Please write in the area of Gender & Culture Study. Essay Question: Representation of women image in consumer culture is often controversial and has provoked criticism on the stereotypical femininity they shape. Use examples to demonstrate whether the role of women plays in consumer society changed, and to what extent contemporary culture constructs gender identities? Thesis statement: The main argument is that the female body is decoded as a symbol in consumption by the patriarchal society. Under the joint force of mass media and male power, a woman actively internalises male aesthetic standards as the norm of their body construction and behaviour. Body Paragraphs1. Gender Politics in Consumer Society The first part of the paper will briefly analyse the gender politics involved in consumer culture and the unequal division of labour between men and women in production and consumption. Using Simone de Beauvoir’s theory about the social construction of female identity defined in The Second Sex, the causal link between patriarchal society and women’s subordinate status in consumer activities is discussed. Unequal social division of labour makes it difficult for women to participate in the cultural process fully. Join what Zimbalist Rosaldo proposes about “private sphere” to illustrate that women are more present in family affairs. This paragraph argues that consumer culture strengthens this ideology.2. Female Body under Power Discipline To discuss “women being consumed”, the main argument is that from the era of waist girding to the appearance of visual advertising, the female image has generally been in the situation of objectification. I’m going to point out a considerable factor of the dominance on women, a male gaze which firstly proposed by Laura Mulvey in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Also combining with the derived value of the feminine model in modern advertising and “symbolic exchange” mentioned by Jean Baudrillard, it is applicative to explain the body symbolisation provoked by symbol consumption under the pressure of male gaze.Primary Source-A Chinese BMW second-hand car advertisement: The bride has been compared to a used car and the highlighting on an essential check whether women’s face is redecorated before marriage is an example of objectification on women body. (https://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/07/19/audi-slammed-advertisement-comparing-women-used-cars-china)3. Redefining “Being Consumed” This part aims to find out whether women undergoing cosmetic surgery are passive under the oppression of a patriarchal society or are taking active control of their bodies. I mainly support the passive perspective and argue that male discipline gradually forms a comparison between women’s self bodies and the ideal female images constructed by consumer culture, thus forming blind consumption in pursuit of “beauty”. In this part, I will provide what Foucault demonstrates about Panopticon model disciplinary gaze on prisoners combining with Kathryn Morgan’s theory that plastic surgery is the colonisation of consumer society on women’s bodies.Primary Source-A Korean Makeover TV show, Let Me In: introducing the phrase, beauty culture to underline an ideology that plastic surgery is an exclusive means for women to have stereotyped physical femininity, thus gaining domestic happiness.
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