Orange Jumpsuits By Prada

Dear Dr. Ding (if that IS your real name):

I have a problem. I have a good friend who is a brand name dropper. What I mean is that she loves to highlight either the cost of something she’s recently bought, or she tries to ensure that you know what brand names she’s buying. It’s really getting annoying lately. I mean I don’t care if she has a label on her purse that says Gucci or Prada or whatever. It’s just that EVERYTHING, every conversation she has seems to eventually get back to something to do w/her expensive lifestyle, her recent acqusitions or trips, or her plans to buy more stuff. Even her groceries seem to be better than mine! She does it fairly subtly, but over the last 3 years I’m noticing that this is in like every interaction I’m having w/her. I sometimes worry that she’s alienating other people with all this snobbery and that maybe one day she’ll piss off her boss or a potential boyfriend or something similar, but mostly I’m getting pissed on my own behalf at her lack of awareness that other people (ME!) don’t have the kind of money she does to be throwing around on luxury items. Oh and by the way I’ve tried talking to her about this but she gets all clever and I end up looking like the snob somehow. How do I deal? Sign me PISSY MISS.

Dear PISSY MISS:

Dr. Ding (and yes that is my real name) sympathizes mightily with your predicament. I’ve known a few folks like this over the years, both professionally and personally, and I’ll get right to the point. Usually people like your friend who overvalue material items have some history of serious impoverishment, whether real or imagined, in their history. This might mean they didn’t have the things they needed as a child, like food or clothing, or it may mean they simply saw themselves as having less than others. The kicker is that some folks like this equate having with being later on in life. So they may try to accumulate fancy things that denote status in our society as a means of forging a stable identity for themselves where life is more predictable, unlike childhood, which was unpredictable. It’s a compensatory strategy at best.

Children and teens don’t have much to call their own by way of identity and that’s why marketers and clothing manufacturers are able to sell “the latest” to this demographic so easily; these kids are developmentally unable to completely distinguish their self-opinion from their clothing or possessions. This is normal at this point, remember. But for folks like your friend it can cause problems if it runs unchecked. In adulthood, such problems can take the form of a) totally rejecting material things and/or the status quo and living and dressing like a semi-pauper or b) becoming fixated on having, buying, acquiring, etc as much of what the larger culture says denotes status. Here status symbols become conflated with identity.

In your letter, the description of your friend left me with the impression that she isn’t terribly sensitive to how her constant self-inflating comments affect others. In the clinical world we might say that such a person has a strong trait of narcissism present in her personality and that she is unlikely to change her behavior without benefit of psychotherapy. In Dr. Ding’s world, I would say you probably need to have an air-clearing discussion with her to let her know how truly icky and dare I say even hurtful her actions are to you as a friend. You implied you’ve been friends for a long time. If that’s the case, give her a chance to redeem herself. I’m of course doubtful that she’ll be able to curb her self-aggrandizing impulse, but sometimes friendships run their course and then naturally decline due to divergent life paths. No harm, no foul. It seems that her path is leading her straight into a tiny but well-upholstered prison cell of big-name designers and not much else, which ultimately is actually a bit pathetic.

However….where is your path leading you? Do you know? Would you secretly like to own a mega-dollar pair of shoes but lack the ambition neccessary to make enough money to do so? Do you yearn to travel the world and rare collect objets d’art? Be honest. Sometimes the things that most irritate us about others are those very things we loathe within ourselves. Do a reality check. If it doesn’t bounce, proceed as you wish. And take a little comfort in the fact that your friend’s pattern of snobbery will be rewarded by lack of meaningful relationships later in life. The wheels of justice grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine, as the saying goes. Meanwhile, you’ll be having rewarding friendships with people whose values are more consonant with yours. So get busy.