Consumerism and society: more than domination from capitalism

Fundamentally, the industry of men’s fashion is based on purchasing. Therefore, in traditional Marxist critique, the inequality in the relation of production and

consumption is understood in terms of domination, especially when the fashion industry views profit-making as the main concern. Edwards, for instance, argues that the foremost function of style magazines is to stimulate consumption. Other than Edwards’s Marxist perspective, Goffman (1959) views men’s fashion as a phenomenon stemming from the growing commodification and aestheticism of

everyday life, accompanied by developments in marketing and advertising in the mass

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media, as he writes in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Recognizing the fact, Edwards nonetheless draws attention to hierarchal relations of masculinity in the politics of men’s fashion:

This also constructs a complex hierarchy if masculinities according to economics, demography and appearances. . . . [I]n asserting the interlocked significance of gender issues and consumption in understanding men’s fashion, a series of interconnected social divisions is enacted around each of these axioms where wealthy, good-looking and well-located young men are increasingly socially valorized over older, uglier or poorer men. (Edwards, 1997, p.134)

Viewing the relation of masculinity to consumption in a macrocosmic “social valorization” as domination of a certain group is nonetheless a matter of common sense, as there are various factors and powers of domination. In Edwards’s view, the negative influences of capitalism take priority to other topics of politics in men’s fashion. However, his overt concern with consumption in light of the logic of domination is mostly aligned with the law of binary oppositions such as

ugly/good-looking, old/young, simplifying and relegating the discursive politics to the one-dimensional concept of domination. His interpretation of masculinity in men’s fashion as part of binarism echoes with Storey’s understanding of reduction ad extremis: by “juxtaposing two authors writing about related topics, the more complex

and moderate position can be equated to the more extreme and simplistic position”

(2001, p. 615). What we get are two extreme representational positions: both tropes of masculinity exist in social and cultural realm, but they are not to be reduced as the

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wider sociological perspective.

What is missing in Edwards’s argument is that if one group celebrates one particular type of consumption or commodity while another group feels

underprivileged for the inaccessibility of that commodity, it is yet too soon to jump to the conclusion that such a type of artist or designer-driven commodity lacks cultural significance in the politics of masculinity since it has not brought about an instant sea change in the entire population. Just as studies of masculinity cannot include every individual male or all variations of masculinity in the entire society, neither can studies of men’s fashion.

In consequence, there will never be a full explanation of masculinity in men’s fashion covering all the perspectives. While Edwards (1997) believes that the significance of contemporary men’s fashion lies in men’s behavior of

self-representation in self-styling and that the identity as “men” is now constructed through “the right look,” his sociological focus on men’s fashion is critical of capitalism yet fails to consider any positive dynamics of men’s fashion. In fact, the invention of men’s fashion as a new type of consumption which involves the relation of the wearer and the onlooker has a lot to do with gender politics, not simply the antagonism described by a typical Marxist understanding of social classes.

In her critique of women’s body images in consumerism, Bordo (1993) is also aware of how an ideal body is engaged in the contemporary global “visually-oriented”

and “narcissistic” social context (1993, p. 166). According to her, images circulated in media, such as television, movies, and fashion have become sources of regulation for women in the sense that “the rules for femininity have come to be culturally

transmitted more and more through standardized visual images” (p. 186). In response to such a social context, women’s bodies have become the focal point wherein to

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envisage an ideal “femininity.”

While she does not endorse a simplistic view of consumerism complicit with patriarchal gender norms, she does not view these gender images as a source of anxiety or locus of hegemony. In fact, other than consumerism there is a more deeply-rooted hegemony that grabs Bordo’s attention, namely, patriarchy.

Consequently, she calls for a reconsideration of patriarchal hegemony in the

Foucaultian sense: power works not through domination from any privileged group or institution; furthermore, patriarchal power dominates women not through the

mechanism of repression but through identity construction which shapes and proliferates as norms (p. 181).

When images of consumerism proliferate along with discourses of feminism, representations of femininity becomes the site of struggle between patriarchy and feminism. The same representation of feminine body can signify liberation and retreat.

Bordo has made a careful analysis of the cultural bodies:

One cannot simply add the historically feminine virtues to the historically masculine ones to yield a New Woman, a New Man, a new ethics, or a new culture. Even on the screen or on television, embodied in created characters like the Aliens heroine, the result is a parody. Unfortunately, in this

image-bedazzled culture, we find it increasingly difficult to discriminate between parodies and possibilities for the self. (Bordo, 1993, p. 174)

In consequence, the analysis of masculinities in consumer images is more than merely the issue of consumerism itself; an examination of the working of patriarchy in society is also required.

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