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...Consumer culture involves selling products and images of the body
that reinforce dominant ideologies about sexual identity and socio-economic
status. The selling of 'feminine hygiene products' including tampons,
douches, and sprays suggests that female genitals are impure and unclean.
The desire for fresh, clean, and unspoiled bodies, suggests a fetish
surrounding desire and relationship. It suggests ridding the body and our
relationships of all that is natural – hair, smells and body fluids. When
there is a smell or menstrual leak, the shock of realization, 'Oh, is that me?'
shows detachment from the body and its natural essences.
When concealment, rolled-on images and sprayed-on superficialities
become obsessive the psyche is buried or ignored. Women and men are
held to ransom by the consumerist market. People become numbers and
are targeted by advertising and the media culture. Men are targeted with
products such as after-shave, bodybuilding products, and expensive cars
which make the male body more 'desirable' and appealing. Both genders
are subject to this corporeal surveillance. While consumerism relies on
consumers desire for the products, its method of selling is largely dependent
on what people think they need and what the product evokes.
The mystery is how the 'supreme sell' of male and the female is
maintained. Is it really a question of effective marketing or is there a darker
element? Is it easier to live a detached existence? Is reality just too difficult?
The promotion of image based on the dominant male ideal, consumerism
maintains a conservative, traditional, stereotype of men and women which
is a simpler option than original thinking. However the consumerist ideal
is not static, even Ken and Barbie change their appearance, jobs, and clothes.
These changes come and go with trends that still fit within traditional
parameters. It is unlikely that Barbie or Ken will ever be 'fat', gay, or wrinkled.
How is the sex/love 'fix' maintained? Traditionally the male 'hard sell'
parallels the female 'soft sell'. This makes women an easy accessory of
desire. The hierarchy positions man as subject and women as object. In
advertising paradox occurs. Images are manipulated in order to create a
new marketing strategy rather than to change old ideals.
How and why is the addiction to consumerism so strong? To consider
this question we must go back to the concept of desire. With desire comes
need and want; the inability to obtain the product, the image, the feeling,
causes a sense of castration. For women castration relates to the invisible
clitoris and vagina or circumcision of the labia, while for men it is related to
the denial of sexual performance. Although different, the feeling of
castration carries with it fear, loss, and lack for both men and women. In
this sense, the feeling of castration is tied to lack and pain with its demands
of giving in to the sell. The result is image buying through the wearing of
the stereotypical image of man and woman as advertised, filling your house
with product. The pain of desire is eased for a while, until the next shopping
spree. From here on in, the addiction needs to be constantly appeased.
Spin-offs from the consumerist cycle are volatile acts such as crime, jealousy
and envy, rejection and hate.
***
Why is it so difficult to escape the addiction of desire and consumerism?
How has society engineered the gender camps so effectively? By the time a
consumer acknowledges their addiction to buying and selling they have
fallen in and out of love with their own image so many times that they
have an identity crisis. Narcissism has more to do with self-loathing than
self-love. Narcissists find it difficult to form trusting bonds or relationships
with others and are left with a painful emptiness. The consumerist cycle
helps to feed the narcissist's addiction by producing more products to sate
their need for identity and image. Consumerism allows the narcissist to
feed the self while appearing to engage with others in relationship. It may
appear easier to buy without thinking but the outcome of buying into
image alone is a simplified, essentialist, watered down version of self.
Because the 'gender war' or the 'gender surrender' is economy-driven and
based on a binary sexual division, it only achieves maintenance of the
system as a continued path into inequity. To 'maintain the rage' through
gender disharmony is advantageous to marketers, but does not help to
transform. Fighting outside the consumerist realm gives an opportunity
to re-emerge with a new vision.
***
So what is the price of your market value? For women the price has
been high. They have masked themselves and have not reached the perfection
image-makers demand. Foot binding, corsets, stiletto heels, plastic surgery,
contribute to sacrificing the self. Such practices are forms of body-fascism
and colonise mind and body. Recently some women have changed their
attitudes to using makeup and certain items of clothing because they believe
appearance does not contribute to 'oppression'. In the past there has been
a conflict between image and identity for women. Now women ask
themselves 'Am I selling myself short?'
The choice is of 'dressing up' — to wear lipstick, lace, nails and to
enhance cleavage, to express the self or to sell a product. For Dolly Parton
the 'dress-up' is a vehicle for selling herself as a singer and object of desire.
Dolly Parton admits to being artificial and like a cartoon, comparing her
longevity of success to that of Mickey Mouse. Her aim is to be 'your
favourite dresser doll', an object of fantasy. In a world where intelligent
women want to be taken seriously this is a sell-out and places women in a
stereotypical 'Barbie' environment. Although she is 'honest' about it, Dolly
tells women how to succeed in a fantastic, plastic world. All that is required
to enter this world is a tiny waist, huge firm breasts, a little-girl voice and
fluffy big hair. That consumerism promotes this image as legitimate it
reinforces the phallocentric order for object as desire and desire as object.
The traditional image of women keeps them confined and outside the
political platform. That the 'Barbie' image is seen by women as sometimes
the only way to get noticed or paid attention is a sad reflection on the range
of options for women to express themselves as public figures. By exploiting
the Barbie look, society is in actuality exploiting itself and limiting its
vision for identity and relationships.
Sadly, the Barbie doll image is a plastic fantastic notion of never succumbing
to age or loss of beauty. This custom made model of femininity – 'blonde,
busty and brainless' – sets up a hollow image for female aspiration. As Susie
O'Brien said in The Courier Mail, 'It's about time we do more than dress
Barbie in a lab coat – let's give her a brain as well'.
Princess Diana was marketed as a living doll. The Diana story with its
elements of tragedy, lust and betrayal represented for many women a
mirror of their own existence and for the marketers a chance to sell death,
hope and more trivial products. For all dresser-doll dollies their life span
tends to be tumultuous and short lived. Poet Melissa Ashley reflects on
the abuse inflicted on women's bodies in the name of image.
***
Men working on their re-emergence as whole beings are chartering
new territory outside the heroic image. The hero figure is strong, stoic, and
not afraid. Men are now encouraged into harmonious communication and
emotional expression of feeling as strength rather than as weakness. In
the heterosexual setting, 'many women were no longer afraid to terminate
a relationship if their needs were not being met'. If relationships are to
work in harmony it is necessary to align feminine and masculine qualities
without pitting them against each other. Thus sports icon John Newcombe
suggests, 'Men must understand that every male has a male side and a
female side and not to be frightened to let the female side come out
sometimes in expressing their feelings'.
Learning about integrated identities needs to come from liberated male
and female role models in all areas of life. Because gender roles are learned
in a multitude of social arenas, family, school, work and relationships, it is
important to recognise that every setting has the potential to be used for
teaching and modelling. Currently thinking is focusing towards moving
boys away from the dominant gender ideologies in schools and promotes
new broader definitions of language, literature and literacy. One strategy to
address being less literate than girls uses the concept of being 'book-smart'
as acceptable and cool.
The macho image aligns itself with the glorification of violence. Violent
role-models such as 'The Terminator', constantly promote violence, torture,
and death as inherent in our culture. 'Violence is an inspiration to the
unstable. People who are frailer, less stable, are more subject to the dark
images they see.' Of concern is the impact of violence on boys as they
develop their emotional identity.
Although men are seen as privileged because of their gender they also
suffer objectification through the dehumanising elements of violence and
the hero. Many images of masculinity are informed by the gay and feminist
movements and there is now acknowledgment that sexuality is as a socially
constructed process.
In positioning the male as surveyor, advertising now presents him as
an object of desire and sometimes the male image has been feminised for
gay males. Although such 'new male' images are consumed by women,
this is a by-product rather than original intent. Even though the influx of
male images in half-nude poses offers the possibility for the active female
gaze, the construction of bodies remains divisive because the prime motive
is marketing a product. In this situation communication and alliances
remain non-negotiable.
Consumerism can deny 'true' reality about identity, and leaves little
room for principled thought in interaction with others. Instead,
consumerism can leave one with emptiness, hostility, cynicism and apathy.
Faith in finding any positive meaning or 'goodness' in life is lost,
perpetuating a downward spiral. When living in an imaginary world of
image, problems remain unresolved. This dynamic works through a stable
of stereotypes that pay homage to the imaginary world of consumerism
and Ms or Mr Machismo are seen in their element.
The aggressive consumer energy including the rapid-fire slogans on
television and radio illustrates machismo on the attack. The 'in-your-face'
advertising bullies the public into buying the product. Only those with a
principled will can meet the product world outside of its fantasy... back to top
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