Imagine working your typical 9-5 and finally getting your check by the end of the month. After paying your bills and groceries, there is something, almost like self-care, in going into a shop just because the mannequin had something you really liked. Maybe a pair of shoes that are perfect for special occasions or a shirt you’ve been eyeing all season. Depending on your income, maybe you can splurge a little more and go into a whole shopping spree where you come out with your hands full of bags that you fill the car with.
Now this scenario would be normal and even healthy.
What wouldn’t be healthy is having a constant need to consume. That would be shopping addiction: a most serious and complicated illness where the patient feels an overwhelming urge to spend and obtain the new shiny thing.
Shopping addiction might come in many shapes and forms, but commonly, shopaholism in Western media is related to the fashion industry. While most movies and series critique overconsumption and the vapid nature of the “shop ‘til you drop” mentality, the truth is, in a capitalist world, hyperconsumerism is not only glamorized, but also promoted.
The fabulous state of the fashionable self
“Shopping is my cardio.”
Said Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, while probably sporting $400 Manolo Blahniks, and an almost empty wallet.
How else do we portray shopping addicts in the media, if not by dressing them in expensive, iconic outfits that silently scream to the viewer, “you can’t afford this”? Fashion is an important part of individuality, as it’s one of the most accessible ways to express ourselves and communicate personal values without speaking. Shopping, then, becomes a kind of ritual, a means through which we acquire the language of style to speak nonverbally. Shopping becomes a way of performing our sense of self.
We engage in a kind of performance each time we dress, revealing the inner workings of our mind through our shopping habits. Clothing and other consumer goods become forms of cultural currency which we use to express our identity within a social group.
Rebecca Bloomwood from Confessions of a Shopaholic introduces herself as a desperate participant of this ritualistic behavior, with 12 credit cards paying for her impulse buying. In her case, shopping gets justified by an overwhelming urge to perform, to express herself, but the self she projects is ultimately that of an active consumer. Her fashion choices express more of an incoherent mixture of designer, revealing a psyche shaped less by style and more by the compulsion to purchase. In the end, the swipe of her credit card becomes nut just a habit, but a defining feature of her personality.
But in reality, Rebecca doesn’t realize that her urge to spend is a problem until the consequences of her addiction hit her head-on.
Both she and Carrie express themselves through fashion, despite their unstable financial states, highlighting one of the most literal consequences of shopping addiction: its impact on their pockets. We see Carrie having little to no savings and Rebecca accumulating severe debt, but that won’t stop them from purchasing whatever they want. Still, the media doesn’t always portray shopping addiction in a negative light.
Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009)
The glamour of consumption and class performance
Cher Horowitz from Clueless or Barbie from Barbie in the Dreamhouse have what we could call by the media standard a dream closet, and a dream closet is no less than the possession of many, many clothes that range from fabulous to more fabulous. The consumption becomes a status symbol for social navigation, and unlike Carrie and Rebecca, these characters have the financial access to these capitalist fantasies.
According to Simmel, the inner workings of fashion involve the expression of social class. Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen from Gossip Girl are born into luxury—opulence is their birthright. The soap opera nature of the show glamorizes the interests of the rich, and in doing so, presents the attitudes and lifestyles of the upper class as something desirable, even aspirational.
As a result, this kind of media lacks any real criticism of hyperconsumption, instead linking it to affluence. In other words, buying an overwhelming amount of fashionable clothing—so much that one doesn’t know what to do with it—is portrayed as a status symbol rather than a problem, largely because this behavior is never met with consequences.
It’s a girl, girl, girl world
As you may have noticed, these shopaholics are all women. Sure, there may be shopaholic male characters out there, but the truth is, the shopaholic trope is heavily gendered. The media frames shopaholism not just as a female-only problem, but also an inherent feature of femininity.
While there isn’t much research that correlates women as particularly more keen to overspend than men, media narratives often suggest otherwise. Women are frequently portrayed as more emotional and more likely to spend money on frivolous items, a kind of framing which reinforces the idea that femininity is inherently linked to the overconsumption of unnecessary goods—especially fashion—an assumption rotten in heteronormative stereotypes. In contrast, male spending habits on things like cars or watches are often praised and described in more forgiving terms, framed as savvy investments or markers of status, while purchases like shoes and clothing are dismissed as shallow or excessive.
Shopaholism is, as a result, labeled as a distinctly female trait. According to the media, particularly the ones targeted at women, women are natural overspenders and more inclined to shop. The chick flick genre in particular is prevalent with this stereotype, showing at least one shopping montage or the iconic image of a woman carrying plenty of shopping bags; Pretty Woman, Legally Blonde, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Enchanted, Hannah Montana: The Movie include these kinds of scenes.
It could be argued that the reason these scenes are so common in female-oriented media is rooted in postfeminism, the notion that women have already achieved the goals of feminism, now represented through their acquisitive power, particularly since the 80s and 90s. In a capitalist, westernized world where success is equated with purchasing power, the shopaholic trope is meant to evoke female empowerment, even if it’s often trivialized.
Pretty Woman (1990)
I buy, therefore I am
As we’ve seen, under capitalism, consumerism becomes currency to obtain and explore self identity. For example, it’s not enough to be alternative, it’s necessary to consume alternative media, clothes, and trinkets.
The media manages to both criticize and glamorize hyperconsumption. Confessions of a Shopaholic is guilty of this. While it portrays the downsides of shopping addiction, it glamorizes and makes brands attractive, simultaneously romanticizing the act of shopping.
In the end, though it’s a very serious illness, shopaholism gets trivialized and gendered in the media. It’s not taken seriously, more often than not misrepresenting a very real, very complex addiction.
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