Emily Mester Knows Why We’re Drowning In Gift Guides

On the r/deadmalls Reddit page, photos of linoleum-tiled halls and emptied ornamental fountains proliferate. Some of the malls aren’t totally abandoned, still boasting the husks of universally familiar storefronts — Auntie Anne’s, Kay Jewelers, JCPenney, Claire’s — with a few stragglers wandering between banners that declare “EAT. SHOP. PLAY.” I imagine that behind the glass are teetering stacks of jeans, rows of shoeboxes, storage closets piled with more boxes of metals and plastic and batteries and foam — all unwanted. This is an extreme of the bleak feeling that author Emily Mester likes to call “Mall Sad.”

In her debut essay collection American Bulk, Mester defines the American Dream as “abundance.” Our stuff — the tube of lip gloss left in the pocket of a rarely worn jacket, the pages of online reviews of the lip gloss, and the comforting thought that if we never recover the lip gloss, we can always buy another — directly correlates to our sense of worth, she argues. But Mester, who grew up going to Costco in lieu of church on Sundays, has no interest in moralizing or proselytizing. She’s still quite the consumer herself, and when describing an Olive Garden appetizer sampler she ate as her last meal before the first day of fat camp, or her grandmother’s barrage of nonsensical Facebook posts, or the year’s supply of LaCroix she once won, she is full of acceptance and understanding. Her writing is capacious enough to hold both the complexity of her own family’s addiction and the absurdities of our collective excess. Mester’s essays rove through the malls of the Midwest, grounded by a three-part piece about her father and paternal grandmother, whose abandoned Iowan home she visits to contend with a long-ignored hoard.

In time for the Black Friday hangover, the author tells Bustle about attempting to “buy nothing” per author Ann Patchett, the importance of wealth transparency, and why there are so many holiday gift guides.

What does it mean to be “good at buying things”?

Whatever hunter-gatherer impulse people might have, mine manifests as finding things to buy. It energizes me and allows me to sift through and process information. I’ll go into a store with my girlfriend and try something on, and she’ll be like, “That looks amazing, you should get it.” And my brain says, “It does look really good. Wait, though. Let me see who else has it, what other colors they have, what its sale history is.” I’m probably addicted to dopamine and, for better or for worse, shopping is the vice that I prefer. I’ve tried to figure out what the impulse really is and think it must be genetic — it’s not environmental because my siblings don’t have this. I think it’s obsessiveness and wanting to activate or to find solidity.

Do you have an early memory of this urge to shop?

The events of my life are organized around memories of things I bought or wanted to buy at certain times. We went shopping every weekend. I could always pick something out, and I was always methodical about it, weighing my options, considering its relationship to things I already owned. I pored over mail catalogues. My dad would always say that my problem was I couldn’t delay gratification. But when it came to buying stuff, my brain was laser-focused.

For a book that talks about both President Trump and the Ulta Beauty cash register during the holiday season, it feels like perfect timing for its release.

It wasn’t exactly intentional, [but] I realized it would come out after an assuredly fraught election and around this heightened shopping time. The psychology of Black Friday is hitting me. Have you noticed how it’s starting earlier and earlier? My friend told me about a good Black Friday sale at a lingerie website, and I said to her, “Ugh, it’s so hard right now.” She got really chastened because she thought I meant “How can you think about that when there’s everything else going on?” But no, of course I meant “Yes, I’m also struggling to not buy everything.”

How do you understand the relationship between gender and material consumption?

Even though my dad is the shopper in my life, I see it as really feminized. Culture portrays it as Lindsay Lohan in Confessions of a Shopaholic. Growing up as a doughy, brusque child, I think part of the reason I liked shopping so much was that it feminized me. I like makeup and clothes, but the way I dress and act doesn’t quite match. I’ve been watching YouTube makeup tutorials since I was in, like, preschool, so I know about doing a cut crease and all the eyeshadow palettes. I’ve bought the palettes and then I never used them. But if I consume these things, it feels like I’m arranging the tableaux of my feminine life. My room has perfume bottles and nail polish and antique lamps. It’s messy, has clothes strewn everywhere — a feminized mess. Maybe that’s where I try to get some of that back, because my affect, how I speak and act, tends to be more masculine.

Has writing the book changed your own buying habits?

It’s made me more aware of the stories I tell myself when I shop. I’m not quite at the level where I alter what I actually do, but it has altered the preparatory thinking around it. The biggest high you get is when you bring a purchase home and it’s your new baby and it’s going to change your life. And then it doesn’t. I’ve come a long way in terms of thoughtful consumption. I’ve attempted a lot of “no buys.” You’re supposed to write down everything you have the impulse to buy but not actually buy it. It’s striking and sobering to realize how addicted you are. I have a list called Things I Wanted. [Pulls out phone and opens Notes App:] “Yellow New Balances. Red cowboy boots. Looser loafers — my loafers are tight. Heavy iron candelabra. Vintage wastebasket.” And then I’d list whether I caved and bought it later: “New wallet — CAVED.” Sometimes the spell breaks, and it’s like the fugue state of having a crush where the crush fades and you can’t believe you wanted it so badly. Sometimes it doesn’t fade, and you still really want the heavy iron candelabra.

Why do you try to resist the urge to shop or to monetize your shopping addiction?

I’m my friends’ Wirecutter. People want to make a purchase and they ask me, “What’s the best couch?” and I’m like, “Are you sure you want to know this information?” It’s very fraught. People say, “You should write for The Strategist. You should have a Substack where you give shopping suggestions.” But I can’t do that. I don’t think it’s morally wrong or anything, but I just can’t. If I was someone who grew up economically normal, with a family that had a pretty normal relationship to money, and I simply liked shopping and it felt like a hard-earned hobby, then I think I’d feel differently. But because I’ve seen it go so weird and because I have complicated feelings about class ascension, I have to keep this private.

You are very upfront in the book that you have wealth. (It’s also made more complicated as you gradually reveal why your dad was so intent on making money.) Why was it important for you to emphasize your position of privilege?

I think a lot of people who come from money are sheepish about it. Writers are like that; people in the arts are like that. I understand because it’s awkward to have more than someone else, or to have to look someone in the face and say “Yeah, this is easier for me.” What do you say about it? “Sorry”? But the sheepishness makes everyone feel weird and doesn’t help anyone. It creates these gaps in people’s knowledge.

There was no way to write the book without saying what my situation was. I struggled with whether to continually apologize for it. I was tempted to do what I call the “to be sure” sentence, which is where you write about yourself and then you have to acknowledge that you see what the writer sees. In a piece about struggling to get pregnant, a writer will put in “To be sure, I know that many women struggle even more than I do with this.” It’s a noble gesture and shows you have an awareness of the world, but it’s just such a drag. Nobody likes to see someone’s else’s guilt. So I had to show the reader I saw all the ironies and the frustrating, unfair, incessant realities about wealth, but then go on and tell the stories.

How did you navigate writing a personal family story that is also making conclusions about all of America?

I was very aware of how I had the power to make my family sound more or less heinous, or more or less sympathetic. Sometimes without meaning to I’d start to make them sound bad, especially when I introduced politics that I think are bad. Writing the book was an exercise in compassion towards why someone is the way they are. I’ve been thinking a lot about having compassion for the so-called other side. I mean, that’s crazy. It’s literally half of people, but when you’re in a bubble, you don’t see that.

Overconsumption is a bipartisan issue.

Olive Garden [was part of] a study using cellphone [geolocation] data that found that the place with the most class mixing is not church, not the grocery store, it’s chain restaurants. A church and a grocery store are hyperlocal. But an Olive Garden is just spread out enough that people come from different class stratum to eat there. Everyone shops; everyone goes to the mall. Hoarding, too, cuts across class in a way that even I was surprised by. Stuff is the language that that disorder speaks but it’s not class-distinct. It comes from a lot of places and affects a lot of people.

A lot of people are making gift guides now, everyone and their mother. What is behind this desire?

Gift guides are so common because people are looking for something to get someone that is outside of what they might buy for themselves. Making one is the same thing as showing your year-end Spotify list or sharing your Top 10 movies. It’s explaining yourself through consumption, which we all do. If you asked someone “Tell me about that shirt you’re wearing,” they would have a story about where they bought it and why, and for how much. It’s self-expression and it is really fun. I’m definitely not denying that.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.