Girl Math
A recent estate sale listing included two pieces of art by my favorite Chicago artist, Marcella Lewin (1918-2004). I wrote about two pieces of hers I thrifted a few years ago, which cost me cumulative $45 dollars (https://www.ericasheirloomquilts.com/ericas-heirloom-treasures/treasures-by-marcella). I made a mad dash to the sale, and, sadly, the works were not as cheap. But “girl math”!
This piece was one I could not pass up. It is a hand drawn image, beautifully framed, done in lovely shades of blue and brown, a spot-on compliment for my blue and brown kitchen. AND it is about chocolate. AND Paris. The details of all the candy jars is incredible, and I simply held my breath as I turned over the tag, knowing full well I would have spent a fairly significant sum for the piece. Phew – it was only $125 and I snatched it off the wall faster than I could blink.
The second work by Marcella Lewin was done in a tall, skinny format, portraying an aqua blue Victorian house with a red ‘Pizzeria Gino’ on the ground floor. Also hand drawn and painted, and beautifully framed. The details are charming, with a bed of pink flowers, a bird cage and a woman in upstairs windows, and elaborate architecture details gussying up the building. While I thought it charming, I couldn’t justify the $100 price tag. I pined for it, didn’t actually need it, and decided buying the French Chocolate shop for $125 was enough for one day.
Needless to say, at the end of the weekend, I went back to the sale. The piece was still there, now half price, and I happily carted it home for $50. Having spent $175 on two pieces I most certainly didn’t ‘need’, I felt impelled to justify the expense to myself. I now own 4 works by Marcella Lewin, the two thrifted ones and the two more pricey (by my standards) estate sale finds. However, when averaged out they are $55 apiece. I don’t know about you, but having art professionally matted and framed is remarkably expensive these days – I recently paid $85 to have an already matted and framed vintage work finished with a piece of glass. Having any of the Lewin pieces reframed would likely set me back over $200 apiece.
It seems my concept of justification is a viral trend these days called ‘girl math’. The modern spin started on Tik Tok a few years back, and women add posts about using flawed logic to justify or rationalize the cost of purchases to feel better about their spending. One example is to divide an item’s cost by usage frequency, though in my case it is more a law of averages skewed slightly. From Wikipedia: cost-per-use “evaluates high upfront costs by dividing the price by the expected number of times it will be used, emphasizing an item's long-term value. For example, if a sweater costs $100, a consumer may view the purchase as reasonable by considering how often they expect to wear it, effectively lowering the assessed cost-per-use. This approach relies on the ‘framing effect’, enabling individuals to justify big-ticket or luxury items by altering their perception of the purchase.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_math)
And of course the modern internet promptly coughs up all the doomsday and stereotype critiques as well. It seems financial experts are very worried about consumers justifying irresponsible spending, worrying about long-term saving plans, and the potential result in psychological distress as a result of financial uncertainty. I for one feel my psychological distress would have been worse for missing one of these treasures, now all hung on walls in my kitchen. Take that framing effect!
