Cyber Monday: Empty Aesthetics for Sale
By Liana Gordan
Women are the world’s most powerful consumer group. We dominate around 70-80% of all purchasing worldwide.
Shopping is an idle past-time for many women, especially tempting during times of stress, sadness, or boredom. Consumerism is now ingrained in femininity. While we laugh it off as “retail therapy” and live for the thrill of a sale or promotion, excessive indulgence corrupts the soul. Indeed, our culture rewards such hedonism with holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Global businesses raked in $65.3 billion during the 2022 Black Friday sales. Beneath the innocent-sounding niceties of getting 50% off on your online orders is a fundamentally flawed conception of personal fulfillment. Today, the once obvious understanding of identity, such as that in sex distinctions, has been blurred and replaced with the dictates of personal pleasure. The hyper-individualism of our day encourages listeners to “be true to themselves.” This authenticity, however, is not defined by one’s relationship to their family, friends, or broader social obligations. It is arbitrarily determined, and therefore often dramatically influenced by trends.
Our society tells women that their existence is not defined by their natural gifts, such as child-birth and child-rearing. Rather, it is a matter of “social performance,” in Judith Butler's terms. Couple the gender confusion of today’s elite with aggressive consumerism and the result is a bunch of confused pseudo-identities attached to fads and popular aesthetics. Look no further than the categories of “coquette girl,” “beach girl,” and “clean girl” on social media.
In denying nature, we’ve not succeeded in alienating men and women from their inner search for purpose. Rather, it gets funneled into fruitless consumerism.Women get lured into the false promise that if they just had the new Rhode lip product, they would become the “clean girl” they see all over the internet. Women buy products in the hope that they would become like the women selling it.
Perhaps we would become more popular and prettier. This fleeting satisfaction is replaced when a new hot item appears on the market. One becomes lost in an endless, empty cycle of constant wanting, buying, and wanting again. When our want for things becomes an end in itself, life becomes more about the addiction of discovering a desire than actually fulfilling it. This is detrimental to our flourishing. Desires can direct us, but it cannot become our identity.
It's ok to indulge in buying nice things, especially on Cyber Monday or Black Friday. But we should be wary of our culture's messaging, especially towards young women. You are a human being — a person made in the image of God — not a branded product that can fit neatly within a two-word Pinterest search category.
Though it is seductive, social engineering cannot destroy men and women's pursuit of real belonging and purpose. Identity cannot be bought.
Liana Gordan is a student at Tyndale University pursuing a degree in philosophy. She makes political and cultural content on Instagram and TikTok. Liana can be found on Instagram @llianagordan.
