Shopping and Roads

Karen Nguyen

ASA 4

Prof. Maira & Omar

30 May 2017

Fiske and Jordan Response

            In Fiske’s reading, it was interesting to read about how shopping both empowered and confined gender identities. On one side, the system of corporate capitalism restricts women to this role of the consumer that belongs in a private space. This role forms a gender identity of women and feminizes the action of shopping. As the demands of capitalism create a privatized arena for women to possess a role in the patriarchal material system, it communicates women’s roles as caretakers in the nuclear family. This private space mirrors the domestic space expected of women. On the contrary, shopping can be a mode of empowerment for women. Placed into this consumer role, women consumers are able to resist hegemony and challenge their subjection to private space. In Jordan's reading, the most interesting part for me included the theatrics of producing a resistance. The performance and artistic aspect of politics can be used as a tool for resisting Western values. Transforming public spaces to protest and resist is a community-based way for typical people to communicate their needs.