These phrases are the hallmark of my social media feeds. Every time I open TikTok or Instagram, I get a veritable Trojan Horse of advertisement. There is always a new thing to buy, peddled by a skinny, attractive girl who really, really seems to love the product (and of course, the sponsorship money). Every new product is the “holy grail” of beauty; things you need to be better, prettier and more special. You’re probably thinking “Well gosh Zazie, bold of you to point this out when I saw you in a new pair of Lululemon leggings last week.” And you’re right! Despite my awareness of being, in a sense, duped by these people, I still buy all of these things. After all, I want to be better, prettier and more special! I am only human. All I can say is that it’s really damn expensive to keep up with being an “it girl” in today’s world… and this got me thinking. My experience as a woman has always been tied to consumption, and I don’t think that’s an accident.

The bond between womanhood and consumerism started long before the dawn of modern social media. In the twentieth century, consumer culture grew increasingly intertwined with women. Picture this: It’s the early 1900s and American producers have a problem. We industrialized well. So well in fact that nearly 40% of American factory production didn’t have buyers. This was a major catalyst for the growth of American consumerism — to keep up with the growth of their production, they had to figure out who was going to buy their goods. Mrs. Consumer, a term coined by Christine Fredrick, would be the solution. A belief among middle and upper class Americans developed around this time that American women were a liberated force that controlled a household’s spending power with money pouring in from her toiling husband. In one of the first-ever consumer study efforts, Ms. Frederick publishes a book entitled “Selling Mrs. Consumer”, a comprehensive guide for advertisers on how to target women in their marketing. All of a sudden, Mrs. Consumer is convincing her husband to buy a brand new Model T Ford and new linens and little Jack and Jane some darling clothes… but what now? There are only so many tablecloths a woman can buy! What desire could they fill that would never be satisfied? 

Youth and beauty were the answers. The inability to achieve perfection was added to the laundry list of things for women to feel ashamed of. Your skin is too wrinkly, your hair is too thin and dry, your teeth aren’t white enough, and your waist should be smaller. Newspaper and radio advertising proliferated the idea that women needed to be better. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the exact same narrative women are constantly bombarded with today. Now, we continue to buy retinol, hair masks and white strips.

Skinny, young and beautiful became what everyone wanted to be, or at least they thought they did. The 1950s targeted women even more in the market. Antoinette Donnelly, a columnist at the Chicago Tribune, wrote a special column called “Beauty Hints,” giving women the latest and greatest advice on health and beauty. It was an instant hit with American women. This column was later bought out by a soap manufacturer eager to capture the trust of these women and ultimately use the rapport of Donnely’s work to sell more products. Every commodity you could think of was packaged as a way to make you more desirable as a woman. Even General Electric ran a campaign for their colored light bulbs targeted at women. In a clever campaign, they put Arelene Dahl’s face on their ads (she was a beauty icon at the time), and claimed that “Proper lighting can do much toward making or breaking a beauty reputation, yet many women ignore this factor completely.” From every angle and every sector, women were being told that they could only measure up if they bought more.

At the turn of the century, being skinny triumphed as the popular new beauty standard for women. Paris Hilton and Kate Moss championed the movement to make skinny the standard. Once again, advertisers repositioned themselves to capitalize on women’s bodies. Just look at the rise of the Special K diet or Slimfast. No wonder eating disorder rates skyrocketed from 2000-2009. Not only was skinny seen as healthy, but it was viewed as the only way to be happy, to be fulfilled. This is not unlike what we see today. Ozempic, a drug made for diabetics that has been co-opted by celebrities and regular women alike for weight loss. In the third quarter, the drug company made nearly $3.3 billion in sales. Women continue to pour millions of dollars into the health and beauty market, which is projected to reach nearly $700 billion by 2026. As time has passed, companies and advertisers have only found more ways to exploit their consumers, and more problems to create for them. 

With so many powerful and intricate advertising tactics being used, it can be difficult to navigate the world of consumerism as a young woman. Expressing yourself through the things you choose to buy is OK, and at the end of the day, trends can be really fun. Looking at the aggressive style of modern advertising, it is no wonder that this can be such a difficult line to walk. Wisdom of the crowds, a popular tenet of advertising to a female demographic, relies on FOMO, or fear of missing out. If a young woman can be shown that everyone else has it, and everyone else likes it, the feeling will begin to arise that she needs to have it too to measure up. A similar concept, social proof, operates when someone feels that they may not know the correct mode of behavior or choice, so they look to peers to determine the right course of action. This is the foundation of how targeted marketing, especially what we see on TikTok, functions. If you’re trying to measure up and not sure how, Alix Earle, Matilda Djerf, and the many other beautiful influencers on the app seem to be a good place to start. How do you follow them? You buy what they do. As you go forward as a consumer and woman, I would encourage women to keep these things in mind.

This is not all to say that you need to ditch your Lulu leggings and Uggs—I know I certainly won’t be doing so—but practicing mindfulness about why we feel the desire to buy can be a step in the right direction towards more conscious and empowered consumerism. Be aware of the underlying emotions that you feel might be driving your purchases, and remember that advertisers are banking on your need to measure up to the women around you. Go forth and buy whatever you’d like, but remember that many of the insecurities you feel you need to fix have been manufactured.