Stupid headline

[ailbhe]

I can't sleep, so I'm fretting about a stupid headline I saw somewhere. Apparently the average woman in the UK spends as much as or more of her life shopping than she does in high school.

I'm surprised it's not more.

Schools in Reading have pupils in them about 190 days a year, for not quite 8 hours a day, sometimes much less. Supposing the average woman attends high school for six years (which is again an overestimate), that's 9120 hours per lifetime. And supposing she does no shopping until she's 20 and stops when she's 60, because she is average and has 2.4 children and she gets her daughter to do it for her then, or something... That's 228 hours a year, which is about four and a half a week.

That's all the grocery shopping, taking children to have their feet measured, DIY shopping, large house purchases like beds and chairs and televisions, plant nurseries, kitchen utensils, special event stuff like birthdays and Christmas, school uniforms, children's clothes, often gifts for their partners' friends and families, gifts for their children's friends for a good 8-12 years per child, and then on top of that there's buying lunch sandwiches in Boots or M&S when she's at work and on top of that there's buying her own clothes, possibly including the aeons it takes to try on things like wedding dresses, and maybe if she has time to spare books, CDs...

I also wonder how much difference there is between what women consider shopping and what men do, on the kind of survey that asks that kind of question. Do men consider looking in catalogues and magazines to choose which kind of TV to buy to be shopping? Possibly not. Do women consider looking at clothes for 10 minutes during their lunchbreak to get an idea of what is and is not in the shops and what things cost, even if they don't buy anything? Often, in my experience, yes they do. They were in shops, so they were shopping (but didn't buy anything).

Women shop, I think, and men just buy stuff. Call it a midnight hunch.

Comments

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Four and a half hours per week? Dear gods. I think I'd want to die.

I do less than that per month, with as much of a bias as possible towards the fun things like book and record shopping. The only thing that keeps my average up is the occasional trip to IKEA or B&Q, which also eats several days worth of spoons.

Seriously - per week? Ugh.

[ailbhe]

Well, I don't do that much per week, but if I buy groceries *and* a child's shoes *and* a single household item, I could easily do 6 hours in a day, all of which would count as shopping, including the travel between shops. Add in extra-slow Christmas shopping including stopping for lunch, and it goes up again.

If you only count time actually purchasing goods, it would be much lower.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Buying children's shoes (assuming you go to Clarks or Start-Rite and get decently made and measured shoes) takes forever. I remember that from when I was a child! Half an hour if there was nobody else in the children's department. An hour and a half plus if busy. Multiply by number of children. Ugh.

[ailbhe]

I'm assuming grocery shopping for a whole family takes about an hour; I don't do our grocery shopping, because we fail at average, so Rob does it alone without children to tow around.

[nonhae.livejournal.com]

Grocery shopping for my family of 4-8 takes at least four hours a week, probably closer to six, if you include travel time.

There's the trip to Dunnes for some things that are on special offer, the trip to Supervalu for some things that are on special offer, continue until all different supermarkets are covered. That's before the weekly trip to the market/farmer for spuds+veg. And then there's the thrice weekly milk and bread runs and the occasional popping out for something at the last minute.

When I was living in Dublin this year I'd easily spend 2-3 hours a week on grocery shopping just for me. How normal that is is beyond me though. It's normal for me, that's all I know.

[ailbhe]

A lot of people here do grocery shopping in one place only with one adult only and the children all somewhere else, without bargain-hunting. But it's all rendered moot by the further info google showed up about the survey anyway.

[ailbhe]

... and another thing, she said, because I'm still awake. When I tried to find out which trousers fit me post-partum, I was shopping for over *four hours* and didn't manage to buy trousers which fit. It was indeed horrific, and if I hadn't had a friend with me I'd have exploded. But that was looking for one article which I didn't find.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Yeah - that's why I bulk-buy clothes, wherever possible. If I find trousers that fit, I buy several pairs of them at once!

My new clothes-buying trick is as follows:
1) Look at every pair of black casual trousers in Marks & Spencer's.

2) Rate them for a) do I like the style? b) does my fat arse have a hope of fitting into a size 18-20? a) clears out about half of the trousers, b) clears out another half. If I need bigger than a size 20 just to fit my arse in, then there'll be far too much fabric everywhere else.

3) Take the trousers which look like they might fit me to the changing room.

4) Do not angst about trousers which won't fit me because they aren't designed for a person with my hips or arse. That is genetics' fault, not mine. Or possibly the trouser-designers' fault. Not a thing that can be helped by being sad about it, anyway.

5) When trousers fit, buy multiple copies of them. You don't want to be doing this again in a hurry!

6) Go and get a hot chocolate in Costa.

I managed to get the time down from an all-afternoon run out of energy and feel like crap event to an hour or so, just by ruthlessly excluding things while they were still on the hanger. It really helps when you shift the position of power: "It's not MY fault for being this shape, it's the DESIGNERS' fault for not making clothes to fit me."

Some time in the dim and distant future, when I have copious free time and nothing to do with it, I plan to set up a company making clothes for pear-shaped women. Clothes that have narrow waists but plenty of hip and arse room. For all the women who have to wear trousers two sizes too big to fit their derrières in, and then wonder what to do with all the rest of the fabric. And I will get Richard to take the photos. And then NO WOMAN will say "Does my bum look big in this?", because she'll know that the answer is "My bum looks SPLENDID in this"!

I can hope, anyway.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I'm going to do that too when I have copious free time one day. It will be a wonderful dim and distant future.

[ailbhe]

I googled it - "Over 3,000 women were surveyed by Clothes Show Live, the UK’s biggest fashion and beauty event which takes place from 3 – 8 December 2010 at Birmingham’s NEC," and they came up with 11.5 hours a week, so obviously had longer school hours in mind. With a totally average survey sample, obviously.

[etoile-violet.livejournal.com]

*sigh* - I had a feeling before I even scrolled this far down that the shopping would be reported as the 'frivolous' stuff only. I too wonder how many of the women surveyed including shopping for essentials in their weekly amount.

If they did do the survey actually at the Clothes Show Live (I couldn't work out from the article whether CSL did the survey at one of their actual shows or elsewhere), then yeah - people at the Clothes Show are interested in fashion and might like to buy clothes. Who'd'a thunk it.

[rmc28]

Ah, yet another "survey" as headline-generating PR tool, with added misogyny. GRRRRRR.

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

It is a daft comparism (IMHO) as you shop for more years than you go to school.

It's also a social thing. Mum & I went Christmas shopping yesterday & spent as much time chatting as we did shopping.

[haggis.livejournal.com]

There's also an intrinsic suggestion of "schooling is worthwhile and important, whereas shopping is frivolous" to that survey.

Education is important but the idea that the only time spent on it that counts is when you are in a formal environment, doing nothing else is a bit odd. (What about work based training or experimenting to teach yourself a skill?) Shopping for frivolous things is frivolous but shopping is a way of providing food, clothes and other necessities for a family, which would have previously been done by hunting and gathering or trade with neighbours.

[clarahippy.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Being thrifty and frugal are really important household skills to make the most of your money so the family unit is fed/clothed well.

Also I seem to remember some sort of campaign a while back that encouraged parents to teach their children skills while doing household tasks like shopping so basic maths/reading etc.

I can only speak for Americans at this point

[eavanmoore.livejournal.com]

The men I know who actually have money spend a fair amount of time doing what I would call "shopping." Eg my dad looks through woodworking catalogs, remaindered-book catalogs, stops in antique stores when he sees them to do a taste check, keeps an eye out for potential gifts wherever he goes, shops for new socks or shirts or suits, etc., etc.

My housemate who actually has an income also does shopping, although his is in thrift stores and grocery stores. My housemate who doesn't have an income doesn't shop, but it is admittedly less fun when you can't buy anything.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

I spend an awful lot of time shopping, because I enjoy it. I shop for special deli and organic market foods, I shop for books and music, I shop for holiday deals, and yes, for clothes, and of course presents, as well as necessities like groceries and household items.

For very large portions of the time (groceries and his Xmas present excepted), A is with me. But if the data was reported on this type of survey, chances are that I would be "shopping", and he would be "going shopping with his girlfriend".

Gendered? Science(tm)? Impossible, Shirley!