Patience has never been one of my virtues. I couldn’t wait the requisite two months it would take Daddy to forget he’d issued the warning and I couldn’t just sit there while my fellow JAPs toyed with and contemplated buying my bag. So I did something utterly perverse, something completely foreign to the majority of college-aged JAPs. I got a part-time waitressing job.

Just because we Know Thy Enemy doesn’t mean we’re ready to take Forever 21 by storm. Entering Forever 21 on a whim for browsing purposes is for seasoned Cheap JAPs only. Try it with your remedial skill set and the masses of garments will chew you up and spit you back into the overpriced boutiques you can no longer afford and you’ll spend the rest of your shopping days in Purgatorial limbo.

Scenario: You’re out with some friends wearing a fab, black, mini-but-not-too-mini dress you scored at Forever 21. A female acquaintance pulls you aside to gush about the awesomeness of your apparel, and begs to know where you got it…

Forever 21 is the saucy minx of stores that boast big fashion at teensy prices, and she likes to use patterns, embroidery, plasticky embellishments and bold colors to distract us from the task at hand: finding something that doesn’t look as cheap as it is. Avert your eyes from the glistening rainbow of textures and colors, for they are the beer goggles that obscure our ability to know class when we see it. Zero in on the stuff in blacks, earth tones and neutrals, keeping in mind that light colored bottoms give you a fat ass.

That my mother and I are not the same shoe size is perhaps God’s biggest joke on me. Mere inches stand between me and racks and racks of thousands of dollars worth of stilettos, a third of which she’s never worn and never will. Last year, I found myself in her closet surveying the dire situation. I’d just finished my ritual of trying on 4 or 5 pairs of her least worn/most coveted heels to no avail. My feet had not grown, hers had not shrunk, things were looking grim.