"Shopping Bulimia" Is The Latest Made-Up Disorder

Michelle Madhok “is a successful entrepreneur, a devoted wife . . . and a self-confessed binge-and-purge shopper.” So begins the harrowing tale of a supposed “shopping bulimic.”

The New York Post describes Madhok’s visits to the dark side:

“You’re laying in bed with your iPad and you’re shopping, and suddenly you’ve spent $2,000,” she says. When the packages arrive at her Upper West Side apartment a few days later, she is elated, if not a tad confused. (It’s not uncommon for the 39-year-old to experience “I Forgot I Ordered It” syndrome.) Madhok unpacks her loot – the maroon jeggings purchased at midnight that don’t quite hold up in the light of day; the sweater she bought in three different sizes – and jots them down, along with their return-by deadlines, on a sheet of paper kept near the computer. The goods are then hidden in the corner of Madhok’s bedroom, where they will sit until the end of the week, when she’ll return almost everything she’s bought.

Skeptics might call this a bit of a first-world problem, given that it requires an iPad, a card with a several-thousand-dollar credit limit, the requisite time to “lay in bed” and select jeggings, and a convenient hiding place in one’s Upper West Side apartment. But the Post swears Madhok’s “just one of the growing number of women who are shopping bulimics — otherwise known as circular shoppers or chronic returners.” Other symptoms of this terrifying disease:

— not wanting to use dressing rooms because they might have bedbugs.

— preferring to take clothes home so that one can try them on “with the shoes I want to wear it with and the lighting I like.”

— needing lots of different outfits for one’s television appearances.

Shopping addiction can be a real and serious problem for some people, but the Post‘s version of “shopping bulimia” just sounds like a fancy term for being rich and indecisive. Which also makes you the perfect subject for a trend piece.