Gendered Consumers/Engendering Consumerism

The toys marked to young males satisfy a strong need for identification that has been created by the media through its idolizing of sport figures and the overindulgence lifestyles portrayed in popular television.

My subject for this assignment is a 12 year old white male of the upper class that resides in a well known wealthy beach town in my area. My subject, Sean, was introduced to me through my sister, who frequently baby-sits for Sean and his other siblings. Sean attends an expensive, private Catholic grammar school and is involved in several sports. He was happy to help me out with my assignment, being that it had to do with shopping! Sean has all the toys a young male could ever want, therefore he more or less told me what toys interested him the most.

Sean informs me that after school he likes to play sports, hang out with his friends, and watch television. His favorite shows are Rob and Big and MTV Cribs. Being quite familiar with both shows, it was easily to see how they could possible influence a young person. Rob and Big shows the life of a rich entrepreneur skateboarder that has a luxurious house and lavish lifestyle, shown weekly on MTV. Rob, a young white male, goes around buying excessive amounts of items, cars, lottery tickets, and even toys! While MTV Cribs just merely shows the enormous households of celebrities and how many luxury cars they have sitting in their driveways. “Our notions of what is adequate, necessary, or luxurious are shaped by the larger social context.”(Schor 187) These shows have created a need to consume and collect these items in order to develop a glorified, superior status that has spread into our society.

“Because television shows are so heavily skewed to the lifestyles of the rich and upper middle class, they inflate the viewers’ perceptions of what others have, and by extension what is worth acquiring- what one must have in order to avoid being out of it.”(Schor 185) These shows have clearly influenced Sean and his needs as a young man. Forget toys, Sean has moved onto bigger and better needs such has the new I-Phone, a laptop, and what kind of a car he wants when he gets his license, in 5 short years. Sean also expressed interest in a new Jason Giambi jersey, the once steroid abusing first baseman of the New York Yankees. Sean expressed interest in these items because, well, he needs them and likes them, and that all of his friends have them.

“Males use sports as a terrain of fantasy identification, in which they feel empowered as “their” team or star triumphs. Such sports events also generate a form of community, currently being lost in the privatized media and consumer culture of our time.”(Kellner 16) When Sean expressed his interested in a new baseball jersey, I went off on a bit of a tangent about sports with Sean. I asked him why he liked watching sports and it seemed as if he liked them because of his dad, and that his entire family were fans of the teams that he enjoying rooting for. It’s the overwhelming need to apart of a community and to adhere to the rules and wants of the community that sport exploit and build upon.

When I went online shopping for Sean, nothing that he requested was found in the toys selected for his age group on Amazon.com. Sean and his peers are ahead of the pack. It’s actually quite alarming to think that this young man has many of the same needs and concerns of most of the of males of my own age. “In order to fully grasp the nature and effects of media culture, one needs to develop methods to analyze the full range of its meanings and effects.”(Kellner 13) We have to start changing the ways individuals are portrayed and, more importantly, awarded and gloried in the media. Our embedded needs to identify ourselves with those that our seen extraordinary and superior has affected young males and has clearly influenced their needs as consumers.