Page 124 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

Hemmed In and Shut Out . 109

however, announces, "Miss Chin is bad luck." Meaning it's my fault
they lost the boys. We are by the escalator and the girls consider going
downstairs. "That's where the perfume is," Natalia says. We go up to
the third floor again. No boys. "Miss Chin, you're making us lose
men!" Natalia wails. We go all the way to the first floor and the girls
stop at the Clinique counter for a few minutes, playing with the facial
"computer" there. We head back upstairs again, on an escalator, and
on the way the girls place coins on the moving rubber rail, calling to
me and saying, "We gave the coins a ride!"
In pursuing the boys the thrill is in the chase itself. Exploring different
departments in Macy's, playing with electronic typewriters and chil-
dren's toys, riding the escalators, fiddling with cosmetics displays are fun
and exciting for these kids. These activities would be fun for any kids,
but what was absent from the surface, at least, of these children's playful
meandering was any engagement with most spaces as consumers with
money to spend. They played with the typewriters just to play with them,
not so that they could think about buying them or even wish that they
could have one of their own. The escalators were by far the most exciting
and fascinating element, aside from a certain pleasure they seemed to
take in knowing they were on the verge of wildness—all the roaming up
and down and up and down again—and yet unlikely to suffer any
painful consequences.
This was their mall: a large, open, interesting, exciting space, full of
cute boys, though dotted with inconvenient security guards and dis-
approving grownups; lined with stores containing fascinating merchan-
dise; punctuated by escalators that lifted them to the mysteries above or
lowered them to the unknown below. They were not there only or even
primarily to shop, but to explore, to go "boy huntin'" as Natalia said,
and to generate a safe yet thrilling excitement. This is perhaps not the use
for which Macy's or the mall was designed; like the amusement park,
Macy's and the mall presented the girls with a closely monitored—and
hence relatively safe—space.
Being at the mall does not place kids in a field of unadulterated free-
dom, but it does allow some pressures and problems to recede from the
forefront of their experiences. Cautious and on guard for dangers posed
by men when at home in the neighborhood, Tionna, Natalia, and Asia
can revel in being girls at the mall. At home they worry that men might
be after them; in the mall they chase boys as if every day were Sadie
Hawkins Day. The following are portions of an interaction that took
place in the mall's food court: