Music Gives Shopping a Bum Rap

Only women born with the shopping gene can understand why I awake one morning daydreaming of bluejeans. By the time I’ve reached consciousness, I am gripped by an undeniable urge for new, mean jeans I can see in my mind’s eye. The denim should be slightly stiff and dark, the color of the night sky. They won’t look already dissipated. These jeans will challenge me to break them in, which will involve the urban equivalent of traveling 40 miles of hard road. The waistband will hover just south of a plain, shrunken T-shirt’s edge. Acres of flesh will not be exposed above these nouveau hip-huggers, but an errant sliver of skin might peek out now and then.

Silly me. I thought that hunting for these perfect pants would be fun. Yet the stores that offer bountiful selections of them also play horrible music. Annoying music. Headache-inducing music. Is it even music? It’s atonal, nonmelodic. It’s rap.

When I first heard rap, more than 15 years ago, I thought it was a fad that would go away. I hoped it would, so I’d never have to try to appreciate it. I remember playing records I’d saved my allowance to buy and tuning out my parents’ complaints that the music was jarring and too loud. They didn’t get the Beatles, and by the time I moved on to Springsteen, we inhabited completely different cultural universes. Now that rap’s shown real staying power, I’m the one who doesn’t get it--this pop genre I’d find aesthetically unappealing even if didn’t celebrate violence and misogyny.

Rap has become so ubiquitous it has taken the simple, mindless pleasure of shopping and spoiled it. Lately I find myself in a store, motivated to buy, and my paramount thought is escaping that infernal sound.

The purpose of jeans is to postpone the moment a woman past 30 must look in the mirror and say, “It’s official. I’m becoming my mother.” How dare music, not clothes, be what reminds me that I am? The music makes me feel discriminated against! Not by size--thanks to life lived in the Zone and only one Tootsie Pop a day, I can fit into those 27-inch low-riders. Not by price--I can afford ridiculously expensive jeans, although my thrifty older sister would roll her eyes if she knew I’d fork over so much money for a style the Gap will copy any minute then sell for a more reasonable amount. My musical preference excludes me. No bouncer at a boutique’s door bars my entrance by saying, “Sorry, you aren’t our demographic.” The sound system communicates that message clearly.

Maybe I’m not alone. I complain to a man who might have a vested interest in my acquiring some sexy jeans. “If the music in stores bothers you, don’t go in them,” he says. I should know better than to talk to a heterosexual male about shopping.

But a friend, a wardrobe stylist for television and films who spends a lot of time in stores, feels my pain. “Fred Segal on Melrose is the worst,” she says. “The music is so loud you can’t even hear yourself think. I’ve complained and they don’t care.”

In fact, an award for worst musical offender would be difficult to grant. Once my sensitive ears have been assaulted, I notice that noise pollution is everywhere, not just in shops that want to telegraph their hipness to Generations Y and X. Something awful is blasting at BCBG in Sunset Plaza. At Emma Gold on Melrose, Missy Elliot testifies. Even at Gucci on Rodeo Drive, the chattering of tourists is drowned out by the quasi-musical din.

“That music makes me want to kill myself,” I say dispassionately, to a saleswoman at Madison on South Robertson Boulevard in Beverly Hills, where the beat throbs. “Me, too,” she says. “But I don’t get to pick it.”

Of course modern technology offers shopping by remote control, in the comfort and quiet of one’s home. The dirty little secret of the home shopping channels is that most of the clothes they hawk are pathetic, homely little wallflowers you wouldn’t waltz into a dressing room if you encountered them in a store. The selection on the Internet is better, and I could cybershop with something civilized like David Gray’s “White Ladder” CD playing in the background. The problem is the Internet is fine for buying books and electronic gadgets, but it’s sterile, devoid of sensual input. Appealing clothes seem to sing the Who’s “Tommy” anthem: “See me. Feel me. Touch me.” I’ll heal you.

An official protest would be out of the question. Most of the nubile saleswomen so obviously enjoy the music that’s played where they work. I’d feel like an old pain ruining their fun, and I need their goodwill, since their knowledge of jean cuts far surpasses mine. What could I say to a shopkeeper that wouldn’t make me sound like Tipper Gore in her crankiest hour?

I’d like to point out that a store is not a dance club. But they probably don’t care what I think. Or that I have daydreams. And jeans needs. Because I can buy hot jeans. But I’m just not cool anymore.