The chapter “Community, Commodity, and Commerce: Alloy.com and the Commodification of Teen/Tween Girl Communities” focuses on the use of community/fashion websites as a marketing tool aimed at young women. The website in question is Alloy.com, a clothing company that makes fashionable, feminine clothing. I found myself feeling somewhat attacked in this chapter because I’ve always dressed “girly,” and used to buy from Alloy.com when I was in high school. I never participated in the message boards, or read the articles online but I did receive the catalog in the mail and occasionally found things that I liked in it. I don’t think that it’s fair to limit Alloy’s marketing at “commodity fetishism,” because some girls do enjoy following the trends even if they are “mainstream.” This article seems to unfairly label girls who dress in a way that is “normal,” by society’s standards as being affected by marketing and thus, ignorant consumers. I would have enjoyed this article more if it had attacked the fashion magazines themselves, which in my eyes are much worse, because they are more widely circulated among girls and directly play into commodity fetishism by being bought and collected.
When I was in high school, I remember flipping through the Alloy catalog and sometimes chuckling to myself at how young the girls in the pictures looked. Sometimes I wondered if I was too old to be ordering from the catalog. Usually I would flip through until I had a list of a couple shirts, some shoes, and maybe a bag or something and then beg my mom to give me an allowance to order them. I had no idea the website or the catalog were so popular and never did the thought cross my mind of being marketed towards. I was most concerned with fitting in while still having a personal style I believed was my own. I didn’t play sports or wear uniforms. My mom had long since stopped picking out my clothing. For me, shopping and creating outfits was a way to express myself visually and form a public identity. I liked dressing up. As I thought more about the article, I wondered was this all a set-up? Am I really just a vessel for some corporate, gender normalizing scheme? The article says of the tween demographic, “The anxieties that are the hallmark of the pubertal and pre-pubetral years are relieved through the acquisition of aspirational products-makeup, jewelry, halter tops, and so on. In fact, part and parcel of the construction of the tween/teen girl identity in this concept of “normative femininity”-a narrow, culturally prescribed vision of what the ideal woman/girl should be like” (267). The article goes on to say that the culturally ascribed version of feminity focuses on female’s relationships with the opposite sex and the commodities needed to accomplish the goal of a relationship (clothes, makeup, etc). While I agree that the website serves both of these perceived needs; I do not think that the generalization of Alloyers as prescribing only to normative feminity is accurate. If you actually look through an Alloy catalog there are no boys. Girls are pictured with each other, socializing. They’re dressed in clothes for school or work, and play. The implied message to me is that there are clothes appropriate for certain situations and that interaction with peers is important. These two things are not “gender normalizing” but simply facts of life for both sexes. I grew up understanding these concepts and have accomplished many goals I set for myself by acting (and dressing) appropriately for the situation. My point is that somewhere we need to draw the line between persecuting girls for their success at being “mainstream,” and encouraging girls to break free from normalizing forces.
This article, unlike the others in Girls 2.0, really kind of put a negative spin on the idea of style as self expression. It’s not that I flat out hate the article and disagree with everything it says, it’s just that it hurts to be labeled, for lack of a better word, a “tool.”
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