Why I hate shopping

According to the lazy, offensive generalisations of popular culture, as a woman I am constantly worried about the size of my bottom, addicted to chocolate, hail from Venus, and I love - I mean absolutely

Cheese-loving earth-dweller though I am, it is the shopping part that most annoys me.

It is always the big joke - woman drags bored man around shopping centre, him moaning about missing a Manchester City away game, her orgasmic over those cutting-edge, red patent court shoes.

But it is actually not that funny. I find the drinking mugs you can buy teenage girls in card shops, with their jaunty cartoon characters and the motto 'Born To Shop', as depressing as the little girls' T-shirts that say 'Princess'.

Shopping is not a leisure activity. Shopping is for when you want to buy things, which unless you are incredibly rich or indecisive - and give or take the odd trip to Tesco for bread, wine and loo roll - really should not take up more than a couple of hours of your month.

My hatred of this gender stereotype really began during a weekend with some friends in Bournemouth. We had all been sunbathing and having a splash in the sea, and at last decided to move on from the beach.

At this point I was told the boys were going to play crazy golf and then go for a drink, while the girls went shopping.

Sorry, but what were those girls thinking? The choice was watching someone trying on pairs of shorts, or a round of crazy golf followed by a cold beer.

I could not believe how deeply these girls had been brainwashed. It's like those women who go bankrupt buying shoes. Not champagne and exotic holidays and good times. Shoes.

You want to scream at them: 'It's OK, love, the black ones go with everything.' I just can't believe it's much more fun than bankrupting yourself by buying frying pans or cushions.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not against nice things. I like a new dress or CD as much as the next person. What I find distasteful is the way consumption is being made a fetish - the constant stress on spoiling yourself through purchase, which leads to people buying things they do not need, or appreciate - or even want that much.

The term retail therapy says a lot about this trend.

Feeling low? Why don't you buy some body polish! Manic depression? What you really need are some lacy knickers!

The whole concept is nonsensical - buying make-up in the hope that it will transform your life is surely just a short-cut to deeper self-hatred when it inevitably fails.

Unhappy people should watch a cheesy film, or phone up their mum for a chat, not be encouraged to run up a credit card bill which is likely to be far more devastating in the long run.

And how do women come to run up such large debts?

I saw the vilest advert in NatWest the other day, showing a woman um-ing and ah-ing over a red and a white version of the same dress, and encouraging her to get out a personal loan to buy both.

A loan. To get two versions of the same dress, because she does not know whether she prefers red or white. No wonder this country has a debt problem.

And then there is windowshopping. Ugh.

Wandering around soulless arcades, past faux-marble pillars and glass elevators, breathing in that pumped-out cookie smell, David Gray quietly whining in your ears as you press your nose against the glass, thinking: I want that sheepskin coat, I want that Chanel limited- edition compact, I need that Gucci-look handbag. For me.

Whether it is pitiful or just plain greedy, the effect is of thousands of manicured Gollums taking over the town centre every weekend, whispering 'My precious' to themselves as they peer in one window after the other. 'Greed', though - that is a word that is not used often these days. You would be forgiven for thinking it had dropped out of the top seven deadly sins.

All the adverts for shampoos, spa baths, ice cream, sickly liqueurs - 'Because you're worth it', 'Indulge', 'You deserve it'.

Am I the only woman in the world to think: no, actually, I don't really deserve a radiant skin flash balm.

Never mind that most of the world lives in poverty, and probably really 'deserves' a bowl of grain, this month's Cosmopolitan gives a ten-step happiness plan that includes such 'happy steps' as 'Buy those shoes' and 'Give yourself treats'.

No mention of giving other people treats. Or buying other people, who actually need them, shoes.

You wonder how people in the Middle Ages didn't just die of misery, with no frappuccinos with which to reward themselves, and nothing to browse through on the High Street but cider and cheese.

The problem today is that fashion has developed an increasingly pornographic attitude to wealth, and these days it seems, with depressing frequency, to be all about the money.

Our obsession with brand labels - which are rarely about look, and always about cost - is witness to this.

Even ten years ago, fashion movements such as grunge could still be teen-led and budget-conscious, about ingenuity and attitude, not price tags.

Now, fashion is led by thirty-somethings who work in PR and fill the magazines with Tocca laundry fragrance and Ugg boots and Space NK candles.

Sex And The City best captured this unashamed materialism, with all its shots of Carrie sliding her foot into a new Manolo.

It is just aspirational, we are told. But why does aspirational always mean the characters have New York penthouses and wear Prada?

In her classic 1963 text The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan discovered that women possessed 75 per cent of the purchasing power in America, and declared: 'I suddenly saw American women as victims of this ghastly gift.'

Our power as consumers is still a ghastly gift. While we have more buying power now than ever, if we are not careful the constant pressure from adverts and magazines can transform this from a tool of female empowerment to one that preserves inequalities.

Too much time spent shopping trivialises us. It keeps us bound to pettiness - the pink eye shimmer or the lilac? - and in thrall to the beauty myth. It convinces us that we need some slingbacks to impress our boss, or a makeover to win a man.

The more weekends we spend trying on vests with our gal-pals at the shopping centre, the more vapid and shallow advertisers will assume us to be.

Most of us do not have much leisure time - especially women, who too often end up with the bulk of the housework and childcare as well.

Why spend your precious weekends buying a lifestyle you never have time to enjoy? If we all bought less, we might even find we didn't need to work so hard.

Perhaps purchasing a new lippy can be pleasurable, but joy can also be found in lots of free things - such as Scrabble, for instance, or a walk in the park, or tea and a natter at a friend's flat.

Maybe I am a bit of a hippy, but that's better than being born to shop, and on those occasions when I do feel like being a decadent Western spendthrift, it at least involves a meal out, friends and lashings of red wine - not a bloody blouse.