Class Year
2024
Document Type
Student Research Paper
Date of Creation
Spring 2024
Department 1
Anthropology
Abstract
For LGBTQ individuals whose identity expression transgresses heteronormative aesthetic values, mass production and its prioritization of a heteronormative consumer base for profit create feelings of otherness and ostracism. Previous anthropological theory on mass production and advertising recognizes the transference of meaning onto material culture through marketing and identifies the generic symbolic meaning that carbon-copy, mass-produced products hold. Theory and research surrounding colonial encounters attest to power imbalances wherein material culture is imposed on a powerless group, and marginalized individuals react through rejection or creative reappropriation of the material culture, which provides a basis for examining the power imbalance between corporations and marginalized individuals in American retail spaces. Formulated from ethnographic research conducted among members of an LGBTQ living space on Gettysburg College's campus, this Honors Thesis project examines the reaction of LGBTQ individuals to the lack of products in retail spaces designed and advertised with queer identity in consideration. The members of the LGBTQ living space recounted their resistance to the imposition of heteronormative material culture in retail stores primarily attesting to rejection of these spaces and their products: seeking out alternatives such as second hand stores. They posited that retail environments with less clear binary gender divisions allow for freer ability to reappropriate products that were originally advertised to a binary-gender market via styling. Where LGBTQ identity was taken into consideration in marketing, often termed rainbow capitalism, informants spoke to the positive visibility queer-focused marketing provides and the negative pandering that often accompanies it.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Mikulski, James M., "Aesthetic Exclusion Within American Capitalist Culture: LGBTQ Students at Gettysburg College and the Creative Reappropriation of Clothing to Forge Personal and Communal Identity" (2024). Student Publications. 1130.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/student_scholarship/1130
Included in
Fashion Business Commons, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons
Comments
Written for ANTH 400: Capstone Experience in Anthropology