Showing posts with label consumption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label consumption. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Lieblingsnotizbuch
The "history of Moleskine" leaflet is some of the rankest commodity fetishist marketing invented, and yet to be honest I'm quite pleased that there's apparently a specific German word for favorite notebook.
Friday, July 01, 2011
"guilt-free" . . . ?
I've recently been rather puzzled by advertisements and articles using the tagline "guilt-free."
For example:
An outlet mall billboard proclaims "Guilt-free shopping!" and displays the logos of available brands, the first one being Nike.
Or, another one:
An article on the Weather Channel website shows how to "Enjoy Your Barbeque, Guilt-Free." It proceeds to relate seven tips, all of which focus on how not to gain weight during summer revels.
The phrase guilt-free seems to be applied pretty often to either the shopping or the eating category. Ok, that's fair enough: consumption as a source of guilt makes some sense.
But what kind of guilt precisely are we avoiding here? On the shopping, I'd guess guilt-free should mean (at the least) that we're buying things made by companies that deal fairly with their employees, but I'm thinkin' probably not if Nike is first on the list of guilt-free shopping options. What is it that makes the outlet mall guilt-free, then? Other advertisements confirm that it's the discount prices. Apparently a lot of people think the problem with buying extra stuff isn't exploiting workers, wasting natural resources, or feeding one's own materialism -- the part responsible for guilt (and hence moral angst, shame, "I really shouldn't," etc.) is . . . spending money? Guilt reactions are structured to protect the consumer's own wallet rather than look out for anyone else.
Same kind of deal for the food guilt. This kind of discourse on guilt leaves out questions like, Does eating all this meat hurt the world food market? and, What can we do for the folks in our community who can't afford mountains of delicious food? (I'm not saying I've got clear answers to those questions, just that I think they're sensible questions to ask if you're going to talk about the ethics of barbeque in the first place.) But instead, we're asking, How can I keep from getting fat? It's a similar misdirection -- forget about the wider implications of the consumption and shift the moral burden to protecting one's own body.
In both cases, there's a move to make morality about covering and beautifying one's own backside. I think that's pernicious on multiple levels, since it distracts people from addressing more meaningful causes for guilt in consumption, and the ethically-charged language also gives an illusory halo of righteousness to decisions that are simple self-preservation. Not that I'm against saving money or staying healthy -- but I think those issues should occupy a very much smaller fraction of the moral discourse on consumption than they now do.
For example:
An outlet mall billboard proclaims "Guilt-free shopping!" and displays the logos of available brands, the first one being Nike.
Or, another one:
An article on the Weather Channel website shows how to "Enjoy Your Barbeque, Guilt-Free." It proceeds to relate seven tips, all of which focus on how not to gain weight during summer revels.
The phrase guilt-free seems to be applied pretty often to either the shopping or the eating category. Ok, that's fair enough: consumption as a source of guilt makes some sense.
But what kind of guilt precisely are we avoiding here? On the shopping, I'd guess guilt-free should mean (at the least) that we're buying things made by companies that deal fairly with their employees, but I'm thinkin' probably not if Nike is first on the list of guilt-free shopping options. What is it that makes the outlet mall guilt-free, then? Other advertisements confirm that it's the discount prices. Apparently a lot of people think the problem with buying extra stuff isn't exploiting workers, wasting natural resources, or feeding one's own materialism -- the part responsible for guilt (and hence moral angst, shame, "I really shouldn't," etc.) is . . . spending money? Guilt reactions are structured to protect the consumer's own wallet rather than look out for anyone else.
Same kind of deal for the food guilt. This kind of discourse on guilt leaves out questions like, Does eating all this meat hurt the world food market? and, What can we do for the folks in our community who can't afford mountains of delicious food? (I'm not saying I've got clear answers to those questions, just that I think they're sensible questions to ask if you're going to talk about the ethics of barbeque in the first place.) But instead, we're asking, How can I keep from getting fat? It's a similar misdirection -- forget about the wider implications of the consumption and shift the moral burden to protecting one's own body.
In both cases, there's a move to make morality about covering and beautifying one's own backside. I think that's pernicious on multiple levels, since it distracts people from addressing more meaningful causes for guilt in consumption, and the ethically-charged language also gives an illusory halo of righteousness to decisions that are simple self-preservation. Not that I'm against saving money or staying healthy -- but I think those issues should occupy a very much smaller fraction of the moral discourse on consumption than they now do.
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