Thoughts on Black Friday

I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but there is a Target** commercial that recently caught my eye (actually, I don’t watch TV too often, so it caught my boyfriend’s eye, and he showed it to me). It features a pretty middle-aged blonde woman in a sweat suit, high heels, and pearls, completely freaking out over Target’s Black Friday sales. Actually, she’s not just freaking out, she’s preparing. Lifting shopping baskets as if they were weights, doing crunches outside of Target, timing herself wrapping presents, screaming manically over the Target catalogue, racing around the store in high heels, counting down the days—not until Thanksgiving, but until Black Friday.

 

Now, I could get upset with almost every commercial that airs on TV, especially commercials aimed at women, but other people (cough*Sarah Haskins Target Women*cough) have done that 10 million times better than I ever could. (Seriously, watch Sarah Haskin’s Target Women commercials—no relation to the Target stores—they’re hilarious.) There are a few reasons this commercial really gets on my nerves, namely its intense focus on materialism and its stereotypical gendered portrayal of women.

Materialism has always bothered me. I know that sounds stupidly hypocritical given this is a blog centered around style, but I’ll go ahead and own that. In fact, it bothers me how hypocritical I am about this. If I had more money, I would love to buy all my clothes from people I knew, in small, local boutiques where all the clothes are made from organic materials by people who make completely fair wages. I don’t have all the money in the world, and I do fall victim to fast fashion and my consumerist American culture. Guilty as charged, absolutely. It does bother me, as someone who is interested in style and fashion without spending a billion dollars, that consumerism and fashion have to be linked. But this…took it to a whole new level.

The commercial showed a woman placing her own consumerism, materialism, and discount-craziness over her time spent with her family. She counted down the days to Black Friday, not to Thanksgiving (ok, I can write a whole different rant about how crazy Thanksgiving is, but let’s just say for now it’s generally counted on as a day to spend with your family, and leave it at that for the time being…). Black Friday was her real holiday. A holiday that required training, working out, and preparing…for shopping. The commercial told us, as commercials often do, that this is what we should be doing; preparing ourselves for a shopping holiday, spending our time and energy on buying things, not on our families. But it’s not materialism, of course! It’s savings, which makes it ok. These are some of the things I hate about shopping and fashion, and the things that make me feel weird about telling my friends I have this blog; this is the image of me I expect them to see. Fashion obsessed, deal obsessed, crazed, my priorities out of line. I don’t want to be this person, and I don’t want Target telling me this is who all the budget-conscious shoppers out there are.

The LA Times picked up on this push towards Black Friday crazy consumerism the other day, stating, “Black Thursday is now becoming the new Black Friday, as retailers are opening holiday sales on Thanksgiving Day itself. Wal Mart, Toys R Us, Kmart will open [at 10 p.m.] on the night of Thanksgiving while Macy’s Target, Kohls, and Best Buy, among others, will open at midnight. ‘It’s no longer Black Friday, it’s going to be Black Thanksgiving from here on out,’ said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at the NDP Group." Another article states that “About 194,000 people have joined an online petition…begging Target to resist temptation and ‘Save Thanksgiving.’”

Back to the commercial, there’s a big kicker that’s driving me crazy: gender. This commercial “works” by hitting on multiple stereotypes about women. The bored housewife, the rich woman, the crazed shopper, the looks-obsessed portion of our female culture. There are so many gendered portrayals of clothing and shopping, and so many of them play off of insecurities. The main one I see here is a direct connection between clothing and weight. The woman in the commercial is working out to shop, she is working out to buy clothing (or, if you're feeling generous, all the other items Target has to offer). Exercise for women is always marketed as being about clothing. It’s about “going down three dress sizes” or “fitting into my skinny jeans!” It is so rarely about staying in shape, being healthy, being fit, feeling good about your body, or heck, even lowering your risk for heart disease. This commercial takes that to the extreme. It’s not only about exercising to fit into your clothes, its exercising to buy your clothes.

I hate that by shopping in today’s America, I’m supporting industries that do crazy things to get consumers to buy their products (too-skinny models, too-airbrushed ads, crazed shopper ladies, you name it…). I love Target clothes, but when I buy from them, I’m now supporting a company that is—here, at least—presenting women as CRAZY. (Almost) every store I shop in has too-thin models, airbrushed photos, unattainable perfection. But I still shop in them. I like the clothes these stores sell; I don’t like the ways they sell them. Should that be enough to stop me? I’d like to hold myself to higher standards, but I don’t know exactly what those standards should be. I’m working on it.

**(This isn’t the first time I’ve been pissed with Target. In 2007-2008, Target gave $3,250 to ProtectMarriage.com, a supporter of Prop 8—the proposition to ban gay marriage in CA. It should also be noted that they did give $750 to Anti-prop-8 groups as well, but their donations seemed, to me, a bit one sided.)