Is there something to this or am I just crazy?
Men, in the corporate, business, consumer world, rebel against the meaninglessness of their existence. As much as most humans like to believe otherwise, we are still animals. We still have animal instincts and desires. And so we take men, who (as a historically stereotypical whole) used to hunt things and kill things and build things where there were no things, and we dress them up and put a decorative noose around their necks, and tell them to sit in a chair and stare at a screen and push buttons all day. Men, especially in a country built up by pioneers and cowboys, get lost in this process. They become drones and they live for all the wrong reasons. They buy things, because that's what they're supposed to do with the money they earn in their well-paying, emasculating, new roles in modern society. And sometimes they wake up, they steal money and beat up the copier, they kill a bunch of people, they blow up the financial district, they find out they're the chosen one and they alone can stop the aliens that are using human beings as an energy source...
The heroes, and anti-heroes, of our favorite stories of revolt against the corporate work force are men. These rebels are the cowboys of our generation. They are our new definition of badass. This idea isn't anything new. Superheroes generally come from humble origins. That's why we love them. They represent an ideal form of ourselves. And if we are now defined by our corporate jobs, then that too must be the birthplace of our beloved modern heroes.
But something strange happened over the last fifty years. Women rebelled against their traditional roles in society. Now they're not so much at home tidying up the castle and preparing the feast. They're actually right there in the next cubicle.
...Corporate accounts payable NINA speaking. JUST a moment. Corporate accounts payable NINA speaking. JUST a moment. Corporate accounts payable NINA speaking. JUST a moment...
For the purposes of this rant, I am not going to dwell on how women haven't reached equality yet. We're getting close, but there is still a world of discrimination that takes place as women continue to join the workforce. Women now represent a huge number of starting employees within corporations, but still represent a very miniscule amount of CEO's and other high-up, exalted positions. We all know this. But, for our purposes, let's just say that women are there.
So why aren't they a part of the rebellion?
Men in the business world seem to have been forced into their careers, by society and family and the need to provide. Maybe they'd secretly rather be doing something else, but business is the world they were raised to know and become a part of.
Women seem to be choosing to join the business world. Maybe they could have married well and raised kids full time, or they could have gone into a more traditionally acceptable field like teaching or nursing. For a long time, the business world didn't want them in any positions but secretaries (although I'm sure they wanted their secretaries in all kinds of positions). Women had to fight to be where they are now. And while today they are welcome to hold positions on equal footing with men, they are often still perceived as intruders. Sometimes men perceive them this way, sometimes women perceive themselves this way. No matter how it starts, both parties end up believing it.
So are women left out of the revolution because they are still striving to be a part of the world that men are beginning to run from? If all the men woke up to find their inner cowboys, would the women be left to become the mindless drones that keep our economy running?
Do women even risk falling into the trap of mindlessness as employment? Women are raised to be emotional. It's not only acceptable, it's expected. We are but slaves to our constantly fluctuating hormones. We have feelings, all the time, about everything we do. Men are raised to turn most of those feelings off. Men are not supposed to go home and cry because their boss was rude to them. Men are not supposed to take comfort in ice cream and shoe shopping after a rough day at the office. Is it possible that women have the ability to find meaning in meaningless work, or are better conditioned to deal with the stresses of futility?
In this capitalist society, our heroes are not only revolting against the production side of the business world, but also against the consumer side. Cozy, IKEA furnished apartments are destroyed in exchange for run down houses in the middle of nowhere. Desk jobs are abandoned for construction work. Suits and ties are traded in for threadbare clothes without tags or brand names. The men's consumer rebellion is a heroic story of riches to rags.
This idea works because consumerism still seems somehow unnatural for men. Solid American men never needed anything but an old pair of blue jeans and maybe an axe. But now producers and advertisers, who have for so long preyed upon women's self-esteem issues in order to hock their goods, have found a whole new market in a previously untapped gender. Metrosexual men are springing up everywhere, demanding equal time in the bathroom and equal counter space for their newly purchased products. Patrick Bateman uses first a water-activated gel cleanser, then a honey-almond body scrub, and on the face an exfoliating gel scrub. Tyler Durden makes fancy, delicate soaps out of human fat. Male consumers of both literature and toiletries suddenly feel uneasy about their new collection of creamy, scented goo.
A more widespread form of male consumerism can be found in technology. It's not enough anymore for a successful man to simply have a nice car. Real men have gadgets. They have self-cleaning, self-propelled, self-timed, self-analyzing thingamajigs. They have digitalinternetgpscameravideoipodphones. But these too are unnatural; these too are nooses. They serve to tie men down to things and to places and to people. They give them all the opportunity in the world to communicate, which is exactly the thing men have been claiming they're no good at since the dawn of time. Our new heroes must also abandon their fancy, delicate little machines. They must revert to their earliest, most traditional, primitive form of male communication: violence.
Overall, American women have also been omitted, or have omitted themselves, from the consumer revolution. While there are definitely some women who don't buy into the race to consume, these radicals are by far the minority. In the marketplace, unlike the office, it is men who find themselves as the new entrants, and women who remain the seasoned old pros. As caregivers over a few thousand of years of patriarchal societies, women have been doing the shopping for as long as there have been places to shop. And so, for as long as there has been a general acceptance of female literacy, women have been the target of a great deal of advertising. Women's lib plus a few decades is not enough to clear us of this history.
Advertising appeals to people's needs (dude named Maslow arranged these needs in a hierarchy that's somehow applicable in every single college course). People will generally find ways to fulfill their physiological needs (hunger, thirst) and safety needs (security, protection) without much coaxing (most people will eat, drink, and find a place to live without anyone telling them they have to). So it seems like most advertising appeals to less basic needs. Marketing often focuses on people's social needs (sense of belonging, love) and esteem needs (self-esteem, recognition, status). How many ads strive to make you feel terrible about yourself and then present you with the cure for your newly discovered problem, all in less than thirty seconds?
As far as we've come, for men, size still matters: the bigger the bank account, the better the catch. Buying stuff doesn't make you rich, but owning certain stuff can let everyone else know that you're rich. Men will want to be you, women will want to be with you. Much of men's advertising goes something like that.
For women, more than ever and even in the workplace, value continues to be based on appearance. Women want status too, but to get status - whether it's by landing the best man or landing the best job - they need to look good doing it. It's not that women aren't ever valued for their intelligence; it's just that a smart, sexy woman is generally considered more useful to society than a smart, dowdy one.
So, to recap and oversimplify:
Men's consumption = purchases that improve their possessions and surroundings.
Women's consumption = purchases that improve their physical appearance.
So, to move forward:
Men who rebel against consumerism (their stuff) are rewarded with independence and are considered manly, modern heroes.
Women who rebel against consumerism (their looks) are ignored and branded with the most heinous "F word" of all: Feminist.
Now, the purpose of this whole spiel was to find out why women aren’t rebelling against corporate jobs and consumerism in works of fiction. The answer to that is easy. It’s because nobody’s writing about it. But why isn’t anybody writing about it? We have all these novels and films about the revolution of the modern male. We have these stories, because somewhere, deep down, the modern male population really does want to rebel. If we don’t have stories like this about women, maybe it’s because there isn't a need for them yet. So why is it that men want to rebel against their empty corporate jobs and their consumer driven lives, but women don’t?
I'm sure that there are actually plenty of good stories out there about business women. Clockwatchers is one of them. It grossed $444,354 in theatres, and you may be able to catch it once every five years on IFC. I don't actually know of any others, but assuming they exist, they've never come close to a level of blockbuster or best seller or even cult following.
There are also a whole gaggle of women in our world that are all consumption and no contribution. Paris Hilton and her consistently less attractive BFF's. The Real Housewives of Everywhere. Nobody's really sure if more of America is mocking them or idolizing them. Either way, we can't stop hearing about their fabulously vacant lives. They have something that men aren't permitted to have - all of the wealth and none of the responsibility. There are men who live like that, but they are not the subject of any attention or praise. Usually in fiction these lazy rich men are just misunderstood, and they fall in love with a beautiful poor girl who is finally able to teach them the value of an honest day's work. Women, on the other hand, can actually earn respect by lavishly spending someone else's earnings.
Has consumerism been so much further engrained into women's lives that the thought of revolution has never occurred to the majority of them?
Were two revolutions in the last century enough for a while? Should women just be thankful for how far they've come and shut up already?
Are the majority of women "balancing" work life and home life, and does that provide them with enough meaning in life to be content?
Don't you think corporate accounts payable Nina has to be pretty fucking miserable?
Are we finally at a point in history for the long overdue revolt of the middle-to-upper-class mostly-white male?