Shoplifting as Self Reflection: Rachel Shteir Traces the Roots of This ‘Sticky-Fingered Habit’
Photo by Marion Ettlinger
In The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting (The Penguin Press, 2011) Rachel Shteir traces the phenomenon of shoplifting to its roots in London, before bringing readers back to America to examine the rise of “department-store shoplifting.” She discusses shoplifting’s role in the antiestablishment climate of the 1960s and attempts to explain the crime’s longevity, how society deals with its perpetrators, and why it will never cease. Currently, Shteir serves as an associate professor at DePaul University’s Theatre School. Before that, she taught at Yale, Carnegie Mellon, Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, Columbia University School of the Arts, and the National Theatre Institute.
Shteir’s first two books — Gypsy: The Art of the Tease (Yale University Press, 2009) and Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show ((Oxford University Press, 2004) — were both cultural histories, like The Steal. Gypsy is the biography of Gypsy Rose Lee, a famous stripper. Striptease details the history of the girlie show, lending cultural context and examining the options stripping gave to women, such as increased independence.
Why write a book about shoplifting?
Procrastinating finishing my first book, Gypsy, during the Winona Ryder trial, I found myself fascinated by some of the actress’ remarks from the hearing and the trial that made their way onto the Internet via various crime websites. It was the first time such a trial was hurled across the globe.
Coincidentally, I was at the time also reading Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser’s great novel about department stores and desire. In Dreiser’s time and our own, we Americans are captivated by objects—by things—even more so by them than by people. We are certainly interested in possessing them, as stores are well aware.
From there, I became obsessed with the topic, and began to collect evidence of shoplifting’s importance and ubiquity.
It seems that Lindsey Lohan is the new Wynona as far as celebrity shoplifting goes. Do you find yourself similarly fascinated by the Lohan case? What makes this case different?
It is always fascinating when someone who appears to have everything—i.e. a celebrity– shoplifts because it is impossible to attribute it to need. The Lohan case has been downgraded to a misdemeanor and Lohan pled out and will not go to trial. A more significant difference is that the store tried to sell the videotape to the media, which is more blatant attempt to capitalize from a shoplifter’s crime than anything Saks tried to do during Ryder’s trial.
One thing that both cases share is the way they are treated in the media, which is fascinated by what the allegedly shoplifting stars wear to court, as if to suggest that dressing in a certain way proves guilt.
How does this book relate to your “day job” as Associate Professor at the Theatre School at DePaul University?
All of my books—Gypsy and Striptease—thus far are cultural histories of overlooked subjects.
You are almost always present in the book; how does this style of writing add to the work?
Shoplifting is a topic that is both extremely intimate and extremely public and demands that the writer be fluent with both modes.
“... It is harder politically for stores to prevent middle-class and wealthy shoplifters from stealing than it is for them to punish poor people and immigrants from boosting.”
Have you ever shoplifted?
Would you ask someone who wrote a novel about a patricide if she had ever committed one? You remind me of two things my books about striptease share with The Steal: first, both subjects elicit titillation, a feeling that a naughty act is taking place; And second, that in order to authentically understand these naughty acts, the writer has to participate in them. Au contraire. In fact, one of the reasons I’m a writer is that it allows me to visit the worlds of other people who can do things that are foreign to me.
Considering the intimate nature of the crime, why do you think so many people agreed to open up to you?
Because of the taboo surrounding the crime, I think some people who were ashamed about having shoplifted were relieved to have the opportunity to speak about it without being judged.
In the introduction, you write: “…the theft of one $5 heirloom tomato from Whole Foods can require sales of up to $500 to break even.” Why is that? It is hard to believe that an item as small as a tomato costs a store hundreds of dollars when stolen.
It’s only hard to believe if you follow the strain in pop culture that insists on trivializing shoplifting. This strain goes back to the nineteenth century or farther, and considers shoplifting less of a crime than a rite of passage, something only naughty children or tormented young women do and which essentially has no meaning or consequences. In fact, shoplifting does have consequences, as I explore in the book.
To a store, any stolen product—even if recovered–is like garbage and has to be disposed of or destroyed. There are security costs the store must absorb to protect the shoplifted item and, of course, processing the alleged shoplifter costs the store as well. Although I don’t much like the saccharine, imprecise phrase used by shoplifter education groups, “shoplifting hurts us all,” I would add to the tangible factors I outline above the costs of time spent on dealing with this crime.
In Part Two, you write that the retail industry would like people to believe that boosting, which isreselling stolen goods for a profit, and shoplifting, which is for personal use, are quite different, that boosting is a much bigger deal and isn’t as harmless as shoplifting may seem. What do you believe?
There are no reliable statistics proving that boosting is more prevalent than shoplifting but it is harder politically for stores to prevent middle-class and wealthy shoplifters from stealing than it is for them to punish poor people and immigrants from boosting.
In England, some retailers have turned to Internet Eyes, which is a kind of videogame that allows people to pay a subscription fee and earn up to £1,000 monthly by catching shoplifters they witness on their televisions via a store’s CCTV feed. What do you think about the Internet Eyes project? Do you think Internet Eyes could be a viable solution to shoplifting in the U.S.?
[In] my February 10 Op-Ed piece for The Daily, [I discuss how, in the fight between privacy and security in the U.K., for the most part, security wins. Many merchants struggle with how to stop shoplifting and not make customers feel that they are being spied upon from the minute they walk into the store.] It’s unlikely that Internet Eyes could take off in the U.S. given our preference on privacy rights over security.
