Part II: From the Gym to Queens

Miss Cheapist belongs to one of those gyms in New York City that costs almost a hundred dollars a month for the convenience of visiting any one of its many branches, in any neighborhood, at almost any hour of the day. Last week a computer glitch required the manager to summon Miss Cheapist from the treadmill, into his office. The Manager, a 20-something man of African-American descent, who obviously enjoyed his access to human vulnerability as a salesperson, gave her the usual "I like Asian girls" once over, looked at her account and said:
"You know, you've been paying too much. Wow."
Miss Cheapist, always suspicious that everyone at this gym paid a lower rate than her, first felt vindicated. Then she needed more.
He continued, "I can get you a deal. I’m your new friend ‘cause I’m going to do something for you.”
"What's the deal?" she asked blandly, trying not to use her sexuality as a negotiation tool.
"Are you a student?"
"Sure, I took continuing ed. class at NYU in the spring."
"Perfect, I'll close your old account and start you with a student discount. You’re going to really like this."
As he processed her application, Miss Cheapist decided it was only fair to reciprocate and show superficial interest.
“Do you like your job?” she asked.
“Love it. I used to work for GEICO. I like this so much better. There I was like, ‘hi, this is GEICO, how may I help you.’ Here I am really helping people…I mean, everyone needs health.”
“But car insurance is mandatory.”
“Too boring. They kept saying, don’t do this, don’t do that. Here, I can hang out, manage a great team of people, get a little flirt on, you know…”
“Yah.”
“And you know how much I make? 50,000 a year before commissions!”
“You really know how to work the system. They pay you, and you screw them by giving out discounts to people you hardly know.” Her light cynicism was unexpected, perhaps precipitated by the boundaries he crossed by sharing his salary with a complete stranger. Even for her, this was candid.
The Manager responded conspiratorially: “No, you get into positions like these so that you can work the system for your friends and family. Got it?”
His cell phone rings. Beats from L.L. Cool J.’s “Mama Said Knock You Out” vibrate from the phone.
“Hold on, this is my fiancé.”
Maybe it was the L.L. Cool J. song. Maybe it was his comfort with her kind. Miss Cheapist could not help but test out her rules of urban anthropology. Was he from Queens? She asks:
“What high school did you go to?”
He seems pleased that she is taking the interaction further. ”Cardozo.”
“In Queens?”
“Yup, Bayside!” he added.
She said, “I know a lot of people from Cardozo,” she offers.
“Really? Tell me their name and I probably know them.”
“They’re Asian.”
“Ya know it! Tons of Asians in Bayside.” The Manager is strangely gleeful. None of the usual territorialism of “Menace to Society” dramatics or the derision of early Eddie Murphy penis size jokes, much less 19th century “Yellow Peril” hysterics, were present in his tone. As a matter of fact, some of his best friends were Asian.
Miss Cheapist abandoned urban anthropology. So racist of her to assume…
The Manager leaned in again, ready to share another insight.
“You know, what race I like, second to my own?” he asked her. “Matter of fact, just as much as my own?” He paused for a beat, “Asian people! You guys really stick together, help each other out. One person opens a store, everyone else rushes to help.”
Miss Cheapist tries to convince her that this is certainly the case for other racial groups but he contradicts her, with the authority of his membership.

The conversation carried on for a few more minutes, but the details were lost on Miss Cheapist. The credit card had to be applied. A photo taken, a new key pass reissued. The memorable qualities of this encounter were three lessons for Miss Cheapist to take away and apply to life:
1) Always assume there is a cheaper rate.
2) Volunteering your salary to a stranger can be socially acceptable, and sometimes even builds unexpected bonds.
3) Not everyone finds Asian people annoying. Some actually feel genuine kinship with them, primarily based upon assumptions about their relationship to money and community.

Going for 50/50: Cheapism and Love

It is said that money and housework are the most commmonly argued topics in a relationship. Sadly, these statistics may actually ring true. In addition to her writing hobby, Miss Cheapist plugs away at a stable, but not lucrative, public sector job, while her partner is a self-employed artist and consultant. Her work is routinized, interpersonal and service-driven. His work is technical, inconsistent and client-driven. Tensions arise whenever the subject of a shared income, and their obvious counterpart, shared domestic responsibilities, arise. When friends hear about his inability to adhere to a "chore wheel," the vitrolic arguments about who does more, riddled with phrases from childhood like "pulling ones weight," and his scathing critiques of Miss Cheapist's shoe habit, they usually shake their heads and say, "just hire a cleaning person." According to them, paying for someone else to clean allows a couple to elevate their relationship above the profanity of domestic life, freeing up their time to discuss more exciting topics like having better sex, planning a family, and buying a country home.

But Miss Cheapist cannot "afford" a cleaning person, nor does she think a working couple living together, without children or any limiting physical disabilities, should have to rely on one. Affording a housekeeper is a moral and financial issue for Miss Cheapist. Even though she is not struggling financially, she is not exactly thriving either. Like others in her peer group with higher educations and middle class families, she knows that she will never be destitute, and yet spending a few hundred dollars extra a month for cleaning seems an extravagance. Some would respond that they don't have the time to clean, and want to spend their free time on leisure activities. That's totally valid! Let's not discount the importance of relaxation, especially as employers demand more in this new economy. Still, it seems, if a couple can not learn to negotiate their work, leisure and home responsibilities, and devise a language of sacrifice around keeping house, it seems weightier topics will be equally difficult to tackle. Miss Cheapist has stubbornly refused to hire a cleaning person, yet she is bored with arguing. Is cleaning a metaphor for something else in the relationship? Is okay to let a couple "off the hook" by letting someone else do their dirty business? Isn't some of the "small stuff" worth sweating? If she hires a housekeeper, she may never find out.

We live in place that used to be cool?

(Miss Cheapist looks forward to free, open courts in suburb V)

Final thoughts on the suburban urban life. Please read previous entry, "Soul Deadening Suburbs?" for more context.

1) How many particle wood "designy" pieces of furniture can you buy?
Walmart has secured market share with the cheapist Religious Right in the exurbs of America. Target extends its reach into the urban market of Bravo watchers and dirty hipsters, into the outer boroughs of New York, thereby revitalizing the "inner city" with economic development, and good, cheap taste. Whenever Miss Cheapist goes to Target in downtown Brooklyn, there are lines of people roped around the store, often hidden behind carts of merchandise, eager to purchase. How many 12-packs of paper product can be squeezed into a NYC apartment? How many Issac Mizrahi trenchcoats can a person own? How ironic that the greatest retail excitement in the city seems to be the latest opening of a multinational chain store, typically found in the suburbs. Although it is usually cheaper to do this type of business outside of the city, urbanites have embraced big-box shopping, and as a result, the stores are multiplying by the day. There is no sweeter sight than sitting in Union Square, looking up at Filene's Basement, DSW and Forever 21. The city has become so expensive that discount shopping has become leisure and an aesthetic experience all at the same time.

2) Why does everyone in NYC own a Hummer?
What happened to living in a walkable city? Who are these war mongers driving their vehicles without apology, surging into crosswalks, unable to control the power of their V-8 engines, taking their kids to soccer at Asphalt Green and buying organic at Fairway? If these owners want a large car, they should live in the suburbs and have their own garage. Stop taking up street parking and wasting your time finding it. Isn't that cheaper?

3)"Our kind of People"
New York City has been declared in past years one of the U.S.'s most segregated cities, especially at the level of public schooling. Many may ask how that can be possible, given the high number of minorities who work in restaurants, ride the subway and serve as tastemakers for the My-Space generation. Miss Cheapist could provide nothing better than, "the city has become a place of haves and have nots," but she does know that if people want to create enclaves of people just like them, they don't need to live in a doorman building, or buy a brownstone with their friends in the hood. They can just move to the suburbs.

4)Tennis anyone?
Miss Cheapist is not an athletic person, but she occasionally plays tennis, just to keep her calves slim. After April, it is nearly impossible to play. Not only has the price of a public tennis pass doubled in price over the last few years, but it is nearly impossible to get a court without a long wait, and sideways glances from regulars who want to turn the city's parks into private racquet clubs. Yet in every sweaty inch of the city, you see people exercising, jogging, playing touch football, birdwatching, and mountain-biking. At any given time, these experiences have the risk of some unpleasant urban interruption, usually from someone unable to share space. Some would argue exercise is the only way to leave our small apartments and meet people in this cold metropolis. But if they want to be outside and exercise so much, isn't it less hostile and cheaper to do so outside of the city?

Yet it's a free world.

Of course Miss Cheapist is not advocating a move to the suburbs. However, the life we cherish in the city is not sustainable (or pleasant) if everyone retreats into their own private enclaves, secured merely by the ability to buy a particular lifestyle. Beyond the cache of saying you live in a place that used to be cool when it was "grittier," or enjoying the new Bloomberg antisepticism, there seems no point in being a part of a city, if public life and its counterparts, access and conservation, are not a part of ones intentions.