Abstract
In this current neoliberal age, gender identity is constructed as much through material consumption as it is through other forms of cultural expression. There is a very real sense in which we now purchase our points of identification and it is these acts of consumerism that then become markers for gender, sexuality, and class. My argument is that this kind of gendered consumption functions as an exemplar of ‘cruel optimism’, that it hinders rather than helps subjective flourishing. Lauren Berlant defines ‘cruel optimism’ as a kind of relation that exists when the object of individual desire becomes an ‘obstacle’ to flourishing. It is the undelivered promise of health, happiness, and wellbeing. I argue that gendered consumption itself is a form of cruel optimism. After discussing the specifics of gendered consumption’s relationship with cruel optimism, I examine two American television advertisements, Maybelline’s ‘Push Up Drama’ and Electrolux’s ‘Juggle’. By focusing on how these two advertisements instantiate a culture of cruel optimism, I illustrate the extent to which femininity is constructed through such acts of consumption, and the problematics that inhere in this process.
Highlights
I argue that gendered consumption itself is a form of cruel optimism
By focusing on how these two advertisements instantiate a culture of cruel optimism, I illustrate the extent to which femininity is constructed through such acts of consumption, and the problematics that inhere in this process
Lauren Berlant defines ‘cruel optimism’ as a kind of relation that exists when the object of individual desire becomes an ‘obstacle’ to success.[2]. It is the undelivered promise of health, happiness, and wellbeing, and I argue that gendered consumption itself is a form of cruel optimism
Summary
In this current neoliberal age, gender identity is constructed as much through material consumption as it is through other forms of cultural expression. Lauren Berlant defines ‘cruel optimism’ as a kind of relation that exists when the object of individual desire becomes an ‘obstacle’ to success.[2] It is the undelivered promise of health, happiness, and wellbeing, and I argue that gendered consumption itself is a form of cruel optimism. The amount of health, beauty, and household products available to consumers has risen steadily since the mid-twentieth-century.[4] Within just a few decades after the advent of the 1960s advertising boom we could see ‘more cars, ads and credit cards and many more ways of expressing oneself through goods than there had been in 1960’.5 What this process creates is a cultural landscape in which women are limited to and by the versions of femininity that they can purchase. She capitalises on this identity position, commodifying her own performance of the ideal wife and mother by turning herself into a brand
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