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Female shoppers, beware. Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving,
considered one of the biggest shopping days of the year — is lurking
at the end of the month, raising the risk of a postholiday debt hangover. Twenty-three percent of Americans will not pay off
their holiday debt until March or later, equaling $14.6 billion in
interest-accruing debt, according to a 2006 Consumer
Reports survey. More than one-quarter of
Americans use credit cards most often when holiday shopping, contributing
to the $63.6 billion charged on credit cards throughout the shopping
season. Because as much as 75 percent of retailers’
profits accrues during the holiday season, Black Friday represents the
point in time when retailers’ account books shift from red (debt) to
black (profit). But black fades into red when we switch our standpoint to
the consumer’s perspective. The money flowing into cash registers accentuates the
red tide of consumer debt, which is especially toxic for women, whose
bankruptcy filings have increased ninefold in the past 20 years, according
to research published in the Brooklyn Law
Review. It’s not that women are profligate in their
spending, at the holidays or otherwise. Yes, Women’s Wear
Daily may tell us that “yuletide
bling” appeals to multiple generations of women and that
“jewel-encrusted bras, camisoles embellished with feathers and silky
crotch-less panties sold like hot cakes last year.”
This could tempt you to think that women have become
downright hysterical in their spending, but more methodical research tells
us that when it comes to overspending, our society has achieved a rare
gender balance; the two sexes do it to pretty much to the same extent. Instead, overspending during the holidays is a
women’s issue in particular for a very simple reason: Women can
afford it less. That’s because women continue to earn less — 75
cents to the dollar earned by men, on average — and women are also
less likely to have other financial safeguards such as jobs with good
health-care and pension benefits. Much more often than men, women are using consumer
credit to pay for life’s necessities. Retailers, meanwhile, are clearly worried that
spending will not match the double-digit sales gains of the last several
seasons, which gets us to the real warning of the story. In 2006, companies spent a staggering $209.74 billion
on advertising. The results of all that money are, in their immensity,
difficult if not impossible to either avoid or ignore. Advertisers target women because they’re
responsible for about 85 percent of all consumer spending. The constant
buzz of advertising is, as the economist John Kenneth Galbraith once put
it, “relentless propaganda on behalf of goods.”
The array of available goods grows daily, and so
inevitably does the list of what we know we don’t have. This induces
a perpetual state of wanting, and millions of us heed the siren call of
malls, department stores, upscale boutiques, downscale discounters, and
everything in between. It’s all particularly dangerous for women who
head households. Saving a portion of your earnings is an essential element
of long-term financial security, but a recent report in the Survey of
Consumer Finances, says that 53 percent of female household heads spend all
or more than all of their incomes. The dominant media don’t want to focus on the
systemic reasons for women’s financial problems. Instead they focus,
as usual, on self-improvement, running endless how-to articles about ending
impulse spending, making a list and sticking to it, cutting back on your
makeup routine, and finding a less expensive hair salon, and don’t
forget the $64,000 question: Do your finances need a makeover? This individualist focus misses a deeper point: There
is no social policy working to protect people from the aggressive influence
of marketing, and not enough is being done to make sure women have more
workplace equity. Women as individuals and consumers should, of course,
develop habits that get them off the consumer escalator. Read a book, take
a walk, talk to a friend instead of reaching for that credit card. Sure. But there’s more to the story than any one
woman’s individual behavior. For one thing, there’s recent political
history. Over the past 25 years, kicked off by the massive tax cuts of the
Reagan era, income in the United States has been distributed less and less
equally. That has created a huge gulf between the very rich, the posh
well-to-do, and the rest of us. Not only ads but also entertainment programming such
as Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous make people earning $35,000 a year desire the ways
and means of those earning $135,000. Economist and social commentator
Juliet Schor describes the new consumerism as a cycle of “See, want,
borrow, buy.”
So when we think about consumerism as part of social
policy — rather than as a simple set of “free” individual
choices — it becomes obvious that our national fascination with
“more” is being driven by policies designed to reduce public
attention to the values that sustain us as a community. As citizens we value parks, clean energy, recreation,
housing, and the environment, but the share of federal spending devoted to
these public goods has been declining since the beginning of the
conservative attack on government in 1981, when these were 11 percent of
the federal budget. Spending in these areas is now a mere 8.6 percent of
federal spending. Households finding it hard to make monthly home, car,
and credit-card payments are not likely to look fondly on spending to
enhance community life. Funding for health care, parks, public recreation,
elder care, child care, transportation, and education becomes less
palatable. So with that in mind, maybe the best approach to the
day after Thanksgiving this year, rather than rushing around the mall, is
to join anti-consumer, pro-environment activists in Buy Nothing Day. After all, it’s a political campaign season.
With all the time we save by not shopping, we can start looking over the
candidates. Who’s talking about women’s pay and benefits
disparities? Who’s talking about health care, park, public
recreation, child care, transportation, education?
Susan Feiner is professor of women’s studies
and economics at the University of Southern Maine in Portland.
This article appears in Nov 15-21, 2007.
