Book Review: Can’t Buy My Love
Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing some reading on femininity, exploring different perspectives on the problem of being a healthy woman in our modern culture. So far, I’ve looked at Wendy Shalit’s A Return to Modesty and Laura Sessions Stepp’s Unhooked, each of which helpfully articulate some aspects of the problem. But as I read these and other books along similar lines, I found myself thinking that we can’t understand what it means to be a woman just by examining personal relationships. We also have to look at our culture – and its rampant consumerism. To that end, Jean Kilbourne’s critique of advertising in Can’t Buy My Love gives us a valuable perspective.
The most dangerous aspect of our consumer culture is that it is invisible. We live it and breathe it; we don’t see its action in our lives precisely because it affects every aspect of our lives. Kilbourne aptly points out that the public makes no outcry to the appalling Channel One broadcasts of news/advertising to a captive audience of schoolchildren, but “imagine the public outcry if a political or religious group offered schools an information packet with ten minutes of news and two minutes of political or religious persuasion. Yet we tend to think of commercial persuasion as somehow neutral, although it certainly promotes beliefs and behavior that have significant and sometimes harmful effects on the individual, the family, the society, and the environment.”
Advertising is designed to sell – and it is very good at it. But what happens when it sells too well? Here Kilbourne makes what I think is her most telling point: that “the more materialistic we are, the better, because “our materialistic culture encourages [a sense of emptiness] because people who feel empty make great consumers. The emptier we feel, the more likely we are to turn to products, especially potentially addictive products, to make us feel whole.”
Ironically, the more we view ourselves as “hip” and culturally savvy, the more vulnerable we are to the cumulative effect of advertising. We rebel by actually embracing consumerism, certain that as we are doing so we are able to see through all the advertisers’ tricks. (Aided, of course, by all the media messages that praise us as smart, savvy, hip, and too cool to be taken in. If it happens that the more something is advertised, the more we buy it, that’s just a coincidence, right?)
Kilbourne’s analysis is focused mainly on the effects of advertising on women and girls, and she pays close attention to the way that women are depicted in the media. Sexuality, therefore, is an important issue: as everybody knows, sex sells. Kilbourne notes that women are objectified in advertising, and goes on to say that “this objectification has consequences, one of which is the effect that it has on sexuality and desire. Sex in advertising and the media is often criticized from a puritanical perspective – there’s too much of it, it’s too blatant, it will encourage kids to be promiscuous, and so forth. But sex in advertising has far more to do with trivializing sex than promoting it.”
I’d say yes – and no. Yes, the media trivializes sex. But I’d argue that the trivialization actually serves to promote it. If sex is no big deal, then why not say “OK”? If sexual desire is no different from the desire, say, to have a bowl of chocolate ice cream, then why not indulge? After all, denying yourself that pleasure is puritanical and oppressive. Go ahead, hook up – just make sure that you protect yourself from disease and pregnancy. Using birth control is like choosing low-fat ice cream, or maybe frozen yogurt: it’s just something sensible you do so you can enjoy the experience without any nagging worries about it being bad for you.
The trivialization of sex removes one crucial reason for someone (male or female) to say no: the idea that it’s too important to waste on the wrong person, too powerful to do in the wrong context. Young women (and men) are left with nothing more than (at best) an intuitive misgiving about having sex; the more sex is trivialized in the media and reduced to mere physical pleasure, the harder it is to say “no.” Why say “no” if sex doesn’t really matter?
But it does matter. It matters a lot – as the girls in Laura Sessions Stepp’s study tell us, again and again. They just don’t have a way to articulate why it matters.
Kilbourne adds “The problem is not that [the sex promoted in the media] is sinful but that it is synthetic and cynical.” I think that in making this distinction, Kilbourne is showing that, like most people in our culture, she views the idea of “sin” as outmoded, even harmful. She is right to critique the media’s “synthetic and cynical” presentation of sex – but could our desensitization to the concept of “sin” be contributing to that cynicism and a sense of artificiality in our sexual lives?
Kilbourne is clear-headed throughout most of her book, but at the very end I think she falls into the trap of trying to make her work fit her pre-existing ideology. She has effectively demonstrated a connection between advertising and addiction; after all, it is the consumer who is addicted to a product who will buy the most. But she goes on to argue that “male violence exists within the same cultural and sociopolitical context that contributes to addiction… [a context of] racism, classism, heterosexism, weightism, and ageism, as well as sexism.” She sees our culture one of systemic (male) oppression. What I’d say, from looking at that list of -isms, is that our culture is one of systemic permissiveness. Whatever we do is right. Except that it’s not.
As Shalit and Stepp have shown so clearly, no one is immune from whatever toxic force is operating in our culture. Even the young women who seem to have it all made, the ones who have been raised to be self-confident and assertive, the ones who are completely sure of their equality, graduating from the best colleges and embarking on fulfilling careers… even these women, women like me, are struggling to make sense of what it means to be a woman.
Does sexism affect us? Yes, it still does – sorry, men, if you were hoping to be totally off the hook. But I think that we women are blinded by ideology if we don’t recognize that we have it a whole lot better than fifty or a hundred years ago. We have vastly more opportunities and more real equality than our grandmothers ever dreamed of. You would think, if systemic male oppression were the problem, that we’d be doing better on all counts. And in fact we are doing better in the areas where sexism reigned: we still don’t have total equality in pay or jobs, but it’s demonstrably vastly better.
But that’s not the whole story. Our political, social, and economic options have gotten a lot better, while our emotional lives have gotten a lot worse. Our relationships are disastrous. The incidence of all sorts of self-harming behaviors like self-mutilation, eating disorders, and promiscuity has shot up.
It’s hard to be a woman these days, it’s really hard, and it isn’t because of oppression by men. It’s something else. Or rather, it’s a whole lot of things that come together in one toxic cultural soup. And one important ingredient in that witches’ brew is what Kilbourne has been talking about all along – don’t let Kilbourne’s turn toward hyper-feminism distract us from that point. It’s consumerism.
Yes, women have been objectified more than men so far, but that’s changing; men are becoming more sexualized and objectified too. Ironically, Kilbourne seems to recognize this, but embraces it. She writes that “we inevitably objectify ourselves and each other sexually, which is fine as long as there is reciprocity, as long as we all can be subjects as well, and never merely objects.”
Fine? I don’t think so! The problem is not objectification of women by men, it is objectification of people by people. The problem is a consumer culture that encourages us to treat everything and everyone as a possession to be used and discarded; that demands instant gratification. The ideal of having us all equally objectify each other, taking turns to be the passive object and the wielder of power, horrifies me.
We are seduced by consumer culture into objectifying each other and our own bodies.
Consumerism has become the new religion of the masses, infinitely more appealing to this generation because it purposely doesn’t put any demands on the buyer… other than to buy, of course. Kilbourne notes that spiritual values are increasingly co-opted to sell products, which are promised to deliver the experience of the sacred. We are encouraged to constantly remake ourselves, but Kilbourne notes that “the focus of the transformation has shifted from the soul to the body. Of course, this trivializes and cheapens authentic spirituality and transcendence. But, more important, this junk food for the soul leaves us hungry, empty, malnourished.”
We learn to love the object, to pursue satisfaction not in connection but in possession… a condition that’s incredibly toxic for both men and women. The media gives us unhealthy, unrealistic ideals and offers us enticing alternatives (sex, drugs, alcohol, shopping) when inevitably other human beings don’t live up to the ideal. The more we buy into the glossy, airbrushed, packaged ideal of life in the media, the less satisfying the real thing will seem.
Yet the fantasy is never as satisfying as the reality. It’s never as real as the reality, obvious as that may sound. Fantasy just creates more hunger, rather than satisfying it. So when we are addicted to fantasy we always move on to the next thing, the next person-as-object. We treat our own bodies as objects, with all the distorting effects that brings.
If we could get off the treadmill, we’d see that the real, messy, complicated world of human relationships and real pleasures is infinitely better than the fantasy world the advertisers promise. If we get off, though (or make noises indicating we want to) then we risk being rejected by everyone who’s still on board. It’s threatening, after all, to step out of the mainstream; it implies that maybe there’s a better way…
So I would posit consumerism as a key piece of the puzzle of why it is so hard to be a woman in today’s culture. Not only that, I think that if we were to ask them, and really listen to what they have to say, we would discover that it is also really hard to be a man in today’s culture.
Materialism, consumerism, relativism: these are all things that seductively promise a better, easier, more entertaining life… and turn out to destroy human beings.
Related posts:
- Book Review: Unhooked
- Book Review: A Return to Modesty
- Book Review: Sex God
- Paul’s Letter to Generation X
- Sin and Love
3 Responses to “Book Review: Can’t Buy My Love”
Dr Holly Ordway came to Christ through reason, in the pursuit of truth. "In your hearts honor Christ as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect" (1 Peter 15).
She writes about her journey from atheism to orthodox Christian faith in her book "Not God's Type: A Rational Academic Finds a Radical Faith" (Moody Publishers).
Love your blog. Two thoughts:
1. Your discussion echoes some themes from Rowan Williams’ book, Lost Icons. There he explores consumerism, “choice” (of various kinds), and the like. His book is hard sledding, due only in part to the writer’s understatement and English diffidence. It’s also hard to take because of our own immersion in a consumer culture. The figure we see in his mirror may be accurate but it isn’t pretty . . .
2. Your post here, together with your “UnHooked” review, is a practical reflection of the meme of “the world” and “the flesh” (perhaps in reverse order). Can the devil be far behind? or is the devil only in the details?
Thanks for the book recommendation! It does sound interesting. I’ve been interested in consumerism for a long time (well before I became a Christian) and in fact I blog on consumer issues on another site (www.spendingwisely.com). This book review was applicable enough to both that I posted it on SW as well, actually, though I wrote it for this site.
I’m not sure I see what you mean in your second point. Could you explain your thought a bit more? I’m intrigued…
Sorry — a lame/obscure pun there.
A phrase from the Book of Common Prayer asks for deliverance from “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” Vasrious writers have grouped temptations under these three categories. This short list reworks a passage from 1 John 2:16: “For all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father but of the world” (KJV). I just don’t remember whether the word translated as “world” concerns “time” (aeon) or “world-system” although the passage is making a play on words: the world-system passing away. 1 John 2:17.
Consumerism fits into the “world/lust of the eyes” motif, while the UnHooked column dealt with “flesh/lust of the flesh” issues. Whether anorexia and other issues you recently posted on fall near the “devil/daemon” category is for you to say.
My remark aimed at making a play on the words “devil/devil in the details.”