Consumerism

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, dominant codes of masculinity rejected the pleasures of personal consumption. Among the white middle class, productiveness and respectability were core values, and men were expected to be the family's breadwinner, a term that denoted an ideal of mature and hard-working masculinity. This ethos of masculine productivity and self-sacrifice was augmented during the nineteenth century as the self-made man, embodied in the novels of Horatio Alger, Jr., emerged as an influential cultural icon.

Masculine ideals oriented around work and the fulfillment of family needs also pertained to working-class culture. By the end of the century, however, many urban workingmen—both white and African American—were also embracing models of masculinity that privileged personal recreation and stylish display. Making a virtue of flamboyant consumption, these “mashers” and Bowery B'hoys were highly visible figures in urban centers of commercial leisure. More widely, however, consumption related to personal pleasure remained an uncertain territory for men. During the late nineteenth century markedly feminine associations still surrounded consumerism, exemplified by the prominence of the “dandy,” or “dude,” as a stock character in popular humor. Distinguished by his dapper clothes and self-conscious urbanity, he was ridiculed in popular culture as an effete “pussyfoot.” Bachelors—men not bound by provider responsibilities—also were viewed with suspicion and deemed unmanly by middle-class culture.

Nevertheless, by the turn of the century, growing urbanization and the rise of a modern consumer economy were drawing greater numbers of men into cultures founded on consumption. Alongside the working-class mashers, many middle-class men also embraced a culture based on personal consumption, and a network of businesses developed specifically geared to men's consumer interests. At the seamier end of the scale were brothels, blood sports, and other illicit pleasures, but a host of restaurants, barbershops, tobacconists, tailors, bars, and theaters also thrived on the patronage of affluent “men-about-town.” Traditional notions of heterosexual masculinity, however, were still pervasive and dictated that men carefully distance themselves from the feminine connotations of shopping. Therefore, commodities purchased by women were called consumer goods, whereas men's purchases were accorded the more manly label of expenditure.

The 1920s and 1930s

Amid the prosperity of the 1920s, men's involvement in consumerism became more pronounced. The expanding consumer industries brought higher earnings to many workers, a trend heralded in 1914 by the “five-dollar day” introduced at Henry Ford's automobile factories. Combined with the easier availability of consumer credit, this growth in spending power brought a deluge of new consumer goods— including better clothes and new forms of entertainment such as the cinema—within working men's reach. White-collar workers, too, enjoyed higher standards of living, and middle-class suburbs became important markets for cars, household appliances, and other commodities that grew to [Page 107]be symbols of middle-class respectability. For many, this transformation brought a more comfortable way of life, but it also increased the pressures of the breadwinner role and caused many men to overextend themselves financially. Moreover, economic inequality and entrenched racism effectively excluded many men from the consumer boom. During the 1920s the consumer society's benefits were, for example, less accessible to African Americans, Mexican Americans, and men from other minority ethnic groups, a disparity that continued throughout the twentieth century.

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