To
open the New Year, the Observer ran an article by Amelia Hill
and Anushka Asthana, entitled ‘She’s young, gifted and
ahead of you at the till’
(Observer,
2nd January).
The thesis of
this article is that the high street in Britain is now a thoroughly
‘feminised’ space which attracts affluent and educated
young women in particular. These two authors unwittingly portray
women as atomised mindless shoppers set up to meet the demands of
large corporations under the guise of thus being ‘educated’,
then try to consider how similar marketing strategies might be
employed to encourage this group of young women to vote more often
(only 36% of 18-24 year old women voted in 2001, 23 percentage
points below turnout rates of all voters and 7 per cent fewer than
young men). Reading this article, I personally could only feel
exasperated at the notion of the high street as a liberating arena
for women, a notion which the authors of the article seem to accept
almost uncritically. Shopping and consumerism as a form of feminist
liberation is an argument that has been advanced by other writers in
the British press recently, notably Linda Grant in the Guardian
and India Knight in the Sunday Times (and in more extreme
form by Naomi Wolf in her article ‘Anti-Consumerism equals
Anti-Womanism’) and sadly seems to be gaining a lot of
currency. All such writing begs the question: who benefits? Women or
the retailers?
The
authors point out that such women have a ‘large disposable
income’ but then later point out that ‘women's borrowing
doubled between 1996 and 2001, with the average woman in debt owing
more than 13 times her monthly income and more likely than men to
possess store cards with outrageously high interest rates’.
Nowhere do they question how ‘real’ this disposable
income is in such circumstances. The archetypal female consumer,
here described as ‘Joanna Public’, a few rungs up the
economic ladder than in previous times, maybe ‘represents the
most influential sector in modern British society’ but is also
the most likely to be targeted by the retailers, who have similarly
unscrupulously targeted the tweeny market, kids with a disposable
income.
According
to the article ‘Joanna’s value to the economy is
immense: she not only chooses the larger purchases for herself and
her partner but also decides where they eat, how they decorate their
home and what they wear’. As Naomi Klein points out so vividly
in her book No Logo, a large proportion of the products thus
being bought are produced by young women (whose aspirations and
desires may not be so dissimilar to Joanna Public) in export
processing zones in Asia, working in abominable conditions, sleeping
in barely converted pigsties, their sleeping places marked out with
white lines not unlike car parks, urinating in plastic bags under
their sewing machines because of lack of toilet breaks, and forced
to take not only amphetamines to keep them awake if a large order is
due for the western market, but also contraceptives on the grounds
that pregnancies amongst staff are ‘bad for business’.
This is the reality of the working conditions that produce the
clothes that this new breed of affluent educated woman has been
seduced into buying. In the Philippines alone there are fifty-two
such export processing zones (EPZ’s) with 229,000 female
workers, mostly young and living away from the rural communities
their families inhabit, working 12-hour days for wages way below the
subsistence level in order to fill orders for companies mostly based
in the USA, Britain, Japan and Germany. Estimates suggest that in
China there are 18 million such women working 16-hour days in 124 of
these EPZ’s. This is the dark underbelly of this ‘new
era of shopping that is entirely driven by what will encourage women
to spend money.' The ‘emancipation’ of women as ‘key
shoppers’ needs to be viewed in this light. True emancipation
for women might come better from boycotting firms (which include
many of the major high street chains) who exploit their Asian
sisters in this manner.
The
authors quote the director of Allegra Strategies as saying ‘Women
have always controlled the high street but in the past five years
they have completely dominated it’. This is exactly the
message that the large corporations wish to propagate, suggesting
disingenuously that they are merely responding to a demand that was
already there. On the contrary, it is the corporations who
control and have always controlled the high street. The notion that
the consumers, female or male, are ‘in control’ is a
seductive fantasy but nothing more than that. Consumerism is supply-
rather than demand-led; needs are very carefully created (rather
than merely responded to) by the identification of vulnerabilities
that can be exploited through advertising. These strategies have
infiltrated the less commercialised arenas of terrestorial
television as well, as witnessed by the growth of ‘make-over’
programmes over the last 5 years or more, in which ordinary people
are made to feel uncomfortable about how they dress, eat, decorate
their house, even conduct their sex lives, with the promise of
redemption through some type of ‘make-over’. A
hairdresser like Niki Clarke found fame and fortune by seeking to
better the allegedly dull existence of women at home; the abominable
Trinny and Susannah belittle women into dressing differently using
similar techniques. These programmes are aimed at demonstrating to
women how much better they can look, dress and be attractive to
whom? Men, of course. They identify the vulnerabilities so as to
create a need, then offer a ‘solution’, just as
advertising and marketing bodies have done for decades. Is this
really anything other than demeaning to educated women?
According
to the Observer article, the most successful stores are those
that have ‘feminised’ their products. Does this not
equally patronise women by suggesting that the purchase of pots and
pans or the operation of a vacuum cleaner are naturally ‘feminine’
traits? The notion that as a woman I would prefer a power tool with
a rubbery handle I find extremely insulting, and wonder what the
next step might be? A DVD player decorated with pink ribbons? A
lawnmower designed in the shape of a vacuum cleaner?
Peter
Yorke does at least point to the bright pink, lightweight power
spiral saw, produced by RotoZip Tool Corporation and targeted at
women as a prime example of the ‘patronising pink tool’
syndrome. But he might ask if more affluent women are likely to do
their own carpentry, rather than employing a tradesman (or woman) to
do so, just as an affluent man often takes his automobile to the
garage to be fixed rather than doing the work himself. Perhaps the
retailers might similarly market some butch knitting needles in
order to induce men to knit more often?
Young
women certainly do have a greater control of their income than
previously, and this is of course something to celebrate. If it is
‘she, and not her boyfriend or husband, who decides how much
to spend’, is this maybe because men have different types of
leisure pursuits, such as playing golf, watching football or
tinkering with the car in the garage?
Where is
the evidence for Joanna Public’s ‘strong opinions’,
especially if she is less likely to vote than her male counterpart?
I sometimes wonder how much has really changed in terms of
perceptions since Freud wrote in 1933 that ‘women are deemed
to be closer to nature, more passive, weaker in their social
interests and as having less capacity for sublimating their
instincts than men’ Jane Ussher wrote in 1991 that ‘women’s
sexuality was set by the gender elite’. It would seem that
women’s consuming habits are set by the male-dominated
corporate elite today. The Victorian woman was held ‘to have a
head almost too small for intellect but just big enough for love’,
(Shfrock, 1966). The retailers and marketers seem to think along
similar lines when considering her potential ‘love’ for
consumer goods.
Are
young women really ‘the great untapped power in today’s
society’ or more of the ‘untapped purse’ in
corporate eyes? As the article points out clearly, women continue to
earn substantially less then men, so their purchasing habits are
focussed upon smaller items such as household goods, clothes and now
small household tools. I would imagine that the property, plant and
car markets remain targeted towards male consumers. There is
evidence of changes in the car market by the more ‘feminised’
cars such as Ford KA or Vauxhall Tigra, small cars aimed at the
20-30 market with a cabriolet option, usually 2 door and with a boot
big enough for a jolly good shopping spree. Even the names of these
cars are presented as more non-aggressive, e.g. ‘Tigra’
as opposed to ‘Tiger’ (and where does that leave the
‘Cobra’, a powerful car with the name of a venomous
deadly snake, a phallic symbol?). And of course, ‘KA’ is
so easy to spell even for the educated woman! Lambourgini, Porsche
Boxter or the well-known phrase ‘Voorsprung durch Technik’
are all clear examples of the male-dominated language designed to
exclude women. One can imagine one of Harry Enfield’s 1950s
characters speaking to a female potential buyer, saying ‘Now,
don’t you worry your pretty little head about that, pet, let’s
just call it a Ka!’ This is emblematic of the type of cynical
contempt with which the automobile industry treats female
purchasers. Similarly, the cigarette companies successfully
‘feminised’ their products in order to increase the
number of women smoking, by changing names form Navy Cut to Silk
Cut, the billboard ad showing a piece of purple ribbon suggestively
slashed to bear a resemblance to a vagina.
The
‘feminisation process’ spoken of is nothing more than
yet another cynical marketing ploy. It’s hardly difficult to
visualise the talk around the boardroom table about how to find yet
more strategies to extract the female pound from her purse using key
words such as ‘pink’, ‘small’, ‘manageable’
or ‘hard and rubbery’, rather like a penis, to appeal to
her subconscious libidinal needs. This whole process is just yet
another example of women’s needs as perceived by men,
coming close to urban myths of sexually frustrated housewives
sitting on top of the spinner whilst their husbands are at work
(doing a proper job, no doubt). Most of those working in consumer
research and retail cited in the article are men (Jeffrey Young,
Robert Clark, Patrick Gray, Will Glagey, Peter Yorke, Chris Garner),
who continue to dominate this field, believing women to be
vulnerable and easy targets, to be bullied into buying more products
in order, supposedly, to be able to make themselves less vulnerable
to men’s power over them. Who is really in control in a sexual
situation if not the seductress?
Of
course this will all be anathema to Naomi Wolf, who reiterates
patronising male put-downs of earlier feminists when she says, with
reference to women involved in the anti-globalisation movement:
‘And
here and there, hanging back, you will see their misguided,
self-hating female collaborators, doing their best to look like
their male Alpha-wolf leaders in deliberately unflattering
hairstyles and cast-off biker and soldier garments. The sheer
unattractiveness of these victims' style is itself the best evidence
for the benefits of shopping -- benefits these women have chosen to
forego.’ (from ‘Anti-Consumerism equals Anti-Womanism’)
Perhaps
these women might do better to buy into the ‘Beauty Myth’
that we all thought that Naomi Wolf deplored so much? She buys
totally into a construct of some essential ‘femininity’
created by men and the mass market, and denigrates those women who
choose to reject it. It is her, rather than the courageous women
opposing globalisation, who is in league with patriarchy and the
rigid models it imposes upon women.
‘Future
democracy relies on engaging their [women’s] voices and their
votes in a way we have so far failed to do’, says Vera Baird
QC, Labour MP for Redcar and spokeswoman for the Fawcett Society.
Maybe a genuine democracy might come about if women weren’t
besieged by adverts and television programmes designed to breed
self-consciousness about how others see them. Educated women need to
vote with their feet away from the male and corporate-controlled
high street and visit, say, an art gallery instead of a shopping
precinct.
The
sinister words of Patrick Gray of Experian, hoping to make women
‘use similar brand values when it comes to buying for her
children and partner’ is enough to make anyone concerned about
globalisation scream. Maybe he would like children to be given
sticks of rock with ‘Buy buy BUY!’ written through the
middle, targeting them when they are really young (which in other
ways they are already doing).
Retailers’
success in persuading Joanna Public to spend ‘18 per cent more
on clothing, footwear and accessories in 2004 than in 2003’ is
a success for them, not for her. If women could be persuaded to
spend less time in the shops, they could spend more time fighting
for better wages, or engaging in ‘culture jamming’
exercises as suggested by Klein. The success of retailers in
targeting a still economically disadvantaged group is not so
different to the establishment of casinos in poorer parts of the UK.
The
‘neat categories’ that the marketing men construct for
young women are and always have been social constructs, exacerbating
the social pressure to conform to some types of role models. As a
psychotherapist myself, I know clearly how much emotional and
psychological strength it requires to allow oneself to be seen as
‘different’ and risk ostracisation from a social group.
‘Neat categories’ offer a ‘felt’ safety,
free from the unpredictable one where individuals do not always
conform to preconceived categories. The retailers and marketing men
know this as well as I do, and exploit it mercilessly, whilst
pretending to offer ‘emancipation’ for the women they
exploit in this manner. Compulsive shoppers rarely act from a
position of genuine individualism; rather they are victims of a
collective narcissism disseminated from above. This article colludes
with the patriarchal notion that women are essentially mad, in need
of treatment. The doctors of the Middle Ages were able to make a
comfortable living out of this notion of female madness, followed by
the pharmaceutical companies. Now the retailers have jumped onto
this band wagon, substituting ‘retail therapy’ for
Bedlam, ECT and valium. This is a tribute to the marketing man and
lifestyle guru and certainly not beneficial to women.
The
anti-psychiatrist, Jeffery Masson, sees therapeutic help as
‘corrupt, where the therapist has power over the patient,
exposing patients to financial, emotional, physical and sexual
exploitation’. How is this different from the actions of
retailers? Why are we seeking a cure for a non-existent pathology?
Or has one been artificially created so as to be ‘cured’
in such a manner? Surely education should help us to see through
this rather than leave us blind as implied by the authors?
The
serious question that the article fails to raise, yet is absolutely
pertinent to the issues being discussed, is whether the pursuit of a
consumerist pseudo-utopia has actually become a substitute for other
forms of engagement, political or otherwise. More informed debate
and dissemination of information on the real strategies, mechanisms
and forms of exploitation that underwrite this era of mass
disposable consumption could well be the real trigger for women, of
whatever age group or earning bracket, to become actively concerned
about and involved in the thoroughly political debates and forms of
activism that are quite advanced in the anti-globalisation movement
and elsewhere. If conversely one accepts the premise of the authors
of the Observer article, that politics should be re-packaged
as just one more consumer activity (a process which is already well
developed in an age of public relations and spin-doctor driven
politics), then the ideologies of big business have succeeded in
colonising and appropriating yet more of our collective
imaginations. This phenomenon is in the interest of no-one, male or
female, other than those who stand to reap large profits from it.
But
maybe the authors of the Observer article just might be onto
something? The Labour Party could present party political broadcasts
featuring tall, rugged, chisel-chinned politicians shopping at the
Gap, Next or Levis in the mall, going to a bar during happy hour and
cheerfully gulping down two-for-the-price-of-one drinks, whilst
sharing their purchases with the group. They would continue to
drink themselves into an alcoholic stupor, until they throw up in
turn and collapse en masse onto the pavement. This should appeal to
the twenty-something female binge drinkers, surely, and consequently
get so many of us intelligent and educated women down to the polling
stations? Now where’s my coat……
This article has been
written by Diana Goss, a UKCP Registered Psychosexual &
Relationship Psychotherapist, Research Scientist, and fellow of the
American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, together with Ian
Pace, a classical musician and research fellow at the University
of Southampton. Diana is currently seeking to publish her first book
about the prescribing of drugs for non-medical concerns, in
particular those for 'so-called' sexual dysfunctions. Ian writes
frequently about issues of culture and aesthetics from a Marxist
perspective. Any comments regarding this article will be
warmly welcomed and can be sent via
www.caretotalk.co.uk
