The Contemporary Consumerist Discourses of Reflexive Identities and Self-Ethos Women in Pakistan

Abstract

The intersection of women and contemporary consumerist discourses regarding self-identity, self-transformation, and self-choice encapsulates cultural ideals of individualism and realizing individual potential. Consumerism, viewed as a "technology of the self," portrays advertisements as agents that urge individuals to embrace liberation. L'Oréal's omnipresent "you're worth it" campaign epitomizes this, linking status and willpower to independence, beauty, and self-direction. However, media advertisements can also confine women within self-imposed boundaries, limiting the development of a reflexive identity. Women become both subjects and objects of consumerism, encouraged to transform themselves in the name of individual choices. This study explores how advertisements subtly constrain women from embracing a self-ethos for genuine self-identity in the contemporary world. The media, by imposing an ethical duty on women to monitor their appearance, maintain a certain body image, and indulge in various cosmetics and treatments, perpetuates a discourse that distances women from genuine individuality. Methodologically, the study employs digital ethnography to scrutinize advertising images as an imagined ideal space of pure choice, where interpretive freedom signifies individuality. Drawing on Giddens' subject-object reciprocity and Foucault's self-technology and self-ethos, the research employs participant observation to analyze the dynamic interplay between social structures and human agency, shaping gendered discourses of consumerism and women's evolving pathways to individuality.