Noah Traylor gets online everyday to look at clothes, but rarely goes to the mall.

“If I had the money, I would be a shopaholic,” said Traylor, a junior managerial marketing major. He became interested in fashion when he was a senior in high school.

Contrasting to Traylor, other students visit the mall more often.

“I always feel like I need something new,” Jasmine Trimble, senior marketing major said. “I go to the mall almost once a week. Sometimes I go to the mall when I am mad, and it makes me feel better, but I don’t have to shop every day.

“I do not have the need to shop all the time so I do not believe I am a shopaholic.”

Traylor said he thinks some people definitely express their emotions through shopping.

“If there are certain compulsive behaviors, and people use the behavior to make them feel better, there has to be a happy medium,” Richard Adams, sociology professor, said. “Shopping, gambling and sometimes drinking is a behavior that is being done to not address a problem in one’s life.”

Lauren Joseph, junior fashion merchandising major, said she feels she always has to look nice because fashion is her major. Joseph added some people think the brands they wear define them as individuals and determine their self-esteem.

Adams said some people use shopping as a coping mechanism.

“Shopping can be avoidance coping. It is an addiction once it begins to interfere with normal life behaviors and social relationships like at work or with family,” Adams said. “Avoidance rather than focusing on the problem in the long-run may not be as good as resolving the problem.”

Although Joseph said shopping can be a big stress reliever, she knows when she shops off of built-up emotion, she spends more money than she needs to.

“The money used to shop with, should be being saved because most college students do not have money to blow,” Joseph said. “Becoming a shopaholic is bad, you open credit cards and spend a lot of money you do not have. I don’t see myself becoming a shopaholic for these reasons.”

Shopping could be much like the rule of drinking.

“Similarly, one drink or two drinks is usually not a problem. Once they begin to interfere with rent money or family needs that is where the problem should be addressed,” Adams said.

On top of not having the money to become a shopaholic, Traylor said he thinks Kent is not an area made for shopaholics.

“If I lived somewhere else, I would go to the mall or the strip a lot; trends are not hot here, especially not at Chapel Hill,” he said.

Contact student life reporter Kayleigh Evans at [email protected].