Stealing has always had the irresistible appeal of childhood bravado. Who didn’t dare their friends to steal a necklace or a pair of earrings during a boring afternoon at the suburban mall in middle school? (I never did, but that should count as proof that I’m a late bloomer, not as evidence of my moral compass.) That’s how you know you’re watching a good coming of age movie: sooner or later, there’s a sequence of two teenage girls stealing tank tops and thongs their strict mums would never buy them. And yes, this is an ode to everything from Thirteen to SKINS, by way of Spring Breakers. Have you ever noticed that girls are always the ones shoplifting in movies? Finally, one of the perks of being female: if you steal something, it’s fun and rebellious rather than dangerous or deeply worrying for your future.
Of course, that was only ever true as long as you were a teenager, semi-acceptable, at least while you were still eligible for some kind of student discount. When adults did it, it was considered scandalous. We all remember the impact the shoplifting charge had on Winona Ryder’s career, and the image of her showing up to her trial wearing the Marc Jacobs dress she had stolen just a couple of months earlier remains an iconic moment in pop culture. So iconic, in fact, that Marc himself even cast her in his Spring/Summer 2003 campaign, proving once again that stealing is, sometimes, the sincerest form of flattery (you’ll forgive this slight twist on the original quote).
What has changed isn’t stealing itself, but the way we talk about it. Shoplifting stories have become the new flex, somewhere between complaining about rent prices and bragging about finding a designer jacket at the thrift store. They’re told with the same casual pride people reserve for getting away with sneaking into a festival. The moral weight seems to have shifted depending on who you’re stealing from: a supermarket, a luxury chain, an automated self-checkout. Somewhere along the way, the act stopped feeling like a crime and started feeling like a tiny correction to an economic game everyone assumes is already rigged against them.
So somehow, we’re not in middle school anymore, and stealing, especially, and above all, when it’s not out of necessity, is cool again. How often have you and your friends talked about slipping a couple of items past the self-checkout at the supermarket? Or perhaps you’ve experienced the thrill of hiding a few candles from the cashier while paying for an absurdly expensive bookshelf and two new lounge chairs. Whenever these stories come up, I find myself wondering: are we really longing for the feeling of being young and naughty again, or are we simply missing a couple of bucks from our paychecks?