An Opportunity To Have Total Control Over Your Presents

Is SheWants.com the best thing to happen to the holidays since that gratuitous Mariah Carey remix? Or at least an end to crappy presents?

SheWants.com is a site that lets you, essentially, register for what you want. Then, the idea is, the gift-givers who might otherwise burden you with White Diamonds gift sets or an appliqued twinset will, instead, magically produce a present of your own choosing. Here’s how it works: you sign up for a free account and, registry-style, list what you want. Loved ones can then search your name and gain access to your list. (This could potentially become fruitful hate-stalking ground, too. We all know someone who registry-snarks.) There’s an advisor to help the befuddled, and a section called “She Wants Not” in which they suggest something like the tactful, “thank you, but I have enough perfume.”

The rub, of course, is that then you have to alert people to its existence — and unfortunately, those people who are most likely to give you something heinous are not those to whom you’ll feel most comfortable volunteering this information. It’s great for, say, a parent who asks what you want, or a partner who’s kind of clueless and hates shopping — everyone wins — but that random second-cousin would be baffled and offended by an unsolicited registry. It’s also — as the name implies — very girly: pink-hued, beribboned and cutesy. (And frankly, we find men way harder to shop for.) But you can list what you want and it’s a useful resource for those of us who can never remember what books she wants to read or album she heard was good. Now, you are sacrificing the element of surprise. But after enough men’s-sized fleece vests, that’s a sacrifice many of us are willing to make.