Self-construction and consumer culture in postmodern America

¶ … Living in Modernity in Three Easy Steps

Perhaps it is only appropriate that a so-called guidebook to living in modernity is not in fact a book at all, but only a relatively brief overview, encompassing six to nine pages of text, easily condensed for the reader's evaluation into three easy steps. It is short. It can be potentially read and interpreted by a variety of individuals with varying levels of literacy. It is democratic and addresses the reader as part of a collective, but not as someone who is of a particular gender or social or professional hierarchy. It is friendly to those whose attention spans have been shortened by the Internet and the mass media, yet it also creates a program that is inspirational in nature, to the reader's sense of improving the self. It wishes the reader to become a better self, just like everyone else in the world, that is, in America.

Who are we now, we (post) moderns?

We live, it has been said, in the post-modern age, a world that has seen both the triumph of the French Revolution's over-valuation of individual rights and desires and the Industrial Revolution's impressive creation of a mechanized, homogenized society that has enabled the middle-class to have unprecedented stretches of leisure time and comfort as well as to dwell in an increasingly socially isolated and fragmented world. How to proceed through these treacherous and contradictory cultural waters that have buffeted the modern consciousness from 1850 to the present day?

The Self as a social process under construction

Even this idea of perfecting the self, of perfecting all selves and not just the selves of the upper classes, is a highly culturally and historically located ideal. The idea of the middle-class self as existing outside of culture, as something unique and individually valuable, spawned in the Romantic Era, would not have been possible without the French Revolution's attempted ideological (though not actual and lasting) abolishment of pre-existing social classes and the privilege of birth as integral constituents of the self.

It is tempting to view today's world as entirely lacking in social norms and constraints upon the self, that individuals are 'free.' (Charon, 2000). However, with the freedom from old social structures came a new social convention, the idea that one must construct one's self from whole cloth, or that the self may be created like a custom-designed yet pre-manufactured commodity.

In the modern media in particular, one is increasingly bombarded with messages that one must find one's true self -- through purchasing one's self. Perhaps one of the most interesting manifestations of this may be found in the show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." This show which helps men find their 'true selves' -- through buying more items and discarding what they have kept with them through most of their lives. The idea that sexuality is a natural, biological attribute is also reaffirmed in the show, as it is assumed that somehow gay men have a naturally better eye for style and for dress, as if sexual orientation gives one a privilege in finding the self through marking the self a conglomeration of commodities, as if sexual orientation and is corresponding 'markers' were not highly coded and culturally constructed themselves -- how does, one might be apt to challenge the show's central premise, one become 'genetically predisposed' to liking Prada over the Gap?

Juliet Schor suggests that the American fixation upon spending is like an addiction. The more one buys, the more one covets what one cannot afford, what one sees others buying. "Competitive acquisition has long been an American institution," she notes, as reflective of our more socially unstable social structure than Europe's hereditary-based societies. But as consumption becomes more important in defining an identity, however, regardless of income, Schor notes that "when a reference group includes people who pull down six or even seven-figure incomes, that's trouble. When poet-waiters earning $18,000 a year, teachers earning $30,000, and editors and publishers earning six-figure incomes all aspire to be part of one urban literary referent group, which exerts pressure to drink the same brand of bottled water and wine, wear similar urban literary clothes, and appoint apartments with urban literary furniture, those at the lower economic end of the reference group find themselves in an untenable situation. Even if we choose not to emulate those who spend ostentatiously, consumer aspirations can be a serious reach." (Schor, 1998) What if one loses one's status as a reader, for instance, if one cannot afford a latte at Starbucks?

Rule 1 for living in modernity: Perhaps the first rule for living in modernity, therefore, is to disdain the self as a creation through purchase and branding, through the hyper-consumptive philosophy that one is what one buys, and accept the self as a constant negotiation through societal waters and through personal history, but something that cannot be fixated nor branded, regardless of one's salary. This means that one must reject Schor's contention, incidentally that it is not so bad if individuals making the same salary socially compete, as even this is a kind of branding, even if it is not financially depleting to the competitors -- it is spiritually and socially depleting.

McDonaldization's relationship to rationalization

The difference between the construction of the body through yoga and hemp hand lotion as an instrument of identity and eating McDonalds cheeseburgers when on vacation in Paris perhaps differs only in terms of how chooses to label one's identity through choice of brand. The process of McDonalds shows the standardization of the industrial era, the triumph of the rationalization or organization of production, while the reaction to this in the form of the Body Shop has emphasized individuality as a brand. This is a commodified individuality, where one can purchase, for instance, a yoga mat to show how 'in tune' one is with the culture of self-knowledge, how one rejects the McDonald's lifestyle.

Is there an 'out' to the McDonaldization of food and culture that does not lead one to spending more money and nourishing one's soul no less with the weeds and herbs of self-indulgence?

Rule 2: Don't buy an SUV. Walk. But don't carry a yoga mat oh-so casually slung over one's shoulder. Brown bag a peanut butter sandwich or eat at a cheap coffee shop run by a recent immigrant to this nation. Donate the savings of a Happy Meal to Unicef and better yet, play with a child and give him or her your time, rather than buying the child a plastic toy.

Primary jobs and McJobs: I am what I do?

One of the most notable aspects of American culture, many visitors to the nation have noted, is the tendency of Americans to stress what they do for a living, rather than who they are as people. Again, the industrial revolution and the American de-emphasis upon social class and birth, at least in name, has created the Horatio Alger fiction that one is what one does, that one can pull one's self up by one's own bootstraps and with a little pluck and determination, accomplish the world. Work will set you free, to use a grotesque quotation, in the American mindset, or at least free one from European norms of aristocratic status. Through work, one defines one's intelligence -- a good job means one is educated as professional, or at least through a profession one defines one's diligence -- a good income means that one works hard and can provide for one's family.

At times, the more mobile adolescent class has rejected this notion and assumed the ethos either of tuning in and dropping out of college, attempting to find one's self out of hierarchies, or in today's economy, that of slackers who take lower status and paying jobs to allow for more leisure time. Even individuals who ascribe to conventional ideals of success find themselves in 'McJobs' or jobs that are quick to manifest and quick to disappear in an economically hyper-competitive environment. Loyalty and ties to one's occupation have grown ephemeral in the past few years. Lawyers attend cooking class, former executives work at the Gap. Who one is and what one does becomes disassociated in a society that has always equated one's work with one's value and self. What this means is still unclear, but it does suggest a hard and fast rule three.

Rule Three: Never, never ask the profession of anyone at a party unless he or she volunteers the information.

Conclusion simultaneous embrace of compassion and a healthy skepticism may be the best guides to surviving in modernity. One accepts the transience and constructed nature of the self with a sense of humor, and the industrialization of society and its subsequent branding of identity with a healthy hatred that does not becomes so intense that one is driven to simply buying more products to prove one's individuality. Although this guide may not be a perfect self-help book, easily hocked on the "Today Show," or sold, it hopefully provides some words of wisdom, or at least gentle suggestions to view the world with a tolerant, global perspective that does not require all individuals to be like one's self and nation, yet does not objectify 'the other' as either better or worse than one's own schema of personal values.