Sex, Gender, Becoming - PULP

Shopping for gender 79
Harrods and Selfridges; appropriate shopping behaviour is implicated
as one of the ways by which familial, gender, and social identity are
enacted in society.
The gender of shopping changed after World War II when men started
to participate in the shopping experience, although this was often
limited to the purchasing of ‘technical’ products for the home. 110 Men
now do more shopping than ever before, mainly because they are
marrying later and have to look after themselves. 111 The rise of new
sexual cultures since the 1980s has also led to the increase of male
shoppers and their symbolic entry into so-called ‘ornamental culture’
usually aligned with femininity. 112 The rise of men as consumers of
mall culture is represented by figures such as the ‘metrosexual’, a
heterosexual urban man who adopts a tasteful lifestyle and is in touch
with his feminine side. 113 This is underlined by Underhill’s remark
‘[s]hopping is still and always will be meant mostly for females. ...
When men shop, they are engaging in what is inherently a female
activity’. 114
What is interesting is that although advertising images of men as
consumers of ‘feminised’ products of ornamental culture such as face
cream and hair dye are relatively common, representations of men in
the act of shopping are very rare. One of the few South African print
advertisements shows a well-dressed man with a Sandton City
shopping bag (2004). He is seen from behind and consequently
rendered anonymous in a manner reminiscent of how females have
traditionally been represented. But the visual representation of
shopping in South Africa is still overwhelmingly gendered in favour of
women. This not only sanctions the gendered nature of shopping, but
also supports Lefebvre’s conviction that women are commodified and
used metaphorically to stimulate desire in abstract space: they are
thus both consumers and consumed. 115
Women are either represented on their own (Brooklyn Mall, 2004),
with another woman (Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, 2003), or with
a daughter (The Mall of Rosebank, 2003; Woodlands Boulevard, 2005),
specifically in advertisements for upmarket malls that are geared to
the desires of the so-called woman of leisure. Depictions of couples
engaged in shopping are rare (Figure 3), which is not surprising in
terms of findings by Underhill that show that women who shop with a
110 Lancaster (n 65 above) 202.
111
Underhill (n 9 above) 100.
112 Miller (n 4 above) 13; S Faludi Stiffed. The betrayal of the modern man (1999).
113 It is interesting that the South African artist Peet Pienaar, who investigates the
construction of masculinity in many of his artworks, often enacts performance art
in the space of the mall, thereby interrogating the slippage in fixed signifiers
regarding male identity today.
114
Underhill (n 9 above) 113.
115 Lefebvre (n 24 above) 309-310.