Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a healing newsletter for 80s babies by Shani Silver. This newsletter does not publish free content, but if you’d like to read it you can subscribe here. Thank you for enjoying the work of independent writers.
I won’t suggest it too soon. I’ll wait and scheme while she takes me to a few stores that sell clothes she’d like to see me in. The floral dresses that let her hold her head high at synagogue when she introduces me to people I’ve already met 1000 times as though I’m a head of prized livestock. After we’ve hit the safe stores, and I’ve started feeling brave, I’ll suggest we go to Hollister. I will regret this.
Hollister, for those whose birth year starts with a 2, was a more surf-y version of Abercrombie & Fitch that you could shop at in a mall before they all turned into ruins for budding hipster photographers to descend upon like ancient Rome. Hollister was, without question, marketed directly and rather strongly to teens—thin, attractive, predominantly white teens. When you are 15, deeply unpopular, formerly bullied, and hiding the fact that you share a bedroom with your 12-year-old brother, Hollister clothing feels like armor protecting you from shame. It was how I thought I could fake being cool. There’s a special kind of person who will spend $40 in the year 1997 on a long sleeve t-shirt with holes in it and they are—without question—not yet earning a living. My grandmother however, was too sharp for that shit.