Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.15176/vol52no206

Consumer Dreams of Chic Girls: The Gender Face of Conusmerism

Marija Geiger Zeman ; Institut društvenih znanosti Ivo Pilar, Zagreb
Zdenko Zeman ; Institut društvenih znanosti Ivo Pilar, Zagreb

Abstract

The act of consumption has become an identity strategy that may be examined from the gender point of view. Considering consumerism through the lens of gender, it becomes evident that capitalism, by manipulating traditional gender concepts, influenced creating a mythology of consumption as a genuine feminine practice. From the mid-1960s capitalism has been exploiting and commodifying feminist ideas and values and by doing so, decreasing their subversive potential completely. In popular culture, there persists the idea that shopping as experiential and hedonist spending, is considered a genuinely “feminine” activity, while production is treated as a “masculine” practice. Postfeminist popular culture plays an important role in supporting this gendered mythology of consumerism. Examining examples of four films (and a TV show) based on novels of the so-called chick lit genre, this paper points to the internal contradictions and ambiguities of post feminism that supports traditional gendered concepts of irrational female consumer, while women's rights and emancipation are reduced to consumer choice and spending.

Keywords

capitalism, production, consumption, consumerism, femininity, feminism, postfeminist sensibility, chick lit, chick flicks

Hrčak ID:

149476

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/149476

Publication date:

14.12.2015.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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