The Shame-Based Economy

In a post titled "Capitalism Plus Gender: The Inadequacy Equation", Matt Kailey wrote about the binary gender system as a fundamental lynchpin of capitalism: if you want people to buy stuff, it has to be stuff they don't need (you can't get rich if you limit yourself to selling people stuff they need), and one great way to make people feel they need stuff they don't actually need is to make them feel inadequate. One way to do that is to set up an unattainable ideal of gendered standards for men and for women, and create an atmosphere of shame around failing to meet the "right" standard for your assigned-at-birth sex. It's a great way to sell stuff, whether it's makeup or truck nuts.

I agree, but I don't think he goes far enough. Gender is just one example of how low self-esteem and weak self-images are a resource to be exploited. One reason why the concept of self-esteem -- of teaching people that they have innate worth that isn't determined by their achievements, their personal wealth, their physical appearance, or how somebody else assesses them -- is such a radical one, such a dangerous one is that it's a threat to capitalism. People who love and accept themselves are less easily manipulated into channeling their self-hatred outwards into a vote for a radical right-wing politician who promises to make terrorists or child molesters or illegal immigrants die for your sins, or channeling their existential angst into credit card debt. It's better for the economy and the political power structure (not that those are different) if people don't have the inner resources to accept themselves without hating other people or spending money.

(If this is making you want to say, "But there isn't some big conspiracy out there to make people feel bad!", then you might want to think about whether you're willing to learn to extend the same skills you've learned about analyzing broader structures and patterns in math, logic, computer science, biology, or some other such field to analyze patterns that arise in societies and human behaviors (with no need for centralized, "conspiracy"-style planning) as well.)

I thought about the same idea while reading "Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift" by Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor, a literature review of studies on the efficacy of weight loss in health outcomes that appeared in Nutrition Journal last month. Bacon and Aphramor use evidence to argue persuasively that contrary to an overwhelming body of conventional wisdom in US culture, there is actually no reason to believe that losing weight, if pursued as a goal for its own sake, will improve your health if you are overweight. The weight loss industry -- and, unfortunately, the medical professionals who serve as an arm of it -- relies on using shame and guilt to keep people dependent on "solutions" that will never solve either their real problems or their imagined problems. But shame and guilt don't cause fat people to lose weight *or* to get healthier -- in fact, shame and guilt make people *less* healthy, in concrete physical ways. We often hear that the "fat acceptance movement" is a bad idea because it's bad to "send a message" that it's okay to be fat. But that's a perspective that arises from a combination of self-hatred, fear, and anxiety: shaming people for being fat doesn't help them stop being fat and doesn't help them live longer or happier lives. In any case, the idea that being fat causes poor health outcomes is much more based on confusion between conformity to artificial (marketing-driven) beauty ideals and health than it is on data or evidence.

But the beauty ideals are important, because they keep the wheels of capitalism spinning. Shame and guilt are a profitable natural resource, and unlike many natural resources, they are infinitely renewable.

Keep hating yourselves, kids -- it keeps the economy strong!