I. The Power of Women's Desires

A. Nava's key points

1. Department store is public space, part of emerging modernity in Victorian era
2. Victorian moralizing denigrated women's consumption: unseemly, passive, lustful
3. Scholars were biased by this, up to the present
4. Denigrating women's consumption denied women power

B. Susan Bordo, "Hunger as Ideology" (1993): contemporary version of Victorian discourses on feminine consumption
C. Gender, control, and mastery in food ads

1. Control as desirable
2. Control as difficult to achieve
3. Women as obsessed with desserts, want to give in to temptation
4. Gendered representations

a. Women give in to low calorie, acceptable foods
b. Men indulge appetites: Manwich, Hungry Man Dinners, or Manhandlers
c. Ads targeting women often show men consuming voraciously: Haagen Dazs

D. Bordo: women's desire is unseemly
E. Control women's hunger, control women ==> feminine ideal of small physique
F. Conclusion: 18th-20th centuries as mass delusion about gender roles

1. Women's consumption becomes increasingly important to women, families, class, urbanization, economic production
2. Consistent rhetorical and ideological movement to denigrate women for their consumption

a. Women praised for controlling consumption, economizing
b. Consumption used to justify women's low status

 

II. The Housewife: Manipulated Dupe of Corporate Greed or Global Dictator?

A. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963): Women as dupes of corporate capitalism

1. Post-WWII ad industry tries to keep housewife at home by convincing her that domesticity is scientific management
2. Goal: housewife is content because "she feels less like an unskilled laborer, more like an engineer, an expert" (33)
3. Women control 75% of American purchasing power
4. "I suddenly saw American women as victims of that ghastly gift, that power at the point of purchase" (28)

B. Daniel Miller's view: "housewife as a global dictator"

1. Culturally and ideologically significant image of consumption power
2. Power of housewives is real and significant, but they have been rendered passive by cultural discourses, capitalist advertising

C. Both Friedan and Miller: purchasing power that women have has not been used to assert women's power
D. Should response be for women to reject housewifery (Friedan) or for society to recognize economic power of housewifery (Miller)?

 

III. Feminist Rejection of Fashion

A. Fashion makes, treats, and constructs women as mindless sex objects
B. Susan Brownmiller (quoted in Wilson): "Why do I persist in not wearing skirts? Because I don't like this artificial gender distinction. Because I don't wish to start shaving my legs again. Because I don't want to return to the expense and aggravation of nylons. Because I will not reacquaint myself with the discomfort of feminine shoes.... Because the nature of feminine dressing is superficial in essence" (295).
C. Reject time consuming and uncomfortable clothes, hairstyles, and body treatments
D. "Natural", "authentic" look
E. Dilemmas arising from feminist perspective

1. Women themselves enjoyed fashion: Was this false consciousness? Wasn't feminism supposed to respect women's choices?
2. 1970s, '80s feminist "uniform" of jeans, overalls, chunky sweaters, and Indian printed skirts isn't any more "natural" than other clothes

F. Elizabeth Wilson: modernist feminism

1. Fashion as a game, use it to be what you want
2. "Madonna feminism"
3. Fashion as performance art

 

IV. Men: Fear and Loathing in the Department Store

A. Image: men hate to shop, except for music, electronics, and a few other "guy things"
B. Campbell, "Shopping, Pleasure and the Sex War" (1997): men are much more likely than women to express negative attitudes toward shopping and to say they hate it
C. Gendered ideologies of shopping

1. Women: meet needs, but also recreational
2. Men: military tactical strike, rational efficiency
3. Differences are seen as clear and natural, used to critique other gender's approach

D. Gap between ideology and actual behavior (not all men and women match the generalizations), but ideology is important in shaping how we see the world, rationalizing our behavior, and criticizing others
E. Nava, Davidoff and Hall revisited

1. Denying that shopping is work as tool for denying the power of women's consumption
2. Campbell: women themselves are partly responsible

a. Women want shopping to be pleasurable, not work
b. Women differentiate between doing the shopping (=work) and going shopping (=pleasure)

F. Male ideology of shopping does two things

1. Enables them to shop in a "masculine way"
2. Criticizes women's shopping techniques in ways that assert male privilege

 

V. Nice Pants: Can You Be Masculine and Fashionable?

A. Gladwell, "Listening to Khakis" (1997): How are men persuaded to buy fashion?
B. Dockers ad campaign, late 80s

1. Quick cuts, men's butts, and nonsensical voice overs
2. Regular guy pants: functional, comfortable, decent looking, but average, worry-free
3. Ads are effective

a. 1997: 70% of American men between 25 and 45 own a pair of Dockers
b. Got men to care about fashion without being aware of it

i. Dockers require more accessories than a suit: sports jacket, sweaters, polo shirts, flannel shirts, T-shirts
ii. 1990-97: sales of men's fashion increase 21%

C. "Nice Pants" campaign, mid-90s-2001

1. Dockers sales drop. 1992: sold 66 million pairs, 1994: 47 million
2. Dockers had older male image, needed to appeal to younger, hipper crowd
3. Nice Pants ads: decent-looking but unassuming man taken by surprise when someone, usually a woman, compliments him for his "nice pants"
4. Sexiness as unintended benefit of Dockers
5. Late 1990s campaigns increased the sexuality/homoerotic component: Meet the parents
6. More recently: adventurer image with "Stain Defender"

D. Problem with Gladwell and Campbell

1. Unlike Nava, Davidoff and Hall, Friedan, there is no history
2. Naturalizes gender difference in attitudes and practices
3. How explain shift from Elizabeth court dandies to today's anti-fashion regular guy?
4. How explain emergence of metrosexuals?