There is an old saw that says, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." It sounds a bit like the macho pep talk of a football coach before a fearsome game. This dubious folk wisdom mutated into a tongue-in-cheek "feminized" greeting card quip: "When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping." Since then I can't begin to recall how many times I've heard that phrase used as a guilt-relieving jest prior to a credit card-induced shopping spree.

The connection is plain. Whatever else women do, they are largely connected with shopping in a way that men are not. It's not that men don't have their own pet spending habits. Who do you think is buying all of the porn, guns and beer? But in our society women are most directly connected with that mysterious process known as "shopping." Men don't "shop," they "buy." That is, they simply fork over the bucks and evacuate the premises. Shopping is a much more involved interaction than buying. It can actually change the production habits of the manufacturers by forming a relationship with the merchant. It involves questioning, comparing, even haggling. Thus, women occupy the privileged position of being the ones who choose what products will be produced.

Theoretically, at least, women have the controlling interest in much that makes up the texture of our daily reality. Yet that effect has been severely muted by other forces at work. A walk through the cereal section of a grocery store, for instance, does not exactly speak of a woman's influence, even though the majority of all breakfast cereals are sold to women for their children's consumption. Where do those Tigers and Toucans and Sea Captains come from? They certainly are not the result of a woman's wanting the best for her children. Something else is occurring here - something commercial, something psychological and something manipulative.

Nor is this simply an issue related to the bottom feeding habits of our junk food society, our cultural debris. At the other end of the economic spectrum, similar processes are at work. Women both control the flow of products and are controlled by that flow. A rich suburban New Jersey woman demands that her painting be returned to the New York art gallery because it is "the wrong color." The wasted expense of the transportation and the installation doesn't matter, nor does the content of the image. The work is a forgettable piece of abstraction that could have been done in any number of colors to match any décor. It is made that way to satisfy the preconditioned tastes of the well-heeled women who are the mainstays of the world of high art. Every woman knows she needs white walls to achieve "more space." The white walls started in the art world to isolate an object for display. The sterile white walls of suburbia isolate a woman in a featureless world of objects she did not shape.

The Going Gets Easy

By contrast, the women in the Middle Ages controlled a great many creative and economic enterprises. In her brilliant lecture Are Women Human? Dorothy Sayers said that medieval women controlled "the whole of the spinning industry, the whole of the dyeing industry, the whole of the weaving industry, the whole catering industry and the whole of the brewing and distilling [industries]. All of the preserving, pickling and bottling, all of the bacon-curing … a very large share of the land management." In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, those industries were relinquished to the modern industrial machine, turned into products and sold back to the woman in her home. I suppose women didn't complain when they handed over the soap making to Dr. Brown; soap making can be a smelly business, although the process isn't that difficult. By the beginning of the twentieth century, most cottage industries were given up to manufacturers. Sayers laments, "It is all very well to say that a woman's place is in the home - but modern civilization has taken all these pleasant and profitable activities out of the home, where women looked after them, and handed them over to big industry to be directed and organized by men at the head of large factories."

In America, the 1930s was the last era to witness a substantial portion of the female population still shaping the home environment. After World War II, the 1950s' building frenzy changed everything. With the addition of suburbs, supermarkets and fast food restaurants, a woman was consigned to the oblivion of vacuuming, soap operas, Tupperware® parties and a rising alcoholism rate. Cottage industries activities were replaced with television sets whose chief purpose was to sell the products back to the very women who had given them up. If there were no longer household occupations that were meaningful, then perhaps women could find a kind of sanctification in shopping.

Glossy magazines and sparkling TV commercials spread the gospel of consumption. Lay-away plans, department store credit and eventually the credit card were held out as permanent temptations. Knickknacks and home accessories filled the shelves in over- abundance. Homes became miniature museums to be filled with "cute" trinkets. The magic words "sale" and "bargain" filled the eyes of women from coast to coast, providing a millennial vision of domestic perfection. The holiest concept of all was that of convenience. New appliances, food that was declared to be "instant," detergents promising to make clothing "whiter than white" all prophesied the imminent arrival of a fulfilled life. At last women could take it easy. They could relax.

The Relaxed Go Shopping

It's a shame that all this wonderful progress was about to be interfered with as questions were raised by different brands of feminism. Not to worry; ultimately the issues raised never even got near the sacred altar of a woman's role as consumer. A woman might find means to escape her biological destiny, but no one could seriously question her right to shop. I mean, exactly where could that question be raised? In a women's magazine? Hardly. In a fashion magazine? A contradiction in terms. On television? Not this year. In the self-help section of the bookstore? Aren't they hoping to make money on those books? It doesn't take a Ralph Nader to realize that for large corporations, women are consumer target number one. Who buys the food? The fashion? The toys? The household supplies? The home decorations? The furniture? The appliances? The pills?

Pharmaceutical manufacturers are well aware that women pay far more attention to their bodies than men do. They've hired psychologists and advertisers to zero in on women's needs and have, in fact, mastered the art of creating those needs. To ask if there are women taking drugs who don't need them is rhetorical. Even the "organic" herbal merchants have fixated upon this market. In the late 1970s, The Tranquilizing of America thoroughly documented that women are the primary buyers of legal medication. Women may soon dominate as purchasers of real estate and automobiles. I'd love to say thank you to those who have enriched our lives by choosing quality products that make a contribution to humanity.

Alas, I can't.

It is not a more beautiful world, a more meaningful world or a more human world as a result of the shopping habits of women. A seductive voice whispers that you can do no wrong, you can do it all, you can have it all - and that chocolate is a substitute for love. (Last time I checked, you could buy that almost anywhere.) Through the tom-toms of the magazine industry, products are situated in such a way as to foster need. The standard technique is to prey upon insecurity through comparison. Images and articles are manufactured promoting the illusion that everyone is buying, using, even stealing "X;" you will be a lesser being without it. This manipulation also works through the begging eyes of a child dimmed by endless ads for the latest game, toy or cereal. Any item can be pushed through the grid. When you add to this the fragmentary nature of many American families, you have a susceptibility to consumption so strong as to seem pathological. The American home is hardly a woman's place at all. It belongs to the brand names of America.