Even in school and at work, teenagers and young women have to have enough outfits for at least two weeks if not more. They have a reputation to uphold, and that means not wearing the same outfit too many times in a month. Of course, that means you can have just a few pair of pants or skirts with a closet full of shirts, but the outfit has to at least LOOK different.
Another reason girls may shop is to meet friends, especially males. A trip to the mall is more than just an afternoon or evening of shopping, it's a social affair. In fact, the teenager who spends an afternoon at the local mall may come home with only one outfit, but she spent all her allowance on the movies, lunch, drinks, and other things while she and her friends walked from one end of the mall to the other. Don't forget, while she was walking, she saw that gorgeous boy who's in her English class and found out that he likes her. All of these are important to a teenager.
For a young woman, the reason may be different, but shopping is still a social affair rather than just shopping. For the young woman, one of the most important reasons to shop is that it relieves stress. How that happens is difficult to perceive, but it probably has to do with the fact that you are concentrating on something other than the cause of the stress. Of course, the aftermath of the shopping spree can mean more stress if she uses money that she needed for something else, but for the moment while she is shopping, she is happy and content.
Shopping brings other benefits as well, such as meeting people she might not have met in other circumstances. After all, do you think guys hang out at the mall to shop? Sure, some guys like to shop, but most guys walking through the mall are looking for girls, girls, and girls! Girls, surely you have walked out of your favorite store to find some male's eyes popping out of his head. You walk out of a store, or even walked down the hall, and here are several males following you, eyes popping out of their eyes with tongues hanging out of their mouths at the same time. What do you do about it? I know when I was younger, my friends and I would get pleasure out of giggling at them, which sent them walking away, heads between their legs like a bad puppy.
More important than anything, I think women in general see shopping as a way to spend time with friends doing something that all of them enjoy doing. It doesn't matter if you're fourteen or forty, a little shopping takes away the uncertainty of what to do with a leisurely Saturday afternoon.
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