Consumerism In No More Miss America

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The emergence of consumerism makes commercial products more divided and specific for different groups. Women are especially targeted because of their purchasing powers and potential market. However, the products that specifically designed for women do not necessarily mean a leap for women to have more freedom or to have more voices heard. The consumerism, or the “sexual sell," aiming at persuading women to buy, merely functions as substitutes for the feeling of emptiness due to deprivation of certain rights. The “sexual sell” is not a liberal progression that frees women but rather a new form of oppression under the consumerism influence that reflects conformity of traditional gender roles. The concept of the “sexual sell” is useful in understanding gender identities and gender inequalities today because instead of forcing the traditional gender roles on women, the “sexual sell” makes women willingly to conform to the gender roles and thus …show more content…

Gender, race, class and sexuality are often interrelated. An inequality problem of gender is often associated with other two factors. In “No More Miss America”, every single finalist in the competition was white. In “Sex Toys after NAFTA”, the author expresses her concern over consumerism and neoliberalism’s influences over purchase of sex toys and racialized stereotypes. For privileged women, they are still constrained by their own culture even though they can purchase luxury sex toys. For black and indigenous women, neither can they afford the price of sex toys nor do they have any means to escape from conservative gender norms (Tyburcz 141). No one is truly “liberated” and the differences in race and class make some of them suffer more. In addition to local Mexican unprivileged women, workers in China that produce sex toys are underpaid and do not benefitted from the sexual sell at

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