Gender and consumerism: cultural patterns and social impacts

Gender & Consumerism

Thomas Hine compares sex to shopping. In every culture, sex is different depending on gender. In many cultures, the male gender retains more power with regard to sex. Shopping is usually considered a past time for females, even though shopping in general is encouraged in consumer cultures. Some people derive the same kind of pleasure from shopping or from finding a great deal as they would from having sex. Hine comments that the mentality regarding sex is similar to attitudes and even behaviors regarding shopping, such as some people are proud and announce it whenever they do it and that some people hide their consumer activities the same way they might hide their pornography or other behaviors people are ashamed to make public. Gender is just as much a factor in consumer behaviors as it is in sexual behaviors.

Jean Baudrillard, in Consumer Society in American History, he mentions how the history of consumer culture includes a specific lack of gender identity. (Page 56) Consumers in consumer cultures lose their individuality because their choices are predetermined and manufactured. Consumers in these kinds of cultures also lose their gender as gender becomes less and less important. Consumers are dehumanized, lacking gender as well as individuality. He argues that controlling consumption is an example of social control. (Page 53) He names this power as atomizing or atomization. Consumption atomizes humans and makes gender not such an important factor; what is more important is continued consumption and control over the production of tastes.

In the text by Schor, one of her main points is that marketers aim to make consumers feel powerful. Power is very closely related to gender. There are a number of power dynamics connected to gender; those dynamics and their meanings shift from culture to culture. Marketers should know how each gender fits within constructions and meanings of power within each culture. In American culture, power as represented in products differs from the male gender to the female gender, and people who occupy genders outside of the primary two-gender paradigm/spectrum.