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Are you registered to vote in New York but have changed addresses from what’s on your voter registration? Today is the last day to change your voter registration address.

Are you not registered to vote in New York? June 14 is the last day to register to vote if you aren’t registered yet. Check if you’re registered here.

When can we vote? Early voting goes from June 14–22, and Election Day is the 24th. Find your poll sites here, and you might be assigned one place for early voting and a different one for regular Election Day (I am).

Do you know who you’re voting for yet? If you don’t, Gothamist has a nice guide on candidates for mayor and other offices. They also have a quiz to show you which candidates align with your values. The New York Times reports on the election and has been posting these “10 Questions” interviews with each candidate. I’d also check out the Working Families Party slate (aside from their #5 mayor choice that came out before she endorsed Cuomo). I just got a voter guide from the city in the mail today. Also, you can watch the second mayoral primary debate this Thursday. This election matters more than the general because the democrat that wins is almost definitely going to beat the nobody Republican and disgraced Eric Adams, who is running as an independent.

What’s this ranked-choice voting stuff, and who should I rank? Here’s an explainer. Read for yourself whose values you line up with, but I can tell you where I’m thinking so far: 1. Zohran Mamdani (progressive with best chance at beating Andrew Cuomo) 2. Brad Lander (proven progressive with loads of experience) 3. Adrienne Adams (lots of experience) 4. Zellnor Myrie (cares about public education) 5. Michael Blake (did great at the first debate). My ordering might change based on if anything crazy happens over the next few weeks. Whoever you rank, I strongly advocate not ranking serial sexual harasser, nursing home death hider, journalist avoider Andrew Cuomo, who is hoping that name recognition will send him to the mayor’s office, or Jessica Ramos, a wannabe-progressive throwing her record away to kiss Cuomo’s dirty ring.

Have you ever canvassed before? I haven’t because I hate to be a bother, but I’m changing that on Wednesday and canvassing in my neighborhood for Zohran Mamdani. Sign up and join me, if you’d like. I think that a progressive win will send a positive message throughout the country, and we have the chance to make that happen. Who says being registered to vote in New York is lame? Whoever you find yourself gravitating towards, consider volunteering or donating to their campaigns. It’s not too late…it’s actually the perfect time to make an impact!

If you have any questions or want to talk anything out, I’m obviously here. I don’t think any of the candidates are perfect, but that’s what makes ranked-choice voting so great. Go form your own opinions! Be free!

Aside from this dreary day, it’s really getting hot here. I had my first true summer workout at the gym: way less crowded because of the temperature outside. With the heat comes my insatiability. I am so, so hungry. I want to do everything, eat everything, drink everything, stay up at all hours, and talk to every person in the world — ready to say yes. As long as I don’t plan too far ahead, I can ride this craze and not burn myself out.

I watched the first mayoral debate, got second place at trivia that had drag shows after, ate Mama’s Too standing up outside of a boutique with oil running down my hands, and ended up at two Puerto Rican Day parades. People trying to deliver aid to Gaza are being captured and ICE agents ravage LA with reckless abandon. Today, I’m going to talk about shopping. The first part is just talking about myself and the second goes into my thesis.

I’ve always considered myself a bad shopper…or sometimes, the best shopper in the whole world. I treat my clothes with a lot of respect. I don’t shop very often, and I pick things that feel high quality to me. I’m not out here buying luxury items, but I have never shopped at Shein. I wear the same clothes constantly and usually for multiple years. I hate shopping online but am rarely motivated to shop in a store. I’ve had some success, but I am, on the whole, a terrible thrifter (I’m too simple to notice something nice in a nondescript mess of a rack rather than a carefully curated store layout).

I don’t think I have bad style; I just think my style is premature. Or too mature. Shopping with my mom is a spiritual experience, and she is way more fashionable than most other ladies of her generation. Unfortunately, that means that I have the instincts of a Gen X-er. I also think of clothing as an investment, and I am rarely trigger-happy — especially with trendy stuff. My weight has fluctuated over the past few years, and that’s made me even less sure of buying clothes if they will either be too big or small for me shortly after. I think the pandemic killed my ability to shop and keep reviving my wardrobe, but I thankfully found clothing rental service Nuuly (use my signup link so we both get discounts) to always have a rotation of new stuff.

I am not sure how I would describe my aesthetic. Lazy athleisure? Jumpsuit devotee? City girl? Wannabe city girl? I prioritize basic washing instructions and comfort. I still wear old clothes my college friends gave me when cleaning out their closets. I think I dress more masculine than I feel like represents who I am because of the reasons listed above. Like all women, I am constantly frustrated by my clothing arsenal. I am one or two adderalls away from donating a bunch of stuff I haven’t worn in a while. Meera will rejoice when my clothing piles can hide from her view.

Again, I rarely go out shopping. I don’t know if I’ve ever successfully shopped for clothes with anyone that hasn’t been my mom, so when I shop now, I do so alone. For me, shopping is a vulnerable act, an opportunity to declare who you are or who you want to be. Shopping might feel more vulnerable to me than, like, kissing someone sometimes. I need to be in a specific mood or else I won’t be inspired by anything.

But when the mood strikes, it is electric. A good shopping day is a blackout. Follow every whim. Try on everything you see. Wander back and forth to the same corner and wonder if now is the time you’ll actually start wearing vests. It’s uncomfortable, sweaty, exciting, bursting with potential. On a good shopping day, I’m on such a high.

I’ve been telling myself for at least six months (but probably a year) that I need to get new workout sneakers as my heels continue to erode the inside of my blue-and-pink Adidas shoes I first wore for a family trip 3 years ago. Because this is such an investment for me, I want to be extra sure of my choice. I went into a Salomon store and was disappointed. I’ve never seen Brooks Running shoes to buy in the wild. I once walked into the Williamsburg On store and immediately turned around because the employees had sinister energy.

Even though many of the colorways are ugly and I absolutely despise the brand name on the side of each shoe, I knew I would ultimately end up with Hokas. I planned to get up early on Sunday and pull the trigger. I tried their flagship store in midtown, but was delightfully blocked off from accessing it due to the Puerto Rican Day parade. I went to their other store near Flatiron instead. My last real shopping trip was also in this area, roaming the big brands for a dress and heels for a work gala over a year ago.

I immediately gravitated towards a pair of chunky, cream sneakers that I later saw three other girls try on and probably buy. I liked how they felt and bought them despite knowing that their light shade will look so disgusting after I wear them in my neighborhood a few times. The high was starting. If I already bought one great thing, what’s stopping me from updating more of my well-worn wardrobe?

I had a straight shot down to 14th Street with a bunch of other stores. Let’s see what the Alo hype is all about (verdict: not sure why it has such a cult following, but I got some good workout pants). Athleta will provide me with more sports bras than the same two black Adidas and Nike ones I rotate between. The J. Crew sale section always has a treasure, showing me a bikini and reminding me I haven’t purchased new swimwear in two years.

I am leaving every store successful. My one credit card finds this behavior out of the ordinary enough to stop working. I am far too in the zone to take pictures or ask for advice. I make my decisions fiercely with a quickness. Nothing can stop me.

Suddenly: a mirror!

Whether we like it or not, our shopping habits are political acts. Hem lines get longer in recessions; the algorithms push handmaid aesthetics onto us in fascism. Women fought for the right to wear pants. Cops used to arrest people for cross-dressing. Men’s pants have all sorts of helpful pockets when half of our pockets are fake. We are fed all sorts of commands from brands on how to dress, how to present ourselves, what styles make us look like women. Every day, our outfits seek to affirm certain things about ourselves.

If outfitting ourselves is a war, look to the battlefield of Aritzia. The Canadian retailer started with one store in 1984 that spread across the country until seeping into the U.S. in 2006, New York in 2012. Each “boutique” is designed individually with one of the only uniform parts being its dressing room structure (I’ll get there in a sec) and filled with a few different brands that you don’t see outside of their stores.

Aritzia pitches itself as everyday luxury, AKA affordable as in definitely not cheap but not a designer brand either. They have clothes for pretty much every occasion, from work to the gym to dinner out to staying out. I see all ages of women (and a small cohort of men that are actually shopping in the little men’s section) but primarily see women around my age. The thing they might be the most known for is their Superpuff, a comfy puffer coat that comes in a bunch of colors and lengths but is easily identifiable as itself. Living on the Upper East Side in the winter, you see one of these in the wild every two seconds.

Of the bigger brands in my universe, Aritzia is one of my favorites. I think their stuff is reasonably high quality, and I identify with the cosmopolitan girl ideal it sells me. Aritzia is definitely a basic girl brand, but I think it’s a step above a lot of other brands in its ilk because it’s not everywhere and they have great, simple stuff. It’s obviously not in Pittsburgh, and I’d never heard of it until the end of my Boston tenure.

But to get to these clothes — especially if you’re an in-person shopper like I am — you must face a plethora of trials. As of this week, I’ve been inside an Aritzia store three times and know what to expect. My first time in one was their flagship store when I first moved to New York, which was both a fruitful and traumatic trip.

Walking into any retail store is an uncomfortable experience because you are immediately faced with a worker that relies on commission. As a human, I want to help and support them and be a less evil customer than the freaks they put up with on a daily basis. As a shopper, they all start as my enemies before they become my friends. I’m not like this with other service workers, but retail employees incite a fight-or-flight response within me. Let me search in peace, and I’ll find you when I need you. I don’t need you to tell me about a sale that I could read from a sign elsewhere. I don’t need you to have this fake interaction with me that only taxes both of us.

Being an Aritzia employee is a hot person job. Everyone is young, beautiful, and feminine. They could all be perfectly nice and fit the profile of your friends, but they come off as if you’re walking through the mall in high school with your mom and your bully is working at whatever grown up-ish teen store you walk into. You are accosted by one of these fembots as soon as you walk in, just like every other store, but the interaction is usually/thankfully pretty minimal. Unfortunately, that is probably the best interaction you’ll have there.

Pop music is blasting. Sometimes it’s songs everyone knows and other times it’s songs from your playlists that you’re surprised are playing here, reminding you of your basicness. Assuming you’re here on a weekend, it’s busy, both in people and in store content. The Aritzias I’ve been in have multiple floors with all kinds of garments. You find yourself shoving and being shoved into abstract positions to try looking for the size of a garment while someone next to you is doing the same thing.

Unless you are arriving in on a mission, Aritzia is meant for meandering. You have all sorts of opportunities to decide which girl you want to be. Do you want to look like a brunchy summery girl with that white linen crop top with the puffed sleeve? A corporate baddie with a pantsuit? The girl people ogle at at the gym? Whatever Aritzia sells you, they are selling an ideal: the best-looking girl at the office, the restaurant, the dog park. The styles are great for men to sexualize and women to envy. You weigh your options and pick what kind of perfection you want to attempt.

A sales associate appears by your side, always when you’re deep in thought and have at least one garment in your hand. They ask if you’re looking for anything and offer to start a dressing room for you. These employees are hungrier than most retail associates. I imagine this is one of the hardest retail jobs because it really requires the girls to have a sense of style and know how to read their victims. They are constantly on the move, scurrying around the store with your garments and finding other ones like what you have in hopes that you’ll buy from their recommendations. Sometimes they come back to you to tell you about things they found for you. You didn’t ask. They think they have you figured out.

When I was there yesterday, the dressing rooms had a line that I waited in behind a young mother-daughter duo and another aimless 20-something. There was a girl wrangling the clothes of those of us in line and others who eventually would join us. She looked a little gay, but I wasn’t sure. Do they hire gay people at Aritzia? Do gay people shop at Aritzia?

The sales associates stare deep into your eyes when they speak with you, even for the tinies exchange. What are they saying with their eyes? Please buy what I’m selling you. I am going to make you feel special so you buy what I’m selling you. I’m just waiting for my shift to end and am following the rules. I have no idea, but it always feels loaded. I don’t know how to look back at them. When I talk to a barista or any other service worker, I use my eye contact to say Hi fellow human. Thank you for spending energy on helping me today. I am also human and want you to feel as safe as possible in this transaction. With these girls, I don’t know what I’m getting from them. They’re bubbly, fast-paced girls that make walking into the store feel like walking into sorority rush — what is behind their niceties? Why can’t I find a place where we can be genuine? Why does it feel like there is no war in Ba Sing Se?

Finally the gauntlet: the dressing rooms. The Aritzia dressing rooms are designed to amplify these insecurities and the power dynamic you have as the submissive shopper. You walk into one of a dozen fitting “rooms,” small openings behind a stiff curtain that someone can easily angle themselves outside to see you in, making a square outline. After trying on one of the garments you or the sales associate has chosen, you are forced to face the world. In one of the most harrowing experiences of womanhood, trying on clothes, the only mirrors are in the center area outside of the dressing rooms.

Whatever success or flop of a garment you’ve tried, the practice is public. The vulnerabilities we all face in these weirdly lit spaces in which our bodies have never looked more themselves or not themselves (based on your perspective) are magnified. The woman’s private struggle with her style or body are exposed. Usually, the sales associate is nearby, possibly in a gaggle of other sales associates all whispering with each other as they stare at you. Yours comes out and often has commentary, encouraging you with how cute you look or maybe offering a better option or color. Again, these comments from pretty young girls feels like compliments from Regina George. Through their words these pretty, put-together girls are validating you as one of them but also making you feel more unsure. It feels like a distant cousin of the phenomenon of bullies pursuing nursing careers, or toxically positive women in general.

Aritzia is conformity. Almost everyone wants to be taken seriously and accepted, and Aritzia’s goal with everyday luxury is to make you think that you, too, can look successful but approachable (the woman’s dilemma anyway!). Everything in there is unabashedly feminine, down to the workers. And now, you must put your womanhood on display, and see how these ideal garments fit your non-ideal body (so you think, as all women do). Everyone sees how you pose yourself in the mirror and size yourself up, a ritual that should be kept private but the marketplace brings forward. So many women speak to themselves the most negatively they ever will while trying clothes on, so for that battle to be waged in the town square — with beautiful girls discussing it with you — is quite a feeling.

I’ve shopped at Aritzia as sizes small, medium, and large, and I always feel bizarre there no matter my size or how I react to being it. I definitely feel like a girl (although I think I’d be really good at being a boy), but trying on clothes here makes me feel so unbelievably ungirly. Even if clothes look good on me here (which is definitely not every time), it’s really hard for me to see through all the noise and feel it. I feel like a nerdy middle schooler trying on makeup for the first time to seem grown up, to wear a training bra on a flat chest.

In actuality, these youthful experiences and stereotypically feminine things feeling or looking odd on my female body is one of the most womanly sensations of all time. A brand overlord wants me to feel insecure and unworthy, to feel less female than the sales associates and fellow shoppers, so that I’ll give them my money. The brand overlord has hypnotized and brainwashed its young employees to perpetuate this dynamic even though us shoppers definitely have a lot in common with our in-store opps. Shopping always makes me feel ultra-young and ill-prepared as an adult and woman, which is to say that the propaganda works on me.

How do we combat these feelings of inadequacy while we engage in the privilege of getting pretty new things? By enjoying it and trusting our own instincts. I was thankful to be assigned to a dressing room right outside of the mirror, so I would enter the square, take a few seconds to look at myself, and turn right back around into the dressing room. I gave no one a chance to interact with me but myself. The associate included an outfit she picked for me, which I tried on and didn’t do much thinking about. The shirt was billowing and shapeless in a way that would have been insulting if I decided to care about it, but the pants were fabulous. I took a picture of the tag in case I ever want to shop again.

I got three great garments out of this trip: a simple black tank that feels like workout fabric but looks cute with lace trim, a brown top with ruching on the sides that will be perfect for some Manhattan friend’s birthday dinner someday, and obnoxious Kirby-pink sweatpants with pockets on the side. I felt like I beat Aritzia because I was about to leave feeling more secure than when I walked in.

Until I ended up staying for another hour. I walked up to pay and had my first nice, normal conversation at the store with the two girls at the register talking about sneakers. I thought I was being a normal person until my second credit card got declined, and the only way to unlock it was to call their number. I stood off to the side of the register on hold then sheepishly shuffled to the huge couch for wayward boyfriends where I would eventually befriend a small child telling me about “Super Mario Bros. cars,” which sound like an awesome alternative to Mario Kart.

I was on hold for an entire hour until the automated message told me There are no available operators. Please call back another time. Goodbye. Meera came to rescue me, and I was just another damsel in Women Be Shopping distress. She daddied for me, so maybe this was the most feminine I could be in an Aritzia.

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