Effect of consumerism on society Research Paper

Effect of consumerism on decree - Research Paper ExampleStarting with the rise of the department store, and culminating in advertisements that show fe viriles the way to choke the dangerous life, consumerism for women is all about achieving the life and identity that she is supposed to have. The possible exception to this is the Dove authorized beauty campaign, that tells the woman that she is fine the way that she is. However, in a way, consuming this product is also purchasing 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 bout 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, just as females have done. How Consumerism Has Affected the Female Identity forward-looking 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 modern 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 sh birth, 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 interchange these products through the process of m odeling and mirroring. The advertisements model what the good life should be, and what a woman should aspire to universe fit, youthful, vigorous, sexual and fun. At the same time, they hold up a mirror to the womans 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 sight 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 net 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(prenominal) feminist ideal, such as the Virginia Slims campaign back in the seventies, whose tag line was Youve Come a Long Way Baby (Johnson & Taylor, 2008). That said, at least one advertising campaign, Dove, has attempted to use a dif ferent mental object to sell its products to the female audience. Their Real Beauty campaign featured women with less-than-perfect bodies in their underwear, and the message was that women