Read: Miller, "Consumption and Its Consequences"
Fiske, "Shopping for Pleasure"
Nava, "Women, the City and the Department Store"
Friedan, "The Sexual Sell"
Bordo, "Hunger as Ideology"
Wilson, "Feminism and Fashion"

1. On pages 19-20, Miller lists the aims for his chapter. What are they, and how does he demonstrate each of these points? Can you give examples from your own personal experience to support his arguments? How does consumption link the global and the local in our daily lives?

2. How does Fiske link pleasure, power, and resistance in shopping? Thinking of your own experiences window shopping, do you agree with his argument?

3. According to Nava, why have women's experiences of shopping and consumption been excluded from the social scientific literature on modernity? How does her argument respond to debates about the gendering of public and private spheres, as discussed in class?

4. How does Friedan use her analysis of advertising techniques to support her feminist critique of housewifery and consumerism? How does her argument compare to Miller's depiction of the housewife as "global dictator"? Whose argument do you find more compelling, and why?

5. How does Bordo see ads as reproducing gender ideologies? What are the connections she draws between gender, desire, and consumption? How are these concerns the contemporary legacy of the Victorian discourses described by Nava? Do you agree with her reading of magazine and television food ads?

6 How, according to Wilson, have notions of "natural," "artificial," "social construction," and "free choice" shaped feminist attitudes toward fashion? What is her critique of these ideas and the way they have shaped feminist debates about fashion? Why does she argue for viewing fashion as a kind of performance art?

For more information, contact:  aleshkow@holycross.edu