Effect of consumerism on society Research Paper

Effect of consumerism on society - Research Paper Example Starting with the rise of the department store, and culminating in advertisements that show females the way to live the good life, consumerism for women is all about achieving the life and identity that she is â€Å"supposed† to have. The possible exception to this is the Dove real beauty campaign, that tells the woman that she is fine the way that she is. However, in a way, consuming this product is also buying into an identity, albeit this identity is one that is not constructed by purchasing the product, but, rather, is an identity that is internal to who she is. For the male, the evolution has been a bit different, as the modern and pre-modern male was discouraged from consumption - he was the provider, not the consumer. However, post-modernism has arguably changed this, and has made the male more of a consumer because of the rise of branding and designer labels. Branding and designer labels has given the post-modern male a way to construct his identity with consumption, j ust as females have done. How Consumerism Has Affected the Female Identity Modern consumerism, as explained below, was typically associated with the female, as opposed to the male. This was affected by the rise of the department stores in the late 1800s, and this was where the culture of consumption observed a turning point (Martin, 1993, p. 149). ... Advertising plays a role in shaping female consumerism, as it does male, as explained below. For the female, she is shown, through advertising, what it is to aspire to and what it is to be afraid of. Female-directed advertising explains to women that they must aspire to a physical ideal that is unattainable by many, and also must aspire to a youthful appearance. Thus the prevalence of advertisements for products such as weight-loss pills and hair dye (Dyer, 1989, pp. 3-4). The advertising succeeds in selling these products through the process of modeling and mirroring. The advertisements model what the good life should be, and what a woman should aspire to – being fit, youthful, vigorous, sexual and fun. At the same time, they hold up a mirror to the woman’s life, and how her own life does not match that of the ideal. The advertisements seem to imploring the woman to buy the product so that she can reach the ideal that is portrayed in the ad (Dyer, 1989, pp. 3-4). This puts pressure on the woman to reach this ideal, which she can only reach through consumerism - buying products that maybe she does not really need, but feels that she does, because she wants to attain the good life that is portrayed on her television screen. Sometimes advertising actually ties products in with a certain feminist ideal, such as the Virginia Slims campaign back in the seventies, whose tag line was â€Å"You’ve Come a Long Way Baby† (Johnson & Taylor, 2008). That said, at least one advertising campaign, Dove, has attempted to use a different message to sell its products to the female audience. Their â€Å"Real Beauty† campaign featured women with less-than-perfect bodies in their underwear, and the message was that women