Pete Davidson Is the Perfect Supportive Shopper Boyfriend

Cam Wolf

Updated July 11, 2018 at 8:00 AM

Picture a man shopping with his wife or girlfriend. You know the image: He’s probably wearing a polo tucked into a pair of shorts, hovering somewhere along the outskirts of the store, sitting on a puffy couch in a corner, or—disaster—orbiting outside the store’s entrance. He’s almost definitely sitting, thumbing at his phone or turning a wrist over to check the time, again and again. He’s running an errand or completing a chore, fulfilling his spousal duties. That’s just how you shop with your significant other.

That image is so hardwired into my brain that it was jarring to see another picture last week: one of Pete Davidson busting out of a shop with all the verve and joy of the Kool-Aid man. Walking just ahead of fiancée Ariana Grande, he’s dressed in a pair of orange shorts from the brand Pleasures, fuzzy pink Kangol bucket hat, and a tank-top from his favorite brand A Bathing Ape. Davidson is also packing two bags stuffed with clothes from Los Angeles-based women’s brand LF, presumably for Grande. All of which is par for the course. But it’s the massive grin stretching across Davidson’s face that looks like a crack in the matrix.

Of course, Davidson and Grande are in the midst of the hottest honeymoon period the world’s ever seen, but that doesn’t mean you can disregard his smile here. We just don't usually see a guy shopping with his girlfriend look so damn happy. But by all accounts, Davidson is an exemplary partner-shopper in all similar situations. Here he is in, of all places, a cosmetic store still managing to have a good time with Grande by popping above racks to mess with the paparazzi. There’s a good lesson to take from this: even when shopping, Davidson seems to treat Grande like someone he still enjoys hanging out with and sticks around rather than looking for the nearest place to take a seat.

To get some perspective on all this—and to figure out if Pete had changed the game for the rest of us—I asked my girlfriend and a couple friends in relationships what they’d like to get out of their own significant others while shopping. The answer seems to be that there’s a healthy middleground. “If we ask your opinion on something don’t say ‘idk’ or ‘sure,’ actually give an opinion,” one friend said. “But if a guy is too into shopping for me or trying to change my style (aka Kanye to Kim), that’s not good either.”

The good (or bad, depending on your perspective) news is that the bar is already so low for guys that just paying attention and having a conversation can be enough. One of my girlfriend’s requests was as simple as “Don’t be on your phone.”

This shouldn’t be such a unique idea. As guys get more into clothes themselves, it should be reasonable to expect that they also actively participate when their partner is shopping. And some dudes do seem to be more into browsing with their partners à la Davidson. “Unlike many guys, I love to go shopping with my girl,” Jax Taylor, from the reality show Vanderpump Rules, told me. After all, the best couples are teams and you don’t ditch your teammate no matter how long the line outside the Zara dressing room. If your partner wants to know your opinion, be grateful—it means they respect your opinion and that your style is decent enough that they trust you not to ruin theirs. Offer gentle advice, or at least enlightened cheerleading! Anything harsher might create a dynamic that gets you frozen out. Jax’s fiancée Brittany Cartwright told me that while he has “a good eye,” he’s not the most patient and is “quite honest with me whether or not he likes what I’m getting. Let’s just say I prefer to shop with my girlfriends.”

From what we can divine from the photo, Davidson might be the supportive shopping boyfriend ideal: he’s not on his phone, and, based on the amount of clothes he’s carrying, he didn’t shoot anything down, the cardinal sin of shopping with a partner.

Of course, we don’t all have the combined checking accounts of Davidson and Grande to blow on multiple bags of clothes, but it’s all relative. Even if Davidson was just holding one bag with one item, he’s still the image you want to shoot for: smiling, actually somewhere in the orbit of his partner, and even carrying the new purchase. Look at Pete; be like Pete; boyfriend-shop like Pete.