A few years ago, I was sitting in a meeting at work when my boss started talking about "those weird little people who heat up their Tupperware in the microwave at lunchtime." That afternoon, as I surreptitiously snuck forkfuls of leftover taco salad into my mouth from my own plastic container, I vowed to stop brown-bagging whenever I could. Now, of course, such a scenario is laughable (if it wasn't already then). These days, it's precisely parading that plastic container around the office at midday that shows that you're resourceful, that you're rolling with the times, that you're cool in a do-it-yourself recessiony kind of way.
Frugal is the new glamorous. The haves have finally been granted access to the one club the have-nots had owned exclusively, and they've turned it into a fabulous party. Enter the "recessionista." She is learning to cook at home. She's conspicuous about her nonconspicuous, discount-store, coupon-carrying consumption. She's a cousin, perhaps, to the type of person who totes a "This is Not a Plastic Bag" bag, except that, rather than crusading sanctimoniously for the environment, she's crusading for her own cultural relevance.
I doubt that I'm the only one who has trouble taking all this seriously. Perhaps it's because, coming of age in the recession of the early '90s, I've always been conscious of money — having it, not having it, the tendency of those who don't have much to size up those who have a lot. Perhaps it's also because, justly or unjustly, I partly blame the CEO and banker types for getting us into this mess to start with. So the fact that they're jumping onto the penny-pinching bandwagon just at the moment when we actually really need them to spend makes the recessionista trend particularly painful.
That ridiculous term itself — recessionista — started appearing this past fall. Banks had collapsed, bailouts had come through, layoffs were escalating. And there were the magazines, the newspapers, the news stations proclaiming that you could still be a fashionista, even in these tough times. Just pick up these dresses and shoes and bags and electronic wine bottle openers — they're all a steal at under $150.
We've been told to go shopping in our closets. Cute — but what does it mean? That I should take a shirt and pair it with some pants or a skirt that I haven't already matched it to? Call me crazy, but isn't that just called getting dressed?
The more ubiquitous this advice becomes, the trendier it seems, and the more people who don't really need to worry about spending stop spending. The Consumer Confidence Index plummeted to 25.0 last month, down from 76.4 in February 2008. And though that 25.0 represents an all-time low, "we've been hitting a new all-time low for a few months in a row now," says Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board's Consumer Research Center, which compiles the reports. "People are in savings mode." In other words, if we — the rich included — don't get over our consumptive guilt, our economy will continue to tank.
I read a roundup of first-person accounts in a magazine recently about what it feels like to be laid off. One woman, a former finance exec, talked about eating leftovers. "We never did that before," she said.
I'm no Suze Orman, but maybe that's why this woman — and many of us — are having financial freakouts right now. And maybe, with the kind of faux advice we're getting every day, that's why we'll continue to have them.
