On “Learning How to Consume”: I didn’t have to.

Laermans writes about the feminization of consumption and the socialization of consumption, and as someone who is female and social and who shamelessly enjoys consuming I take serious issue with how this part of my existence is labeled.

As humans, there are a lot of things we know- some of these we are explicitly taught, some we have learned from experience, and some we seem to genetically understand.

It's true that I know a lot about how to consume, and I recognize that a significant part of that is taught to me by marketers and other "social messengers". I'm willing to spend $5 on a fashion magazine that is essentially a handbook for consumption: it will tell me which brands I should be emulating, which shampoo Kate Hudson uses. I was certainly taught that Bottega Veneta is to be lusted after, and that Yves Saint Laurent was an artistic genius.

There are also things I’ve learned myself: how to navigate a sales rack or where to park at the mall. That shopping at the same stores as your friends- but always for different items- is a good way to know you are dressing acceptably.

But I am still convinced that as an individual, there are things about shopping that I simply get- that no one taught me, that I didn’t have to learn. It’s simply not true that development of the department store or the mall turned consumption into a social thing. Consumption has been social since cavemen hunted and cavewomen gathered and families sat down to eat together. More recently, town centers- centers based on a market, on commerce- served as social magnets long before King of Prussia became an international shopping destination.

As for the feminization of consumption? Like anything, gender lines are blurry and there are men who like to shop and women who don’t. The “metrosexual” phenomenon was the byproduct of advertising, and its death a few years later is perhaps a testament to the weakness of trends in the face of genetics. Truly, I think women’s tendency to shop is just a byproduct of the fact that women bond with each other verbally, and wandering through stores is a great venue for conversation. It’s a psychological fact that women say more words every day than men do. So let the men play video games and grunt and let women wander with their credit cards. Clearly, Mr. Macy did not set my internal verbal barometer higher when he built his legendary New York store.