Does My Butt Look Like a Cheetah in These Pants?

As another Labor Day weekend sweltered to a close in the LBC, I decided to escape the heat by retreating to the sweet sanctuary of TJ. The Maxx, I mean. Not the city in Mexico. I perused the purses, wandered among the ankle boots, and sniffed the shampoos. As I made my way over to the specialty household cleaners (don’t ask, and I won’t tell), I caught a pair of gray and white cheetah print pants eyeing me from the clearance rack.

Hel-lo, Gorgeous. Paige Denim. White with gray and black spots. My size. And marked down to $25.00. I picked them up, feeling instantly cooler. But was I really a wearer of cheetah print pants? It seemed like something you either were or weren’t. Like engaged. Or pregnant. I immediately thought back to the time I convinced myself that I was the type of person who could wear a silver studded, black leather fanny pack. How I had pictured myself swaying to the strains of some indie rock band in a dark dive bar in Brooklyn. In my bikini top. Because I was just that cool. Then I remembered my last concert: Sheryl Crow at the Orange County Fair. With my dad. Grumbling about having to get up for work the next morning. Wearing a fleece blanket from the trunk of the car. I was definitely not a studded leather fanny pack person.

But was I a printed denim wearer? Like everyone else who was in fifth grade in 1991, I too had floral printed denim that had had its day in the sun. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the 1991 version of printed denim came in the form of Bermuda shorts. That you wore cuffed at the knee with your oversized Hypercolor t-shirt that so cleverly displayed your classmates'  hand prints. Until your mom washed it, that is. Then it was no longer hypercolor. Then it was just a neon orange t-shirt that said “Hypercolor” on it. My Hypercolor t-shirt came courtesy of the Goodwill; all of its clever hand prints had been long ago washed away. But I digress.  Holding those cheetah (or was it snow leopard?) printed jeans in my hands, I pictured myself walking into my office in Newport Beach on a casual Friday. My skinny snow leopard pants paired with a black v-neck sweater. Sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Oversized Timex watch. Tory Burch Reva Ballet Flats. Authentic Bonnie Cashin vintage Coach bag. Because I was just that cool. How chic, people would coo. How gamine! How Audrey!  

I walked my beautiful snow leopard jeans up to the register, excited to become who I was. I bypassed the fitting rooms entirely. There was no way I was going to let an unfortunately placed mirror and cruel lighting ruin my good buy buzz!

Back at home, I tried on my precious snow leopard jeans as my roots processed. It’s hard to really feel secure in cheetah print anything when you are sporting a hairline of gray roots. Not impossible, but extremely difficult. One leg, two legs, zip, button . . . success! I stepped in front of the mirror. Hel-lo, Disappointment! I turned, examining the pants from every angle. Something wasn’t right. Does my butt look like a cheetah in these pants? Is my butt supposed to look like a cheetah in these pants? 

 

Where had I gone wrong? Was I actually too . . . old for cheetah print pants? Sure I had a few gray hairs, but that wasn’t my fault! I had definitely received some faulty pigment genes, but I wasn’t old, right? Right?

Quick, WWTTD? What Would Tina Turner Do? When questioning whether or not something is age appropriate, one should always seek guidance from everyone’s favorite miniskirt wearing, love questioning diva. Even Oprah has sought wisdom from the great wigged one, for crying out loud! Tina Turner’s big wheels have kept on turning in her microminis and sky-high stilettos for decades. Consider this: Tina became eligible for an AARP membership back when Bush was the Commander-in-Chief. The first Bush. Not W. I looked in the mirror. The problem was not the gray hair that I was in the process of covering. It was certainly not my 31 revolutions around the sun. The problem was the way those stupid cheetah pants stretched across my thighs. My moneymaker may have looked like a jungle predator, but my thighs looked like they had been stricken with a yet-unnamed disease. And therein lied the lesson. Tina can shake her tail feather in her short skirts and high heels because she doesn't compromise on fit. My cheetah print pants required a concession from my thighs that I was just not prepared to make. 

I may very well be a snow leopard print pants wearer. But I am not meant to be a wearer of these particular snow leopard print pants. And that’s okay. Like Tina, I will live to dance in my stilettos another day. I’m glad I didn’t throw away the receipt.       

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It's Cool to Be Frugal

Meet Dom. He's a 20-year old college student. He's in a fraternity, and he loves to go out. He also sings for coupons. That's right. He sings. For coupons.

I'll admit that I get a vicarious thrill from watching Extreme Couponers create stockpiles of tomato paste and mouthwash. I imagine what it would be like to swim through their seas of surplus toothbrushes and candy bars. I try to picture just how crunchy my hair would be if I aimed all of those cans of drugstore hairspray at my head at once. And sprayed. And sprayed. And sprayed.

If you have ever watched an episode of Extreme Couponers, then you know the face of the extreme couponer is often a female one: she's the single mom, the military wife, the mother of five teenage boys. If you watch often, you may catch the occasional couponing house husband. However, it now appears that young men are entering the arena of competitive couponing as well. Dom is not the first boy to appear on the show. A 17-year old named Cole, nicknamed "The Couponing Kid," made his professional couponing debut in the show's second season. Which begs the question: where my girls at?

It's no secret that the grocery store is my least favorite place to spend money. I will spend 10 minutes silently debating the merits of purchasing the apple that is two cents less per pound than my favorite apple variety. What's that? You don't have a favorite apple variety? I thought everyone did. Weird. Yet, I do not clip coupons. My grandma clips coupons, and my mother clipped coupons, but I do not. It's not that I don't want to save money, it's just that clipping coupons has never saved me enough money to be worth the time it takes to clip them. And yet, boys like Dom are funding toga parties by singing for coupons and going recycle bin diving, so there is clearly something to the sport of competitive couponing. It concerns me that my ladies are not taking advantage of very real opportunities to line their vintage Coach purses with dollar bills while teenage boys are recognizing the benefits of competitive saving. In fact, the female extreme couponers are to a woman married, with children, or married with children (i.e. saving for a family), while their male counterparts are unabashedly saving for themselves. Or for, you know, a toga party.

Time recently ran a cover story titled "The Richer Sex" about how more women than ever before are overtaking men as family breadwinners. With women outnumbering men in undergraduate institutions and in most graduate and professional programs (including law school) across the country, we're likely to see this trend continue. But as most personal finance experts agree that the key to personal wealth is not just earning more money, but saving more money, it concerns me that younger women appear not to be as excited about competitive saving as young men are.

Right about now you are probably saying, but don't you write about shopping? Absolutely. But I have often wondered if there was not also a way to write about saving money in a way that is as fun (and snarky) as writing about shopping. If maybe, just maybe, instead of celebrating a sister's new shoes, we could instead congratulate her on pouring her tax refund into her Roth IRA or paying off a credit card? That would, of course, mean that women would have to start opening the dialogue about money. It's funny how in the age of Sex and the City (the series and the movies) and Girls that money talk truly is the last female taboo topic. But it doesn't have to be. If a 17-year old boy can realize the importance of saving money and can brag about it on national television, why can't we?

So what say you: do you think a competitive shopper can become a competitive saver? Do you clip coupons? Would you ever discuss (gasp!) money with your friends?

You can catch Dom and his frat brothers singing for coupons when Extreme Couponing premieres tonight at 10 p.m. on TLC. 

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