The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective
The Sex of Things is a collection of thirteen essays discussing the social history of consumption (loosely defined) and gender in France, England, Germany, Italy, and the United States from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century. Taking a primarily historical approach to the topic of gender and consumption, the contributors come from various academic disciplines: history, economics, area studies, English, art history, and gender studies. The contributors contextualize their analyses of gender and consumption historically in visual representations and popular social and political lines of thought.
In the introduction, de Grazia lays the groundwork for why we should be concerned with how gender impacts the study of consumption. Simplistic notions of naturally or inevitably identifying the female sex with shopping sprees are challenged in favor of a deeper inquiry into the assumptions revolving around AMr. Breadwinner@ and AMrs. Consumer@(3). Instead of merely debating whether consumption is liberating or oppressive, these essays are concerned with the study of consumption in terms of the construction of gender roles, class relations, the family, and the state.
Essays in the first section relate to the transition of consumption patterns from aristocratic to bourgeois society. De Grazia locates the growth of bourgeois consumption practices in the Afeminized world of the home@, where female heads of household not only were expected to be nurturing and sociable, but were also consumers of food, clothing, and furniture. Through their purchases, these women accumulated (for themselves and their children) what Pierre Bourdieu called Acultural capital, @ b...
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...en women and melodrama by consideration of statistical data on the female audience, as well as discursive contributions from popular media.
The Sex of Things concludes with selected bibliography by Ellen Furlough, highlighting gender and consumption in historical perspective. The bibliography includes histories of consumption and consumer culture as well as theoretical contributions and contains a number of categories rooted in feminist research on consumption. These categories include: sites of consumption, marketing and design , spectatorship and reception, production of representations, domesticity, sexuality, appearance, and politics and ideologies of consumption. Each section ranges historically from the Middle Ages to the present. Unfortunately, the bibliography is dominated by Western perspectives; only a few of the sources are non-Western in orientation.
There are many people who are driven by consumerism and many people who wish they can get in touch with that type of world. Consumers are often promoted to advertise more of the products that they are buying to get more people to buy more products. Hari Kunzru, author of “Raj, Bohemian,” creates a narrator who is obsessed with maintaining his individuality and free will in a world that is overcome with consumerism. Believes that the world takes away individuality when consumerism comes into play and how hard it is to maintain their true self. In her LA Times article “Teen Haulers Create a Fashion Force,” Andrea Chang writes about the phenomenon of teenage Youtube users who make videos that publicize their latest shopping binges. She expresses
He cites middle class white women due to how they began to ritualize meals and how ceramic designs became more elaborate (pg. 174). Shackel again turns to the Beckham and Moor household ceramics in the amounts of fashionable goods found at the sites (174-175). This demonstrates the idea that material culture can represent the social activities of different genders.
This phenomenon suggests that all women are required to remain loyal wives and stay at home mothers who aspire to achieve perfection. In “Mirrors of Masculinity: Representation and Identity in Advertising Images,” Jonathon E. Schroeder and Detlev Zwick claim that “highly abstract connections are made between the models, a lifestyle, and the brand” resulting in a need to associate these products with a specific way of living (25). Instead of simply displaying these luxurious bracelets and handbags, the ad creates an elegant environment through the incorporation of sophisticated items. The women are dressed elegantly in dresses and blouses, adding a conservative element to the ad. The ad presents a rather stereotypical image of the very successful heads-of-household type mothers who have brunch with other elite women in an exclusive circle. Everything from the merchandise they sport to the champagne glasses down to the neatly manicured fingernails provides insight into the class of women presented in this ad. The body language of the women strips the image of the reality element and instead appears to be staged or frozen in time. This directly contributes to the concept of the gendered American dream that urges women to put up a picture-perfect image for the world to see. Instead of embracing individual struggle and realities, the American dream encourages women to live out a fabricated
It can be argued that negligence should never be enough to warrant a sufficiency of culpability for a serious offence when they did not foresee they might bring about the result of the offence. There are various reasons to support the idea that culpability lies in choosing to act wrongly, therefore negligence should not be enough to be convicted of a serious criminal offence.
Sigismund Schlomo Freud, an Austrian neurologist and the father of psychoanalysis, once stated “When you meet a human being, the first distinction you make is ‘male or female?’ and you are accustomed to make the distinction with unhesitating certainty.” Had Sigismund Freud lived through the 21th century instead of the 19th, he might have had a good reason for hesitation. Now we live in an era when gender norms- and many other standards- must perhaps be questioned and dismantled. Over the last several years, the broader cultural shift in how people perceive gender has picked up speed in almost all spheres of society- politics, education, art, literature, and of course in the fashion industry. Clothing has become one of
As early as the nineteen fifties women were identified and targeted as a market. In a consumer culture the most important things are consumers. Advertisers convinced homemakers that in order to be a “good” wife and mother you must have their products and appliances to keep a clean and perfect home. The irony of this ploy is that consumers must have money to buy, and so trying to improve their quality as homemakers, off into the workforce women went. This paradox left women ...
On November 11, 1918 World War I ended. People celebrated by dancing and screaming with joy in the streets. Normally this wouldn’t be a huge controversy; however, the girls at Barnard College in New York danced around with their hands on the hips of each other causing uproar from the traditional communities and inciting the outlandish behavior of women during the 1920s. Thousands of people paraded the streets. Women came running to the roads with their hair pinned up, however, any other day this would be shunned upon because flaunting your neck was considered immoral. Nonetheless, there was still an all-around general feeling of freedom. Homemade confetti was tossed aimlessly into the air without a care in the world. A “cultural revolution” was now in place; this day was known as Armistice Day. Change was in the air and it wasn’t just about the war ending. We were entering the age of a modern society with prosperity and opportunity and nothing would ever be the same. Women were defying the perceptions of the typical female at this time and would be unrecognizable by the end of the decade. During the 1920s, the "flapper" challenged the traditional image of the housewife by creating a rebellious and independent image for women, effectively taking women out of the kitchen and on to the dance floor.
Twain’s famous novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, plays on the mentality and social structure of his time and its people. He saw the critical weaknesses in our values and ideals as a society during his life. He wanted to express his satirical views to the public and bring light to our society’s problems. Twain had successfully accomplished his task when he published the controversial book that is still argued today. Huckleberry Finn shows how major themes like education, religion, and morality, can be seen in his view.
These movies allowed female characters to embody all the contradictions that could make them a woman. They were portrayed as the “femme fatale” and also “mother,” the “seductress” and at the same time the “saint,” (Newsom, 2011). Female characters were multi-faceted during this time and had much more complexity and interesting qualities than in the movies we watch today. Today, only 16% of protagonists in movies are female, and the portrayal of these women is one of sexualization and dependence rather than complexity (Newsom, 2011).
Led by Laura Mulvey, feminist film critics have discussed the difficulty presented to female spectators by the controlling male gaze and narrative generally found in mainstream film, creating for female spectators a position that forces them into limited choices: "bisexual" identification with active male characters; identification with the passive, often victimized, female characters; or on occasion, identification with a "masculinized" active female character, who is generally punished for her unhealthy behavior. Before discussing recent improvements, it is important to note that a group of Classic Hollywood films regularly offered female spectators positive, female characters who were active in controlling narrative, gazing and desiring: the screwball comedy.
Because of his discoveries and eighteen years of experience teaching at Padua, Galileo grew more and more famous, and his salary had almost tripled. Galileo caught word one summer afternoon of a mechanism that existed in the Netherlands that could make distant objects appear closer. Intrigued by the idea, he decided to make one of these contraptions of his own. To do this, Galileo used spectacle lenses, which at first only magnified things two to three times their size, but Galileo then improved this to eight or nine times their size
In our given scenario we are asked to discuss legal principles influencing the likelihood of any successful action against Steve in the grounds of negligence. Steve’s negligent driving caused a series of events that caused losses to the other people presented in the scenario and they take actions against Steve in the grounds of negligence. At first we must understand what negligence is. The tort of negligence provides the potenti...
... teachers to believe that boys are more intelligent than girls. Scantlebury found that teachers who do believe boys are more proficient than girls in mathematics, are more likely to reframe and breakdown questions “into a series of simpler questions” in an effort to assist the student to attain the answer. No such luxury is given to females in math classes. Teachers are more likely to restate the question and ask another student to answer; typically the student teachers selected to answer the question was a boy (Scantlebury). It’s clear that in classes which are perceived to be male oriented, teachers are willing to work more in-depth with males. Interestingly, Scantlebury found the opposite to be true in “subjects perceived as feminine.” Teachers spend more time with female students than with male students in subjects that the teachers believe are female oriented.
Microscopy allows one to view samples and objects that cannot be seen with the human eye. With all the modern techniques used in the biology field today, microscopy is one of the most important one that allows us to see a world beyond what our eyes limits us too. The majority of both organisms that are helpful and harmful are too small to be seen with the human eye, and without the microscope we would have not understood the mechanism behind the major diseases we know today. Microscopy has helped scientists produce antibiotics and antiviral drugs to treat the diseases that once were in a world beyond our vision. There are three types of microscopy mainly used: optical (light), electron, and scanning probe microscopy.
It is not clear who invented the microscope but it is said that in Circa 1000AD, an implement called a reading stone was discovered by an unknown inventor, this sphere shaped glass object magnified reading material when placed over it, this then began the birth of the microscope. In 1284 an Italian inventor named Salvino D’Armate was credited for inventing the first pair of wearable spectacles. It wasn’t then till 1590 that things developed with Dutch glassmakers, Zaccharias Janssen and his son Hans, experimented by placing multiple lenses in tubes, observing objects placed in front of the tubes they realised that the objects appeared massively larger, thus creating both the forerunner of the compound microscope invented about 1595 and the telescope. In 1609 a father of physics and astronomy, Galileo Galilei made a better instrument with a focusing device, by working out the foundations of the lenses after hearing rumours about the Dutch eyeglass makers.