Those beautiful, insidious email offers.

I'm guiltier than anyone I know about buying things online. And I say "guiltier" because the extra, superfluous packaging and gas used to drive my one or two items across the country to me is very wasteful and excessive. I'm better now than I used to be. For a while there, I had a J. Crew fascination; I think it had to do with the fact I lived in Hawaii, on the Big Island, where the only stores are Wal-Mart and Tommy Bahama - leaving me with the option of buying either a $3 shirt or a $300 one. J. Crew usually has good bathing suits - basic, well-made, not too overpriced - so I would buy mine online and have them shipped over. If they didn't fit or the color looked weird or whatever, I would send it back and they would resend me a different one. Sometimes several times. It's really the ultimate in lazy shopping: the clothes come to you! No need to think about all that this concept entails.

Anyway - J. Crew started emailing me offers all the time, about sales and whatnot. They still do, actually. I have definitely clicked through to their site through a sales-offer email, purchased my items, and then waited impatiently for their arrival. Every time you shop online, you're ten again and it's Christmas Eve. My experience with email offers, at least with J. Crew, have always been fine. They take me right where I need to go on the site; checkout is easy.

If I was still as into shopping online, I would find the emails I'm inundated with (Urban Outfitters, Nordstrom, Anthropologie, etc.) helpful - and they would absolutely encourage me to buy more, as they have in the past. The emails serve to remind you of the business' presence, and - hey! - they just so happen to be having a great sale! It's clever and I think it works. I also think that my deeply ingrained habit of consumerism is being manipulated, which I don't like at all. I've been trying very hard in recent years to repress these tendencies, to be happy with less, to only buy what I absolutely need - with the occasional treat thrown in - and it's been hard! So it's disconcerting when companies know exactly how to reach you and which buttons to push to encourage you to take a certain action. Then I feel less like a savvy consumer and more like one of Pavlov's dogs.