When I embarked upon my annual rewatch of Confessions of a Shopaholic, I did so with a naive sense of excitement — not least because I would get to see heartthrob Hugh Dancy’s face for the eleven-hundredth time.
You see, there was once I time when I reveled in the struggles of the perpetually indebted (and impeccably dressed) protagonist Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher), and watched with a smug sense of schadenfreude as she bumbled through her self-inflicted financial messes.
“That will never be me!”, I’d think wishfully whenever she fretted over a cashmere sweater or resorted to freezing her credit cards. “I’ll have my shit together!”.
Spoiler alert: I did not get my shit together.
Flash forward a few years to my latest rewatch, and now deep into a cost of living crisis, and the classic (and criminally underrated) 2009 romcom feels less like a cute cautionary tale and more like a painfully real biopic.
As it turns out, all these later and despite my delusions otherwise, I’m just as financially inept as Rebecca. And to make matters even worse, my wardrobe is significantly less chic.
Let me preface all of this by saying that while I see myself in Rebecca (a journalist who is jealous of Leslie Bibb in one of her many fuck-ass bobs? Hello?), my financial woes aren’t quite as self-inflicted as Rebecca’s, thanks to a little guy called inflation.
Sure, I’ve been known to enter Kmart for one item and leave with 12, but I’m far from a Givenchy enthusiast like Rebecca — as proven by how long it just took me to spell Givenchy correctly.
So if I can’t blame overspending, I simply must blame inflation for my woefully dwindling wallet — because it’s easier to blame that than it is to go without an $8 iced oat latte every morning.
It’s easier, but it’s also true.
While inflation has eased slightly since its post-pandemic peak, it still has its cold, scungy grip around Australia. Last year, a Mission Australia survey found cost of living was the number-one concern among young Aussies — even ahead of climate change and mental health.
So yes, now that I’m forced to take out a mortgage when buying a bundle of lettuce, it stands to reason that I revisited Shopaholic with a certain level of dread around spending and finances — a dread that perhaps wasn’t as pronounced as recently as 2020.
It’s through this lens that I now see myself channeling Rebecca almost every day. I have BRE (Big Rebecca Energy) whenever I’m weighing up between a new pair of shoes or an electricity bill. I feel her as I undergo the mental gymnastics to justify my Depop cart, or when I look on as folks cave to consumerism and purchase a ludicrously priced Labubu.
And she’s definitely me whenever I see Hugh Dancy — to whom I’d devote my entire life savings. Which, if you couldn’t already tell, is very little.
So, where does that leave those of us who, like Rebecca, are just trying to keep their head above water while also coveting Kmart’s latest homewares range? The answer, like any romcom, is filled with pratfalls.
For me, it means simply embracing being a bit financially rogue, like Rebecca in act two when she relapses during a clearance rack fistfight.
After all, she came out of that sale with bagfuls of stylish clothes, which is yet another lesson she teaches us — that being fiscally responsible can be exhausting, and it’s not always a straight line.
During a cozzie livs crisis, the line between a frivolous spend and a genuine need is so blurry that retail therapy can double as actual therapy. So perhaps the end result of my annual rewatch is something far simpler.
Maybe, all these years later, the biggest takeaway from Shopaholic is the simple fact that Rebecca reminds us we are not alone in our budgeting plights. She is the personification of where the economy has left us, and since she does all that while wearing her notorious green scarf with “If I Was A Rich Girl” as her ringtone, maybe we can fake it till we make it, too.
That being said, you probably shouldn’t take financial advice from me, if only because I just used Confessions of a Shopaholic as a how-to guide for saving and spending. So go ahead and invest in crypto or buy another handbag, but make sure, like Rebecca taught us, that you at least look good while doing it.
Lead images: Touchstone Pictures and X
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