| Shopping in Panama: What's a girl to do? |
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| Written by Aliza Elbert | |
| Monday, September 18 2006 | |
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One thing that I am always intrigued about when visiting other countries, even other states, is the difference in fashion. Growing up in California, I am used to a laid back style of dress where wearing your pajamas to school everyday would not be weird nor would be wearing flip-flops to a bar. For fairness in this article, I am only going to compare the style of clothing where I grew up and where I went to college to the style of dress in Panama. I love to go shopping and have been blessed with excellent stores very near to where I live here in Panama. I am not sure actually if that is a good or bad thing. But whatever the case may be, I tend to hit up these stores quite often. Employees are on you like white on rice. They will first ask if you need any help. Whatever the answer might be, they will “help” you. If you so as touch a shirt, skirt, or pair of pants they will ask you what size you are and immediately start looking for it. My first experience shopping here was quite an unpleasant one. I went looking for jeans because after one day of being here I realized that everyone was wearing pants except for me, because of this thing they call humidity, which apparently is quite common. I attribute this to my ignorance that no one would ever get acclimated to their foreign weather and would always being wearing shorts, even if they worked in a bank. I started perusing the shop, not liking many of the designs and even less of the sparkles and beads that were glued everywhere. I finally found a pair that looked to be decent. I told the buzzing fly in my ear, I mean employee, my size. She looked at me and kinda shook her head side to side in a “no” kind of fashion and gives me a size bigger. Slightly insulted and mostly confused I walked back to the fitting room and tried on the jeans. Can't get them past my knees. Sweet. Get one size bigger, still does not fit. Nice. I was pissed off nothing fit, so I left the store. I go to the mall a week later, and am looking to see what is cute and what is not. I realize that about 75% of the shirts are either cute, not cute, or a combination of both, bombarded with sequences and sparkles, clingy, extremely low cut: they look like they should be in the pre-teens section. Now, I would understand the sizing of the shirts here in Panama if the women were very flat chested and did not have anything to fill the shirts. But, that is not the case--actually far from it. A lot of women here in Panama, whether native Panamanian or not, have very large fake breasts that protrude out of these little tops like a baby kangaroo out of his mothers belly. So, it's not that the women can't fill them. It's the fashion. If I am mentioning these tops that women here in Panama wear, I dare not leave out what they are wearing underneath these tops. I have to admit it took me a while to figure out how these women--if their breasts are real--got them so high and so close together. Well, after trying a couple of bras on, I found the answer. Every single bra that I tried on made my by breasts so close together and at least half an inch higher. So it is a combination of the bras and the tiny shirts: that is how the women here go out at night. Moving on to the shoes. I never wear heels. Ok, I wear heels when I HAVE to. Apparently here in Panama the higher the better. It is almost as if women here were trained at age three to walk in 4 inch stilletos on Panama's completely uneven sidewalks. Along with the jeans and shirts here in Panama, the shoes are also laden with designs. Beads, stones, and floral prints all over. It does not matter your age either; I have seen 60+ year old women trotting around in 3 inch platforms. I do have to admit though, I now own a pair of 2, 3, and 4 inchers. I have also come to realize a couple of other things about shopping and fashion in Panama. The style that is most similar to the United States (no sequence, beads, or extreme floral print), is more expensive. I can go to Albrook Mall and get a bead-infested tank top for about $3. Now, if I wanted a tank top to go out in without all that jazz, I would pay around $14, what I would normally pay in the United States, which, if you think about it is kinda of funny because you are paying a lot less for a shirt or jeans with more design and print on it. One last discovery is that I have never seen a women go outside in baggy clothing. It is very common for people to go the grocery store, lets say, back at home and wear very scrubby clothing. I have never seen a woman here in Panama that is not slightly dressed up when stepping outside of her house. It actually is funny because when I go outside to go to the corner store for instance, I get funny looks because I am wearing soccer shirts, a baggy t-shirt, flip-flops, my hair is frizzy, glasses, and not one drop of makeup. |
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| Last Updated ( Saturday, April 21 2007 ) |
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