Postfeminist Consumer Culture

consuming fast fashion in a postfeminist era

how our culture uses female empowerment to fuel consumerism

The increasing number of fashion-related videos centring around secondhand clothing on Youtube tell us about the heightened awareness of the fast fashion industry, the overconsumption of it, and its detrimental impacts on garment workers and the environment. Much less talked about is the exploitation of those who consume fast fashion.

Why do we even consume so many clothing products in the first place? One major and frequently overlooked reason behind this is postfeminist culture. The postfeminist sensibility is suffused into our ways of thinking and being.¹ With its focus on female empowerment and choice, it conceals its purpose of upholding consumerist and patriarchal standards.

Our consumption choices in clothing are meaningful. In the neoliberal society we live in, we are defined primarily as consumers—it is how we exercise our democratic choice. Whether we shop sustainably, ethically, or trendy, we are what we wear. In the end, we are what we buy.

Fashion influencers on various social media platforms frequently discuss the environmental destruction caused by fast fashion, such as the cultivating and manufacturing processes of cotton products. Yet a discussion of why overconsumption continues, or how the industry is reliant on

the enforcement of postfeminist values rarely

Feminist cultural theorist Angela McRobbie refers to postfeminism as a ‘new kind of sophisticated anti-feminism.’ ² It’s a bold claim, but I believe she has a point.

Fast fashion brands promote an image of female liberation through marketing strategies and the products they put out.³ Feminist slogans are plastered onto crop tops that were made in sweatshops by mistreated garment workers, most of whom are women. Plenty of us are aware of the irony here.

Those women are not the only ones being exploited by fast fashion, though. The industry’s success hinges on women— whether they are labourers in a garment factory in the global South or customers purchasing the end products in the global North. In postfeminist culture, the industry’s female consumers are also exploited, in a much different way.

Some may understand postfeminism as a period in which feminism has been rendered obsolete, or as a sort of contrary response to second-wave feminism. ⁴ Postfeminism operates under the assumption that all the battles fought by second-wave feminists have now been won, and that women are no longer held back by sexism.

As women, we are being assured that now, we are able to take control of the narrative. When we dress up in traditionally feminine ways, we are no longer doing it for men. The choices we make are entirely for ourselves. What a liberating, comforting thought to finally be free of the patriarchy.

However, we are not as free as we are being made to believe. Postfeminism has led to women internalising a ‘new disciplinary regime’⁴ where we constantly monitor our appearances, beautifying ourselves and buying new, trendy clothing. How awfully convenient that we are doing the work of upholding a patriarchal, capitalist society at our own cost.

With postfeminism’s emphasis on female choice, it takes attention away from the stillexisting capitalist and patriarchal constraints that influence women’s autonomy. The media, including fast fashion advertisements, can escape accountability, and their immense impact on female consumers’ choices is disregarded. Through the pervasive and harmful notion that these constraints have dissolved, thus fully liberating women, more responsibility has been placed on us as individuals, for our consumption patterns and decisions. By having these systems remain invisible, they are allowed to operate namelessly and permeate our daily lives.

If women are truly free agents, then isn’t it odd how our apparently liberated choices still conform to traditional gender norms? We ought to be more critical of postfeminist claims of equality and empowerment that simply exist to preserve consumer culture and traditional gender relations. Somewhere along the way, we have been conditioned to believe that patriarchal ideas of femininity are our own.

Postfeminism simultaneously presumes that feminism is obsolete and commodifies the movement by regarding women as empowered consumers.⁵ This implies how postfeminism is intertwined with neoliberalism, ultimately supporting the same ideals despite the former’s seemingly progressive repackaging.

It feeds into consumerism by depicting women’s choice-making as intrinsically empowering. Meanwhile, the manufacturing of their clothing relies on the exploitation of female labourers, who often have to endure long hours for little pay as well as sexual harassment from their male superiors.

As it centres around the white and middleclass woman as its ideal consumer ⁵ , postfeminism hides and perpetuates gender hierarchies and economic disparities, allowing the fast fashion industry to continue profiting at the expense of both its female workers and consumers.

Popular solutions for clothing overconsumption that have been put forward tend to focus on the act of consumption itself by suggesting we shop secondhand, host clothing swaps, and purchase clothing from transparent, ethical, and sustainable brands. Of course, these are all potential ways to combat damage that the fast fashion industry has inflicted onto the environment and its workers, but they do not touch on the core problem: the culture we live in right now endorses postfeminism, and therefore at its core, consumerist and misogynistic ideals.

Due to the notions of female choice and empowerment being at the centre of postfeminist culture, when we question whether women’s clothing consumption is inherently positive simply because it is a choice made by a woman, we may be accused of being too old-fashioned to accept postfeminist ideas.

Too often we over-stress the importance of individual empowerment and action. For instance, we adjust our shopping habits to include more sustainably and ethically made

clothing for the betterment of the environment or the wellbeing of garment workers in the global South—women are much more likely to do this as a result of gendered norms.

Instead, it may be more worthwhile to ask ourselves why we want to shop in the first place, who we are shopping for and whose agenda we are supporting. Are we truly investing in fashion for ourselves like postfeminism wants us to believe?

As McRobbie puts it, ‘[t]his pro-capitalist femininity-focused repertoire plays directly into the hands of corporate consumer culture’.⁷

It is crucial that we acknowledge these factors when we propose solutions aiming to reduce our consumption of fast fashion so that we can incite meaningful conversations about our own habits and how they may fuel the very structures we intend to dismantle.

references

¹ Gill R (2007) ‘Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a Sensibility’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(2):147-166.

² McRobbie A (2011) ‘Beyond post-feminism’, Public policy research, 18(3):179-184.

³ Sobande F (2019) ‘Femvertising and fast fashion: Feminist advertising or fauxminist marketing messages?’, International Journal of Fashion Studies, 6(1):105-112.

⁴ Gill R (2016) ‘Post-postfeminism?: new feminist visibilities in postfeminist times’, Feminist Media Studies, 16(4):610-630.

⁵

Tasker Y and Negra D (2007) ‘Introduction: FEMINIST POLITICS AND POSTFEMINIST CULTURE’, Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, Duke University Press, 1-26.

⁶

Bloodhart B and Swim JK (2020) ‘Sustainability and Consumption: What’s Gender Got to Do with It?’, Journal of Social Issues, 76(1):101-113.

⁷ McRobbie A (2009) ‘Conclusion: Inside and Outside the Feminist Academy’, The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change , SAGE Publications Ltd, London.