Potato-sack

The Jezebel ring-threads I find so fascinating now have a companion piece: the comments on a personal essay about one woman's journey ...

$90 yoga pants revisited

In a recent post on materialism, I gave Lululemon yoga pants as an example of a desired but not that desired purchase. I would like to be a...

Goes around, comes around

Maybe these things are cyclical, because this doesn't feel entirely new, but it seems we've rediscovered that middle school is awful...

Again with the lattes

You who are young and broke, did you know that buying coffee out every day costs more than not doing so? For what is, I estimate, the ten bi...

Snobbery and indifference to stuff, or my love-hate relationship with the idea of buying pants at Lululemon

Is dislike of stuff - of shopping, of material objects - an admirable quality? Is liking stuff evidence that one is a bad person? Or is ther...

Bringing glamor to the woods

Below, three recent or recent-ish things I bought but did not need: - Galaxy-print leggings . At long last! And $20! Which might seem like a...

The thrill of the hunt

Sample sales. I grew up with them, and then, as an adult, basically lost track of them. Yes, it's possible to buy high-quality clothing ...

Adulthood Studies: how do you buy pants?

I've decided I don't have a problem with leggings , or even leggings-as-pants (despite having once received 15 minutes of fame for ...

Cheapness made easy

Ever since Kei invented the idea of a " wanty list ," I've used this concept in my own life and spending-or-lack-thereof. At a...

The NYT endorses your cappuccino habit

As you certainly know , I believe you should drink as many lattes as you can stomach. More accurately: I find cheapness-advice that urges yo...

Serge Gainsbourg is not my style icon

Day 1 of 2 of oral exams. Most are today. Stamina so far so good, to be improved with (more) caffeine. Happier than usual not to be a Mormon...

A serious post about the world today

-OK, so poodles like to prance around on their hind legs . It's not (as some commenters appeared to believe) some Chinese conspiracy ma...

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 che...

Guilty as (over-)charged

Long, long ago, when I was a young'un, a recent college grad and newish grad student filled with energy and dreams, I wrote somewhat di...

Cheapness studied and inadvertently ignored

Readers may be familiar with a tag on WWPD called "cheapness studied then deliberately ignored." This refers to, say, a truly exce...

Life's microscopic victories

After the previous navy sweater disintegrated, I gave myself grad-student permission to replace it. There's one store in town, more or l...

One-dollar eggplant

Back home means back to driving. Somehow the month-long break helped - I now imagine that driving was just something I used to do , and it n...

Ruby slippers

While I was away, I noticed that the shoes were reduced from $150 to $90. And available in the half-size I take. So it had to be done. They ...

The little wedding that could

If the Wedding Industrial Complex has succeeded at anything, it's at giving all of us the impression that however lavishly we celebrate...

WWPD Guides: Beauty

Beauty - as in makeup, skin creams, and so on - is strangely compelling. But why? Is it just because relative to clothing, makeup is cheap, ...