Treat Yourself to Debt
"Deserve" is a funny metric. Few concepts are referenced so righteously and defined so arbitrarily. After years of working in advertising, I am all too familiar with the insidious mechanics of a phrase as seemingly innocent as, "You deserve it!" The seedier implication is: If you don’t buy this, you are withholding something from yourself, and in doing so, withholding yourself from your full potential. In other words, you aren’t "living your best life" — another materialistic construct disguised as a fundamental human right. But some of us, as it turns out, simply can’t afford our best lives.
For Shondaland, I wrote about living above my means, consumerism as self-care, and growing up with a twisted, shame-ridden relationship to money.
Art by Thomas Berloffa.
