In his article, Fiske mentions “earning as typically masculine and spending as typically feminine; Women as consumers and men as producers”. Relating to this notion, I found during my shopping trip to the nearest mall that there were a majority of women present at the shopping mall, as compared to men. Some has young children with them, while some were students (again, more females). Since I went on Friday between 2-4 PM, I was assuming that the most women present at the mall could have been housewives, who have come to shop, while their husbands are at work earning money for them and their family. This situation implies that Fiske’s theory about men being producers and women being the consumers holds true to some extent and portrays “patriarchal capitalism”. Other possibilities would be that of single mothers and/or working mothers, who had come to shop, but were not dependant on their husbands for income or spendings. I also observed some people, men and women, including seniors, of which some were married couples that seemed to be “hanging out” or drink coffee in the food court, while some were simply window shopping.
The article also mentions that “middle-class” shops tend to display more things in their windows and that the entire store is visible from outside. However, the “high-class” stores aim to display “exclusiveness” and unique styles, due to which their window displays have limited things and the entire store is not visible from the outside. The local mall I went to is small and has a majority of the stores for the lower-to-middle class, which is why almost every store had its products “pushed out” and widely displayed in windows. Being a female, I displayed conformity to my gender stereotypes and therefore, was tempted to buy many things, which also kept distracting me from my real purpose of going to the mall (for this assignment, of course).
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