Page 125 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

110 . Hemmed In and Shut Out

Asia spies a boy she knows. With ten-year-old bravado, Natalia says
that she's going to get up and go over to them. Asia tells her to go
ahead. Overcome with the idea, Natalia suddenly decides she can't
possibly do it. Asia gets up and goes over to the boys, tells one of them
that Natalia likes him. Natalia squirms, moans, giggles, slides under
the table and, emerging again, tries to bury herself inside her coat.
Asia comes back. I drink my soda and they eat, glancing back at the
boys who are sometimes looking our way. The taller boy comes over
and says to Natalia that the other boy wants her to go over there. Now
she's really dying. She's saying she's too shy, she can't, etc., etc.
Later, after the boys have left, Asia continues giving Natalia a hard
time for chickening out. "I don't know his last name so I can't look it
up," she says. "I am so mad at you," she continues. "Rashad is going to
be pissed!" Rashad is the missing boy. "The only thing you had to do
was get up, walk over there and say hello, run back and that's it," Asia
said. "Miss Chin," Natalia said, "It's all your fault. I told you you were
bad luck." "Right this minute we could be walking with them," Asia
said with exaggerated wistfulness, totally fake and somewhat funny.
"If I see him I'm going to call him and say wait right there, here she is!"
"If you see him," Natalia said, "you're going to start laughing."

From an adult point of view the freedom might appear childlike, even
though much of it focuses on boy-girl interactions of a romantically (but
not sexually) charged nature. The raucous behavior, the playing around,
the play is what kids do. However, the girls, at least, also think of these
mall outings as a way to begin to explore growing up, not being kids.
Later, Tionna explained that at the mall "we try not to act like kids.
When we're here, at home, then we act like kids, we play, we play with
our dolls." Being able to explore the city and the mall on their own is
thus not just an expansion of their horizons as shoppers or individuals,
but also a mark of maturity—one intrinsically opposed to the vulner-
ability of childhood and playing with dolls at home. Children often
yearn to be grown up for a whole host of reasons. For Tionna, Natalia,
and Asia, one of these might be that feeling of freedom and safety they
receive when roaming downtown, a feeling they do not experience on
home turf. While Newhallville girls who were visiting the mall indepen-
dently did not ignore the toy store by any means, it was Claire's that was
an inevitable pit stop. Going to this store, where more "grown-up" mer-
chandise such as large hoop earrings and sunglasses could be purchased,
was part of not acting like a kid in the mall.