Everyone deserves a break now and then.
Everyone who is on study leave trying to learn the ropes of their respective subjects and instructing themselves to breathe, everyone who has been drowned in a 650 page bulky book like ‘Wolf Hall’ and trying to convince oneself to ignore the loud screaming: “You are bored with that book, pick me, pick me”, coming from one’s wardrobe to-be-read book collection, even more deserve it.
And that’s when the let-me-take-all-your-tense-away magic predominantly created by chick lit writers like Sophie Kinsella, Meg Cabot and Lauren Weisberger and, their ‘for fellas only’ notion of writing style wrapped by entertaining rock’n’roll scenes come into play.
Shopping is one exercise all of us women embrace with much enthusiasm and glee. Well, glee may be a little bit overstating because there could always be a ‘guilty pleasure’ linked into it, but it leaves the element of enthusiasm involved untenable, even when all you do is stumbling upon a blog which swirls around fashion like SIXTHIRTYTHREE. Moving into compulsive shopping itself, it is the step higher of ‘normal’ shopping, whose superficial fashion victims are invariably females, which is the theme reinforced in Sophie Kinsella’s book; Confessions of a Shopaholic.
This book unravels around one such victim, Rebecca Bloomwood, a distinctive financial journalist who works for ‘Successful Saving’ magazine and who can not simply resist a bargain because she justifies all her purchases as investments! This book also sheds light to an acute problem; the non-existence of the distinction between creative choice (choice which reflects your inner soul) and consumer choice (choice you make out of the choices offered). Over the years the progression of the advertising field has been such that now they have imbued the creative choice and the consumer choice are pretty much the sam
e to our systems. They convince us what we need and deceive us fabricating our desire for something which we would not have bought otherwise. When doing this whether these goods are affordable to their customer is the last thing they have in their mind. Sometimes they even add a flair into their course in the form of discounts, and allure women like fireflies who get attracted to light to make frivolous purchases. Hence this book is a good testimony of the female physic on consumerism in the modern-day.
Having pointed out the plus side of the book I must also admit that I found the scenario where Luke Brandon, a high prolific business tycoon whose company is employed by Flagstaff Life, another major investment company to maintain their public profile, states he doesn’t agree with some of the activities Flagstaff Life has undertaken or has been acknowledged of them in public to be uncanny. I’m confused if the lack of awareness is a justifiable argument a person at his level could bring up and if his actions abide to professional behavior. Apart from that the book is an enjoyable light read which meets the chick lit standards and it gets two stars from me.
Now turning into the movie, this adoption is different from the original story, but that is in an appealing way similar to the adoption of ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. Certain scenes have been removed, certain characters have been dismissed, and some have been portrayed differently, but the movie is about the same savvy yet naive and amiable Rebecca who ultimately ends up bankrupt due to the ramification of her excessive consumption patterns. Highlight of the movie is the article Rebecca writes using the by-line ‘The Girl in the Green Scarf’ after realizing the scarf she purchased spending a huge sum of money is not 100% cashmere, which exposes us to think of the rigor of brand name consumerism. After it, it is the typical boy-meets-girl-and-then-happy-ending story.
Now the winner? Hmm, this time I’m going to claim there’s no winner. But if you are ready for some fluffy, silly series of escapade, I can promise you that both will serve the purpose!
To Make Me Look Busy 
