Reviewed: Shopping At Forever 21 While Hungover At 9 A.M. in 2005

If you have never been to a Forever 21, here’s what it’s like: have you ever woken up in the morning and been like, “I want to die…but maybe buying a $10 lime green mini dress that says ‘I’m a Slut for Cheetos’ across the front will scratch the same itch?” That’s what Forever 21 is like.

Even if you ignore the myriad ethical problems involved in the design and production of their clothes, AND the weird Christian stuff (you can go find the links on your own, I’m not your mom!!), there is the simple fact that Forever 21 only carries two types of clothes. One is a cheap, poorly constructed basic that will literally explode the first time you put it in the wash. The other is a nylon party dress so deliriously unhinged, so utterly unwell, that it must spend the rest of its life confined to Arkham Asylum for the good of the people of Gotham.

Going to Forever 21 at any point after the age of, let’s just say 21, is nothing but a vibrant, gorgeous cry for help. So, naturally, it was my favorite place to go throughout my 20s and even my early 30s!

Now, notice that I did not say that it was my favorite “store.” This is because I would characterize Forever 21 as more of a “drop-in crisis center.” I don’t know how much shopping actually goes on there, and I hope to never know. It’s a place to laugh, to cry, to hope, to dream of a better tomorrow!

But it’s only really a place to shop if you had anonymous sex the night before and are looking to quickly pick up a new outfit on the way to work, so your coworkers will only SUSPECT you closed down a weird, nameless bar on 26th Street last night and woke up on the floor of an apartment on Mulberry Street at 6 a.m., nude but still wearing your stacked heel mary janes, instead of knowing for sure.

In early 2005, Forever 21 was an essential part of my morning routine, which went like this:

8 a.m.: Wake up with a start, sometimes on the couch at the boardroom at work, sometimes mysteriously nude but still wearing the heeled mary janes at a stranger’s house (the shoes had a weird buckle that was honestly hard to get right even when you were sober).

8:15 a.m.: Either way, head to the nearest bathroom to splash water at my armpits and vagina as if they are playful little ducks capering in a pond.

8:30 a.m.: Wander the streets like a ghost clutching a Diet Pepsi, looking for an egg and cheese. Wonder about life, and not in the cute way that all hungover 23-year-olds wonder about life; I mean, wonder about life in a really serious and sad way, where you wonder if the ways your parents failed you is going to ruin your life, if their inability to deal with their own shit has already ruined your life and you just don’t even know it yet. You wonder what people whose moms liked them are doing at 8 a.m. Probably Pilates. Or cuddling with some wretched long-term boyfriend they picked up at college, some guy who owns a lot of half-zip sweaters and has some job that sounds made up.

9 a.m.: Show up to the Forever 21 in Union Square.

At this hour, the store would be empty save for a few harlots like myself, the store a temple to our bad choices, aching hangovers, and ongoing interest in dressing like a background extra from Clueless. These people are your soulmates in self-immolation, and you will love each other eternally, even if you refuse to make eye contact in the moment.

Some of the beauty of Forever 21 was that every single item of clothing fit wrong, so it was almost like they all fit right? Literally every piece of clothing in the store was sized differently — even two mediums of the same exact item might fit differently — so why try any of it on at all? You already know that it’s gonna be cut in a weird way where it keeps riding up your belly, or your left tit keeps falling out, or it pushes your ass around to somehow become…aligned vertically rather than horizontally? Just grab something, hold it up to your body in a mirror to get a general idea of its shape, and live a little! Lay down your $10, and wiggle into your new purchase across the street, in Union Square, when the dudes who have the daily anti-circumcision protests there are just setting up.

(me in 2005, upset that they didn’t have any baby tees left that said “Lil Psycho” left in my size)

9:30 a.m.: Somehow, the first one in the office!

—

This was obviously a lifestyle with an expiration date — the drinking, the Forever 21, the job where I just kind of slept in the boardroom. But when you’re 23, you kind of don’t get any of that? You think this is exactly as good or as bad as your life will be until you die.

Weirdly, my relationship with Forever 21 last the longest out of those three things (my job ended five months in, after I got in trouble for saying “blow job” in front of Sarah Michelle Gellar/ never wearing a bra/ getting to anxious to file papers so I just kind of shoved them into a desk — a topic for a future Review). I felt a kinship with it, because I thought we were both misunderstood — people thought Forever 21 was a piece of shit, even though they provided us with the essential service of selling pink faux fur jackets and letting you sit outside the fitting rooms all afternoon because you had no place to go; and people thought I was a piece of shit, even though I provided them with the essential service of giving them someone they could look at and think, “Huh, well, my life is going better than hers, I guess.” Even though I started to feel too old to pull off a pair of see-thru vinyl pants or a pink baby tee that says “I want to fuck Doug from the cartoon Doug” or whatever, it was still a problematic fave in my heart.

But I went in there last summer, and was surprised to find…wow, this place really is a piece of shit! Everything is ugly and scratchy, and this stuff really will disintegrate in the wash so fast, you’re not even saving money by buying this instead of something nice. Is this personal growth? Realizing that I am no longer a piece of shit? Maybe I was never a piece of shit, and was actually just a lost girl, misinformed about life by parents who barely knew more than me, confused about how to find the acceptance and security and sense of connection she so desperate craved?

Or maybe I just got too old to want to look at a shirt that says “Sweet” over one tit and “Sour” over the other.

Rating: A+ in my memories, D- in current execution.