Vanity: 21st Century Selves

C. Tanner, J. Maher, S. Fraser

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349323050, 9780230272187
• eBook ISBN: 9781137308504
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Social Sciences

What role does 'vanity' play in the lives of 21st century subjects? Exploring a range of fields including public health, information technology, media studies and feminist approaches to the body and beauty, this book offers a broad analysis of how 'vanity' shapes contemporary Western societies and its understandings of selfhood.

1

Modern Vanity: Consumption, the Body Beautiful and the New Political Subject

According to Sander Gilman, the rise of Enlightenment reason brought with it a new imperative – self-improvement:

You can make yourself happy through being able to act in the world. This was mirrored in the rise of modern notions of the citizen as well as the revolutionary potential of the individual [...] ‘Sapere Aude!’ wrote Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), ‘“Dare to use your own reason” – is the motto of the Enlightenment.’ The ability to remake one’s self is the heart of the matter. The Enlightenment self-remaking took place in public and was dependent on being ‘seen’ by others as transformed. This extended to the shaping of the body, even within the world of fashion.

(Gilman, 1999, p. 18)

Enlightenment thinking, Gilman argues, made consumer practices aimed at self-improvement through the appearance virtuous rather than vain, even potentially revolutionary. In this book, we are interested in how vanity became a technology of self through the contemporary consumer imperative of self-improvement. In the chapters that follow we examine key sites of vanity for late modern neoliberal subjects – health, beauty and fitness, anti-ageing, reality television and the internet. First we explore how vanity is assigned to contemporary consumers as both a desirable and a dangerous trait. We ask how vanity informs understandings of contemporary subjects and their practices of consumption. We consider recent examples of critical approaches to consumer culture, consumer studies and market research before turning to older references to vanity in literature and the arts. In so doing we map the mobility of investments in vanity, as at once moral and immoral, trivial and significant, with respect to broader debates about consumption and self-improvement.

To provide the necessary context for present-day understandings of vanity, this chapter examines the rise of the modern consumer at the turn of the twentieth century. Along with the advent of mechanised manufacturing, the production of cheap goods, and advances in visual technologies came new forms of self-production and public visibility. It was thus at this time that recognisably modern consumer cultures emerged, coalescing with the Enlightenment project of self-improvement, undertaken in spectacular fashion. Modernity was mapped onto gendered bodies in ways that transformed those bodies and, in so doing, the meaning of self-regard, or vanity, itself. As bodies came to figure in new ways as expressions of Enlightenment reason (shaped by nascent physical, fashion and beauty cultures), ideal bodies were put on public display, producing new ‘good’ vanities of the self. To explore the significance of these developments, we draw on a range of contemporary historical sources produced in the period 1900–10, including women’s magazines, journals, newspapers, promotional material, books and parliamentary debates. We thereby demonstrate how early twentieth-century modernity created new opportunities for self-transformation for proper subjects. In particular, we look at two influential movements during this period: Eugen Sandow’s physical culture movement, and the women’s suffrage movement. Examining these two phenomena in the broader context of modernity, we argue that consumer practices, always open to criticism as trivial and narcissistic, were also integral to purportedly virtuous twentieth-century projects of self-improvement.

In almost all of their forms, Western projects of self-improvement demand engagement with consumer cultures. As this chapter will show, these processes and practices of self-improvement have long been accompanied by ambivalence. Where does the modern, self-transforming subject stand in relation to vanity? Are practices of self-improvement morally compulsory, and in that sense profound, or are they self-indulgent and thus the opposite of profound: facile and trivial? As we argue, vanity plays both an explicit and implicit role in the range of value-laden ways in which consumers are understood.

In contemporary Western societies, consumer practices are endlessly debated. Academics, politicians, economists, environmentalists, journalists, policymakers and social commentators all have a stake in consumer culture, its origins, drivers and outcomes. Psychologists research the drives and behaviours of consumers (Dittmar, 1992; Dittmar, Beattie and Friese, 1996; Hanley and Wilhelm, 1992). Cultural theorists comment on the relationship between late modern or postmodern culture and modes of consumption, lifestyles and identities (Featherstone, 1991; Gabriel and Lang, 1995, p. 1; Lunt and Livingstone, 1992). Market researchers analyse the motivations and decisions of consumers in order to better understand and influence their behaviours (O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy, 2007; Wang and Waller, 2006; Watchravesringkan, 2008). This preoccupation with the consumer is an illustration of the primacy of this figure in all our institutions and daily practices. As Don Slater argues:

Many of our questions about what form we take as modern subjects, about how to understand the very relation between the everyday world and the public space, about our moral and social value, about our privacy and power of disposal over our lives, about ‘who we are’ – many of these questions are taken up in relation to consumption and our social status as a rather new thing called a ‘consumer’: we see ourselves as people who ‘choose’, who are inescapably ‘free’ and self-managing, who make decisions about who we are or want to be and use purchased goods, services and experiences to carry out these identity projects.

(Slater, 1997, p. 5)

Slater notes that the contemporary consumer goes hand in hand with neoliberalism’s positivist model of subjecthood, which assumes and indeed celebrates an autonomous, empowered consumer operating in a free market. This subject is driven by self-interest, and acts with free will and without constraint in competition with other consumers (Brown, 1995). In this individualistic model, consumer choice is key to collective progress and economic advancement in that individual success is understood to underpin collective good. It is these autonomous consumers who, with a few dollars in their pockets or on their credit cards, are offered infinite opportunities to remake themselves in the world.

If neoliberalism and consumer culture both allow and require the remaking of the self, they also produce discourses that validate these projects. It is in this way that the moral or ethical basis for transformation via consumption is established. Contemporary consumers, granted the freedom to buy comfort and happiness, are simultaneously rendered morally responsible for this freedom. Most recently, they have been given the opportunity to transform themselves and to save the world ‘one purchase at a time’. This is evident in the recent rise of the ‘green consumer’, prompted, in part, by the threat of climate change. Popular guides to green beauty practices, yoga, meditation, organic diets, farmers markets and fair-trade fashion fill the pages of e-books, websites and the shelves at newsagents and bookstores. Celebrities devoted to ethical consumer lifestyles guide lesser mortals through the landscape of products on offer, from ‘eco undies’ to ‘bamboo washcloths’. Well known for her bimbo persona in the movie Clueless, actress Alicia Silverstone exemplifies this trend. Her book The Kind Diet: A simple guide to feeling great, losing weight and saving the planet (Silverstone, 2011) and her website ‘The Kind Life’ advise fans on ‘living your healthiest and happiest life to the fullest, while taking care of mama Earth at the same time!’ Ironically, advanced capitalist commercial culture has become a centre for the trade of ethical consumer practices and environmentally friendly products. As Norman Myers and Jennifer Kent explain, ‘all too often [...] today’s headlong consumption – whether in new consumer countries or, more pertinently, in the long-rich countries – means environmental problems such as grand scale pollution, waste mountains, energy shortages, land degradation, water deficits, even climate upheavals’ (2004, p. 4). The rise of the ‘green consumer’ is arguably one answer to what Myers and Kent describe as ‘the biggest challenge ahead’ for late modern capitalist economies: ‘[H]ow to achieve ever-greater consumption – or, better consumption of alternative sorts – without grossly depleting the environmental underpinnings of our economies’ (2004, p. 7).

Within this debate about green consumption lies an important tension for contemporary consumer culture. Can consumption really be ethical when, as some argue, it is the scale and voraciousness of consumer culture itself that underlies many of Western society’s social, health and environmental ills? As Yiannis Gabriel and Tim Lang (1995) argue, depictions of consumers vary significantly:

The consumer is not merely an object of theorizing, but almost invariably a central character from a story; now a hero or a heroine, now a victim, now a villain, now a fool, but always central. In some stories consumers feature as sovereign, deciding the fate of products and corporations at a whim, in others they feature as duped victims, manipulated by producers, advertisers and image-makers. In some, they feature as callous villains, indifferent to the plight of the planet or those less fortunate than themselves, in others as addicts, pursuing a chimera that only reinforces despair.

(1995, p. 2)

Consumers are, it seems, variously empowered and vulnerable, ethical and self-interested, innocent and corrupt. Vanity is implicitly and explicitly reconfigured in accordance with these constructions. In market research, for instance, vanity features as both an important character trait and a potential flaw in consumers. ‘Vanity scales’ are used to examine the relationships between ‘psychological predisposition towards vanity, marketing practices, and body-altering behaviour’ (Netemeyer, Burton and Lichtenstein, 1995, p. 613). In this literature, consumer vanity is defined as:

1) ‘Physical vanity: an excessive concern for, and/or positive (and perhaps inflated) view of, one’s physical appearance.’ And 2) ‘Achievement vanity: an excessive concern for, and/or a positive (and perhaps inflated) view of, one’s personal achievements’.

(Netemeyer, Burton and Lichtenstein, 1995, p. 612)

As Watchravesringkan explains, these two aspects of the ‘vanity concept’ as defined by Netemeyer et al. have positive social effects:

[P]hysical appearance and personal achievement [...] tend to elicit positive impressions upon initial social contact and help individuals achieve greater social acceptance (Kleck et al., 1974), exert greater social influence (Debevec et al., 1986), enhance credibility (Ohanian, 1991) and signal greater success (Dickey-Bryant et al., 1985).

(2008, p. 104)

However, even in consumer research vanity is not solely a good. Both ‘normal’ and excessive or ‘compulsive’ consumption are linked to vanity, narcissism and self-regard (Durvasula and Lyonski, 2010; Wang and Waller, 2006; Workman and Lee, 2011). Richard Netemeyer poses a number of questions with respect to the role of advertisers and marketers in managing the potentially negative effects of these associations:

(1) Does the consumption-oriented society we live in promote things like vanity to the point that consumers engage in unhealthy or addictive behaviours? And, if so, (2) do advertisers and marketers in general have a social responsibility related to the promotion of vanity?

(1995, p. 623)

The meaning of vanity thus proves to be highly mobile when discussed in the context of consumption, as we demonstrate in the chapters that follow (on fitness products and services, anti-ageing treatments, reality television shows and online communication). Vanity is seen as both a necessary and healthy consumer trait, as well as leading to unhealthy and self-destructive consumer behaviour. As Netemeyer observes, it has been:

[...] suggested that concern for physical attractiveness leads not only to positive consumption behaviours (e.g., exercising and healthier eating habits), but to negative behaviours as well (e.g., addictive behaviours, eating disorders, and numerous elective cosmetic surgeries).

(1995, p. 613)

While commercial narratives of self- and social transformation construct vanity or self-regard as potentially useful and productive, the vanities of late modern subjects also feature in popular dystopic tales of destructive and narcissistic consumption. The following excerpt from a piece written by Raymond Legg to ‘help committed followers of Christ […] train the next generation of pilgrims’ outlines the challenges late modern consumer culture poses to Christian values:

[I]t appears Christians are in need of putting vanity in check now more than ever before. From vanity tables with vanity mirrors to vanity license plates and eVanity.com, society is becoming more and more inundated with it [vanity] and is becoming increasingly fixated on itself because of it. And capitalizing on the propensity for it, the Internet offers staggering access to it in every arena – from having a personal vanity concierge to joining the vanity club for self-affirmation. Singlehandedly, the Internet has created an impulse-driven environment in which being self-absorbed has evolved into an art form.

(Legg, 2010, pp. 49–50)

Echoing Christopher Lasch’s influential popular account of narcissism as a key American problem (Lasch, 1991 [1979]), Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell’s recent bestseller The Narcissism Epidemic (2009) is equally critical of the dangers of consumer cultures. According to Twenge and Campbell, there has been an ‘underlying shift in the American psychology: the relentless rise of narcissism in our culture’ (2009, p. 1). To these authors, the origins of the problem are clear: they relate to an ‘emphasis on vanity which appears in almost every realm of society, the media, the Internet, business and even parenting’ (2009, p. 154). As they put it:

[P]eople are seduced by the increasing emphasis on material wealth, physical appearance, celebrity worship and attention seeking. Standards have shifted, sucking otherwise humble people into the vortex of granite countertops, tricked-out MySpace pages, and plastic surgery.

(2009, pp. 1–2)

According to Twenge and Campbell there is a new standard of vanity – ‘narcissistic vanity’ – ‘where it’s not enough to be beautiful; you have to be hot’ (p. 142). They see celebrity Paris Hilton as exemplifying this new destructive vanity:

Paris Hilton, one of the promoters of ‘hot’ as the ultimate virtue, exemplifies the new vanity. When Paris’s cell was stolen in 2004, it contained picture after picture of [...] herself. Above the sofa in her Hollywood home, Paris has hung a large picture of herself. And why not, given how much time and money she has spent on her appearance? Paris regularly applies self-tanner, uses hair extensions, whitens her teeth, and even wears blue contacts over her brown eyes, all recent innovations in the science of looking good. ‘One of my heroes is Barbie,’ Paris says. ‘She may not do anything, but she looks great doing it’.

(p. 143)

Twenge and Campbell further argue that excessive vanity is also evident in the ‘delusional thinking’ that ‘leads some people to become obese (“I’m fine – I don’t need to lose weight”)’ (p. 157). Vanity, it seems, is around every corner. Hilton’s labour-intensive attention to her body and self-presentation (which ironically contrasts with her statement about Barbie’s inactivity) is condemned, but so is insufficient attention to maintaining appropriate body size and weight. Twenge and Campbell’s answer is moderation: appropriate practices of self-improvement, for example, through ‘exercise and eating right’ (p. 4).

In these accounts, vanity is both reviled and cherished. Consumers can be criticised and admired in equal parts for using commodities and purchasing goods and services for the purpose of self-transformation and self-production. Clearly, late modern consumers must navigate conflicting and ambiguous judgements about what constitutes moral and worthwhile consumption. As Gabriel and Lang point out, ‘consumers are said to dictate production; to fuel innovation; to be creating new service sectors in advanced economies; to be driving modern politics; to have it in their power to save the environment and protect the future of the planet’ (1995, p. 1). Yet in bearing such great responsibility, they are also open to much criticism. Consumers are accused, at times somewhat dramatically, of displaying the narcissistic symptoms of an immoral system fuelled by materialism, vanity and self-entitlement (Lasch, 1991 [1979]; Twenge and Campbell, 2009). Fake breasts and Facebook represent the dangerous superficiality of contemporary consumer culture as subjects move towards trivial and dangerously narcissistic forms of vanity. At the same time, as the following chapters demonstrate, the very same imperatives fuel avowedly proper attendance to bodily improvement and maintenance through practices that enhance fitness and prevent ageing.

Vanity thus moves between necessary projects of self-production and judgements of these same projects as wasteful and excessive. Vain twenty-first-century subjects consume and self-improve in a volatile landscape. As Kim Humphery asserts, ‘at no time in the modern period have social observers and political activists sought to be more evaluative of consumption and material possessions than they are currently’ (2010, p. 17). If contemporary consumption is in equal parts necessary and excessive, responsible and vain, has this always been the case? In the next section we consider the mobility and multiplicity of contemporary definitions and assessments of vanity in light of much older ideas about vanity and consumption.

The vanity of consumption

Religious texts,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Modern Vanity: Consumption, the Body Beautiful and the New Political Subject
• 2 Fitness, ‘Wellbeing’ and the Beauty–Health Nexus
• 3 Anti-Ageing Medicine and the Consumption of Youth
• 4 Enacting ‘Reality’: Fat Shame, Admiration and Reflexivity
• 5 Digital Narcissism: Social Networking, Blogging and the Tethered Self
• Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index