What if No One's Watching?

I have been reading with great interest some conversations over at Dr. B's regarding her desire to purchase some very stylish, but expensive, boots. Many of the good doctor's readers felt that the boots were not a justifiable purchase, either because they high-heeled nature was not appropriate for snow, because they were too expensive, or both. Some readers even queried as to how she planned to pay for the boots, were she to buy them.

Y'all, this pissed me right off.

Dr. B. is a grown, self-supporting woman. And while she did ask for opinions on her possible sexy boot purchase, it seems to me like overkill that what she got back were several dozen judgemental busybodies, voicing their great concern over the practicality of her footware and her spending habits. As if Dr. B herself was not more in tune with both her checking account balance (or credit card balance, or whatever) and her ability to balance on high heels than her readers?

Does anybody do this to men? When a guy wants to buy something, do his family and friends pepper him with "Will you really use that?" and "Is that really practical?" and "Can't you get something similar for less?" When a guy says he is thinking of treating himself to something that may be not completely practical, but is certainly well-deserved, is it met with consternations about his financial responsibilities and how there are better uses for his money? Not in my experience.

Basically, it comes back to people thinking women are children who need to be instructed on proper use of their own funds and proper ways to clothe their own bodies, or thinking that women's assets don't really belong to them, and women shouldn't have any use for money or material things anyway, fueled as we are by our desire to have babies and take care of men. Dr. B. didn't ask her readers to take up a collection and buy her those boots (though let's be honest--we would have done it). She wasn't after any kind of handout. She was considering treating herself. But women aren't supposed to do that. Women--particulary women with children--aren't supposed to splurge on great boots for themselves, particularly fancy, high-heeled boots. It's not self-sacrificing enough.

In part, this is a personal issue to me--I like to buy nice things for myself, and I spend too much and save too little. My spending is, at times (and yeah, now is one of those times) , a problem. I know this, and it's something I am working on. However, I am totally adamant that those are decisions I get to make for myself, and I should get to make them without judgement coming from every corner. Whether or not you agree with my spending, I am a grown up, and I expect to be respected as one.

None of this is to say that I'm advocating mindless consumerism--I'm not. However, I've been reading Dr. B. for long enough to know that she does not spend her every waking moment thinking about what she's going to buy next (or if she does, then her blog has a ghost writer). She's a brilliant woman, she's teaching, she's raising her kid, and if she wants to buy herself some fancy-ass boots, more power to her. Furthermore, how she plans to walk in snow in them and how she plans to pay for them are both her business, and not something that she probably needs a chorus of naysayers about. I certainly wouldn't.