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Ain't I A Woman? newspapers, June 1970-July 1971
1970-08-21 "Ain't I a Woman?" Page 11
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[hand drawn boxes advertising different detergents] [down left side and right side hand drawn boxes advertising different products] Consumerism and Women Reprinted from Notes From The Second Year By Ellen Willis Perhaps the most widely accepted tenet of movement ideology, promulgated by many leftist thinkers, notably Marcuse, is the idea that we are psychically manipulated by the mass media to crave more and more consumer goods, thus powering an economy that depends on constantly expanding sales. It has been suggested that this theory is particularly applicable to women, for women do most of the actual buying, their consumption is often directly related to their oppression (e.g., make-up, soap flakes), and they are a special target of advertisers. According to this view the society defines women as consumers and the purpose of the prevailing media image of women as passive sexual objects is to sell products. It follows that the beneficiaries of this depreciation of women are not men but the corporate power structure. The consumerism theory has not been subjected to much critical debate. In fact, it seems in recent years to have taken on the invulnerability of religious dogma. Yet analysis demonstrates that this theory is fallacious and leads to crucial tactical errors. This paper is offered as a critique of consumerism based on four propositions: 1. It is not "psychic manipulation" that makes people buy; rather their buying habits are by and large a rational self-interested response to their limited alternatives within the system. 2. The chief function of media stereotypes of women is not to sell goods but to reinforce the ideology and therefore the reality of male supremacy-of the economic and sexual subordination of women to men, in the latter's objective interest. 3. Most of the "consuming" women do is actually labor, specifically part of women's domestic and sexual obligations. 4. The consumerism theory has its roots in class, sex, and race bias; its ready acceptance among radicals, including radical women, is a function of movement elitism. First of all, there is nothing inherently wrong with consumption. Shopping and consuming are enjoyable human activities and the marketplace has been a center.of social life for thousands of years. The profit system is oppressive not because relatively trivial luxuries are available, but because basic necessities are not. The locus of the oppression resides in the production function: people have no control over what commodities are produced (or services performed), in what amounts, under what conditions, or how they are distributed. Corporations make these decisions solely for their own profit. It is more profitable to produce luxuries for the affluent (or for that Matter, for the poor, on exploitative installment plans) than to produce and make available food, housing, medical care, education, recreational and cultural facilities according to the needs and desires of the people. We can accept the goods offered to us or reject them, but we cannot determine their quality or change the system's priorities. In a truly humane society, in which all the people have personal autonomy, control over the means of production, and equal access to goods and services, consumption will be all the more enjoyable because we will not have to endure shoddy goods sold at exploitative prices by means of dishonest advertising. As it is, the profusion of commodities is a genuine and powerful compensation for oppression. 'It is a bribe, but like all bribes it offers concrete benefits—in the average American's case, a degree of physical comfort unparalleled in history. Under present conditions, people are preoccupied with consumer goods not because they are brainwashed but because buying is the one pleasurable activity not only permitted but actively encouraged by the power structure. The pleasure of eating an ice cream cone may be minor compared to the pleasure of meaningful, autonomous work, but the former is easily available and the latter is not. A poor family would undoubtedly rather have a decent apartment than a new TV, but since they are unlikely to get the apartment, what is to be gained by not getting the TV? Radicals who in general are healthily skeptical of facile Freudian explanations have been quick to embrace a theory of media manipulation based squarely on Freud, as popularized by market researchers and journalists like Vance Packard (Marcuse acknowledges Packard's influence in One Dimensional Man). In essence, this theory holds that ads designed to create unconscious associations between merchandise and deep-seated fears, sexual desires, and needs for identity and self-esteem induce people to buy products in search of gratifications no product can provide. Furthermore, the corporations, through the media, deliberately create fears and desires that their products can claim to fulfill. The implication is that we are not simply taken in by lies or exaggerations—as, say, by the suggestion that a certain perfume will make us sexually irresistible—but are psychically incapable of learning from experience and will continue to buy no matter how often we are disappointed, and that in any case our "need" to be sexually irresistible is programmed into us to keep us buying perfume. This hypothesis of psychic distortion is based on the erroneous assumption that mental health and anti-materialism are synonymous. Although they have to cope with the gyppery inherent in the profit system, people for the most part buy goods for practical, self-interested reasons. A washing machine does make a housewife's work easier (in the absence of Al butt of house-work); Excedrin does make a headache go away; a car does provide transportation. If one is duped into buying a product because of misleading advertising, the process is called exploitation; it has nothing to do with brainwashing. Advertising is a how-to-manual on the consumer economy, constantly reminding us of what is available and encouraging us to indulge ourselves. It works (that is, stimulates sales) because buying is the only game in town, not vice versa. Advertising does appeal it morbid fears (e.g., of body odors) and false hopes (irresistibility) and shoppers faced with indistinguishable brands of a product may choose on the basis of an ad (what method is better—eeny-meeny-miny-mo?), but this just the old game of caveat emptor. It thrives on naiveté and people learn to resist it through experience. The worst suckers for ads are children. Other vulnerable, groups are older people, who had no previous experience—individual or historical—to guide them when the consumer cornucopia suddenly developed after World War II, and poor people, who do not have enough money to learn through years of trial, error and disillusionment to be shrewd consumers. The constant refinement of advertising claims, visual effects, and so on, show that experience desensitizes. No one really believes that smoking Brand X cigarettes will make you sexy. (The function of sex in ad is probably the obvious one—to lure people into paying closer attention to the ad—rather than to make them "identify" their lust with a product. The chief effect of the heavy sexual emphasis in advertising has been to stimulate a national preoccupation with sex, showing that you can't identify away a basic human drive as easily as all that.) Madison Avenue has increasingly deemphasized "motivational" techniques in favor of aesthetic ones—TV commercials, in particular have become incredibly inventive visually—and even made a joke out of the old motivational ploys (the phallic Virginia Slims ad, for instance, is blatantly campy). We can conclude from this that either the depth psychology approach never worked in the first place, or that it has stopped working as consumers have gotten more sophisticated. The argument that the corporations create new psychological needs in order to sell their wares is similarly flimsy. There is no evidence that propaganda can in itself create a desire, as opposed to bringing to consciousness a latent desire by suggesting that means of satisfying it are available. This idea is superstitious: it implies that the oppressor is diabolically intelligent (he has learned to control human souls) and that the media have magic powers. It also mistakes effects for causes and drastically oversimplifies the relation between ideology and material conditions. We have not been taught to dislike our smell in order to sell deodorants; deodorants sell because there are social consequences for smelling. And the negative attitude about our bodies that has made it feasible to invent and market deodorants is deeply rooted in our anti-sexual culture, which in turn has been shaped by exploitive modes of production and class antagonism between men and women. The confusion between cause and effect ts particularly apparent in the consumerist analysis of women's oppression, Women are not manipulated, by the media into being domestic servants and mindless sexual decoration..the better to sell soap and hair spray. Rather. the image reflects women as men in a sexist society force them to behave. Male supremacy is the oldest and most basic form a class exploitation (ef. Engels. Origin of the Family): it was not invented by a smart ad man. The real evil of the media image of women is that it supports the sexist status quo. In a sense the fashion, cosmetics and "feminine hygiene" ads are aimed more at men than at women. They encourage men to expect women to sport all the latest trappings of sexual slavery-expectations women must then fulfill if they are to survive. That advertisers exploit women's subordination rather than cause it can be clearly seen now that male fashions and toiletries have become big business. In contrast to ads for women's products, whose appeal is "use this and he will want you" (or "if you don't use this, he won't want you"), ads for the male counterparts urge, "you too can enjoy perfume and bright-colored clothes; don't worry, it doesn't make you feminine." Although advertisers are careful to emphasize how virile these products are (giving them names like "Brut," showing the man who uses them hunting or flirting with admiring women—who, incidentally, remain decorative objects when the sell is aimed directly at men), it is never claimed that the product is essential to masculinity (as make-up is essential to femininity), only compatible with it. To convince a man to buy, --con't on page 12 A WOMAN AUGUST 21, 1970 11
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[hand drawn boxes advertising different detergents] [down left side and right side hand drawn boxes advertising different products] Consumerism and Women Reprinted from Notes From The Second Year By Ellen Willis Perhaps the most widely accepted tenet of movement ideology, promulgated by many leftist thinkers, notably Marcuse, is the idea that we are psychically manipulated by the mass media to crave more and more consumer goods, thus powering an economy that depends on constantly expanding sales. It has been suggested that this theory is particularly applicable to women, for women do most of the actual buying, their consumption is often directly related to their oppression (e.g., make-up, soap flakes), and they are a special target of advertisers. According to this view the society defines women as consumers and the purpose of the prevailing media image of women as passive sexual objects is to sell products. It follows that the beneficiaries of this depreciation of women are not men but the corporate power structure. The consumerism theory has not been subjected to much critical debate. In fact, it seems in recent years to have taken on the invulnerability of religious dogma. Yet analysis demonstrates that this theory is fallacious and leads to crucial tactical errors. This paper is offered as a critique of consumerism based on four propositions: 1. It is not "psychic manipulation" that makes people buy; rather their buying habits are by and large a rational self-interested response to their limited alternatives within the system. 2. The chief function of media stereotypes of women is not to sell goods but to reinforce the ideology and therefore the reality of male supremacy-of the economic and sexual subordination of women to men, in the latter's objective interest. 3. Most of the "consuming" women do is actually labor, specifically part of women's domestic and sexual obligations. 4. The consumerism theory has its roots in class, sex, and race bias; its ready acceptance among radicals, including radical women, is a function of movement elitism. First of all, there is nothing inherently wrong with consumption. Shopping and consuming are enjoyable human activities and the marketplace has been a center.of social life for thousands of years. The profit system is oppressive not because relatively trivial luxuries are available, but because basic necessities are not. The locus of the oppression resides in the production function: people have no control over what commodities are produced (or services performed), in what amounts, under what conditions, or how they are distributed. Corporations make these decisions solely for their own profit. It is more profitable to produce luxuries for the affluent (or for that Matter, for the poor, on exploitative installment plans) than to produce and make available food, housing, medical care, education, recreational and cultural facilities according to the needs and desires of the people. We can accept the goods offered to us or reject them, but we cannot determine their quality or change the system's priorities. In a truly humane society, in which all the people have personal autonomy, control over the means of production, and equal access to goods and services, consumption will be all the more enjoyable because we will not have to endure shoddy goods sold at exploitative prices by means of dishonest advertising. As it is, the profusion of commodities is a genuine and powerful compensation for oppression. 'It is a bribe, but like all bribes it offers concrete benefits—in the average American's case, a degree of physical comfort unparalleled in history. Under present conditions, people are preoccupied with consumer goods not because they are brainwashed but because buying is the one pleasurable activity not only permitted but actively encouraged by the power structure. The pleasure of eating an ice cream cone may be minor compared to the pleasure of meaningful, autonomous work, but the former is easily available and the latter is not. A poor family would undoubtedly rather have a decent apartment than a new TV, but since they are unlikely to get the apartment, what is to be gained by not getting the TV? Radicals who in general are healthily skeptical of facile Freudian explanations have been quick to embrace a theory of media manipulation based squarely on Freud, as popularized by market researchers and journalists like Vance Packard (Marcuse acknowledges Packard's influence in One Dimensional Man). In essence, this theory holds that ads designed to create unconscious associations between merchandise and deep-seated fears, sexual desires, and needs for identity and self-esteem induce people to buy products in search of gratifications no product can provide. Furthermore, the corporations, through the media, deliberately create fears and desires that their products can claim to fulfill. The implication is that we are not simply taken in by lies or exaggerations—as, say, by the suggestion that a certain perfume will make us sexually irresistible—but are psychically incapable of learning from experience and will continue to buy no matter how often we are disappointed, and that in any case our "need" to be sexually irresistible is programmed into us to keep us buying perfume. This hypothesis of psychic distortion is based on the erroneous assumption that mental health and anti-materialism are synonymous. Although they have to cope with the gyppery inherent in the profit system, people for the most part buy goods for practical, self-interested reasons. A washing machine does make a housewife's work easier (in the absence of Al butt of house-work); Excedrin does make a headache go away; a car does provide transportation. If one is duped into buying a product because of misleading advertising, the process is called exploitation; it has nothing to do with brainwashing. Advertising is a how-to-manual on the consumer economy, constantly reminding us of what is available and encouraging us to indulge ourselves. It works (that is, stimulates sales) because buying is the only game in town, not vice versa. Advertising does appeal it morbid fears (e.g., of body odors) and false hopes (irresistibility) and shoppers faced with indistinguishable brands of a product may choose on the basis of an ad (what method is better—eeny-meeny-miny-mo?), but this just the old game of caveat emptor. It thrives on naiveté and people learn to resist it through experience. The worst suckers for ads are children. Other vulnerable, groups are older people, who had no previous experience—individual or historical—to guide them when the consumer cornucopia suddenly developed after World War II, and poor people, who do not have enough money to learn through years of trial, error and disillusionment to be shrewd consumers. The constant refinement of advertising claims, visual effects, and so on, show that experience desensitizes. No one really believes that smoking Brand X cigarettes will make you sexy. (The function of sex in ad is probably the obvious one—to lure people into paying closer attention to the ad—rather than to make them "identify" their lust with a product. The chief effect of the heavy sexual emphasis in advertising has been to stimulate a national preoccupation with sex, showing that you can't identify away a basic human drive as easily as all that.) Madison Avenue has increasingly deemphasized "motivational" techniques in favor of aesthetic ones—TV commercials, in particular have become incredibly inventive visually—and even made a joke out of the old motivational ploys (the phallic Virginia Slims ad, for instance, is blatantly campy). We can conclude from this that either the depth psychology approach never worked in the first place, or that it has stopped working as consumers have gotten more sophisticated. The argument that the corporations create new psychological needs in order to sell their wares is similarly flimsy. There is no evidence that propaganda can in itself create a desire, as opposed to bringing to consciousness a latent desire by suggesting that means of satisfying it are available. This idea is superstitious: it implies that the oppressor is diabolically intelligent (he has learned to control human souls) and that the media have magic powers. It also mistakes effects for causes and drastically oversimplifies the relation between ideology and material conditions. We have not been taught to dislike our smell in order to sell deodorants; deodorants sell because there are social consequences for smelling. And the negative attitude about our bodies that has made it feasible to invent and market deodorants is deeply rooted in our anti-sexual culture, which in turn has been shaped by exploitive modes of production and class antagonism between men and women. The confusion between cause and effect ts particularly apparent in the consumerist analysis of women's oppression, Women are not manipulated, by the media into being domestic servants and mindless sexual decoration..the better to sell soap and hair spray. Rather. the image reflects women as men in a sexist society force them to behave. Male supremacy is the oldest and most basic form a class exploitation (ef. Engels. Origin of the Family): it was not invented by a smart ad man. The real evil of the media image of women is that it supports the sexist status quo. In a sense the fashion, cosmetics and "feminine hygiene" ads are aimed more at men than at women. They encourage men to expect women to sport all the latest trappings of sexual slavery-expectations women must then fulfill if they are to survive. That advertisers exploit women's subordination rather than cause it can be clearly seen now that male fashions and toiletries have become big business. In contrast to ads for women's products, whose appeal is "use this and he will want you" (or "if you don't use this, he won't want you"), ads for the male counterparts urge, "you too can enjoy perfume and bright-colored clothes; don't worry, it doesn't make you feminine." Although advertisers are careful to emphasize how virile these products are (giving them names like "Brut," showing the man who uses them hunting or flirting with admiring women—who, incidentally, remain decorative objects when the sell is aimed directly at men), it is never claimed that the product is essential to masculinity (as make-up is essential to femininity), only compatible with it. To convince a man to buy, --con't on page 12 A WOMAN AUGUST 21, 1970 11
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