The Christmas Gift Guide 2: The Sequel

Things I Loved Lately: Christmas Bumper Edition, Part II

Let’s jump right in, shall we? Here we go…

For Your Girlfriend:

The problem with a Girlfriend Gift Guide is that I’m sorry, but women are complex creatures and you should have paid better attention throughout the year. Why didn’t you write it all down! Why didn’t you take note! However, this is the most fun section to write (after the tiny mice, duh), so I suppose I am grateful in that way.

Women are messy, and therefore they’re harder to classify than men, but it’s fair to say you’ve broadly— as with boys— got your Indoor Girlfriend, or your Outdoor Girlfriend. Indoor Girlfriends are either Classy or Cosy; Outdoor Girlfriends are always Wild Swimming Girlfriends, in spirit if not practice. (Yoga Girlfriend and Running Girlfriend are, of course, Cosy and Classy Girlfriends in disguise. Do not buy your girlfriend exercise equipment unless it is her joy as well as her necessary motion.)

Classy Girlfriends, much like Elegant Friends, like nice things. If you are the partner of a Classy Girlfriend, you need to go one better than wine glasses, probably because the wine glasses your Classy Girlfriend already has are nicer than the ones you will choose. This bath oil— rub into skin, step into hot bath— is attractively priced, smells amazing, and—uniquely for Aesop— comes in a glass bottle (crucial for the Classy Girlfriend). This necklace will make her think you have been talking to other women about how classy she is— how else would you have found something so nice? It’s a representation of the ripples on water, eternal, of a stone thrown into a pond, and if you can’t write a little card with words to that effect you don’t deserve a Classy Girlfriend at all. For a gift for a Queer Classy Girlfriend, I believe these rainbow hoop earrings say gay without stressing it. The Classy Girlfriend hates to stress anything.

I also believe that about these crab earrings from the same place, although I will admit they are more Quirky than Classy: Quirky Girlfriends can be found in any category of girlfriend (even and especially if the girlfriend is a boy), and have to be catered for with the careful whims of a lunatic: butter candles! Stackable blue glasses in the shape of koi carp! This necklace with the skeletons of golden fish! The sea and butter theme, here, is only further proof that your Quirky Girlfriend is probably a Queer Girlfriend; and the intersection of Queer and Quirky Girlfriend, of course, brings us to the Wild Swimming Girlfriend.