Young women and consumer culture: An intervention

This paper is intended as an intervention. It is presented as a series of interconnecting notes on a range of topics which include: (a) consumer culture as a regime of truth and its problematic status within feminist media and cultural studies; (b) the recent, extraordinary, prominence of young women in consumer culture; (c) the making and shaping of new markets for very young girls; (d) the encroachment by commercial forces on the role and authority of the various institutions which have, in the past, presided over the lives and conduct of young women and girls. We might say, in regard to this last point, that the old social institutions of family, education, medicine and law, which have historically been charged with the responsibility of producing and reproducing the category of girl as a certain kind of subject, and thus with ensuring that appropriate processes of sexual differentiation take place, have seen their responsibility eroded in recent years. One normalizing process is being replaced now by another. Consumer culture, riding the wave of UK governmental off-loading of social responsibility through de-regulationist policies, has grabbed hold of this terrain, turning it into the most profitable of opportunities. Of course there has been a long history of commercial culture (in both instructional and pleasurable modes) directing itself towards the site of girlhood. However, my claim here is that this force is now accelerated and expanded with the effect that commercial values now occupy a critical place in the formation of the categories of youthful femininity. This appropriation of the site of girlhood actively draws on a quasi-feminist vocabulary which celebrates female freedom and gender equality. The effects of this shift have not, as yet, been fully recognized within feminist writing, although there have been a number of articles which grapple with the remarkable growth of popular culture (fashion, beauty, music, magazines, etc) and its increasing focus towards pre-teenage as well as older girls. It has also been acknowledged that many of the forms directed towards girls and young women seem to have embraced what has been troublesomely labelled ‘popular feminism’.