Loyalty points

Sometime soon, a post on meritocracy, aristocracy, and the Stuyvesant cheating scandal. Till then:

A few days ago was a real festival of cheapness-studied-and-deliberately-ignored. Rain boots, lipstick, and neither the cheapest version around. While both were replacement purchases, and the former arguably necessity, I will focus not on financial justification but aesthetic explanation. The rain boots are muted olive green, and somewhat equestrian, and make me feel like a Swiss or Northern Italian socialite. Yup, even on NJ Transit. They fit perfectly, even the calves, which is not something to sneeze at when it comes to rubber boots, which of course have no give whatsoever. Paired with this other recent acquisition, I could be the very height of glam and practicality. (Must I keep repeating that it's possible to love shoes but not stilettos?)

With the lipstick, meanwhile, I wanted a sheer bubblegum pink, mod but not chalky, pale but not pastel, and no shimmer, to replace a too-light, too-shimmery, and almost-finished tube of Korres. (Requisite Alexa Chung example of what I was looking for.) This is surprisingly difficult to track down. Bubblegum is usually too opaque, too purple, or - worse - in the form of lip gloss. This one seems to be doing the trick. Perfect with a subtle liquid-eyeliner cat-eye - this will do.

Which brings me - alas - to a cheapness-studies note: if you sign up for a Sephora loyalty card (ducks head), they tell you how many points you have at checkout, thereby reminding you how many dollars you've thrown away on not being thoroughly low-maintenance. I tried to remind myself that in the course of living in the woods and not buying stuff, I'd honest-to-goodness gone through things like lipstick and eyeliner, which I'd never thought possible. That if lipstick is purchased less than once a year, it can totally cost more than $20 and come from some neato Canadian company that specializes in lipstick made from food-grade substances, and not from a dreary, brightly-lit aisle in the Penn Station Duane Reade.

But the points don't lie. "You have X points" means "You spent $X at Sephora since picking up that card, more than you donated to the Obama campaign, money that you could have at the very least put in your savings account, you frivolous, vapid fool.'" I think I'd prefer a stamp-card system, like in a coffee shop, so that once you've bought X items and gotten something free, you'd be back to square one.