{"id":162,"date":"2004-06-29T01:42:02","date_gmt":"2004-06-29T05:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2004\/06\/29\/the-empowered-wife-buys-more-stuff\/"},"modified":"2011-06-18T23:40:50","modified_gmt":"2011-06-19T03:40:50","slug":"the-empowered-wife-buys-more-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2004\/06\/the-empowered-wife-buys-more-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"The Empowered Wife Buys More Stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Funny how an article<\/a> that starts out talking about how penny-wise wives check their husbands’ profligate stupidity (“We were newly married with no money to be spending on stereos,” said the only sane person interviewed in the entire article) evolves into a pro-consumerism booster that equates empowered, working women with the need to buy more stuff:<\/p>\n

The rules in their seven-year marriage were established long ago. If an item costs, say, $1,000, “I’ll run it past her,” said Frost, a Boston money manager. “If I really want it, I might get her the same thing.” In place of a motorcycle, he got a Nissan 350Z. She got a Honda Element. “It was to my benefit, the whole motorcycle thing,” she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thanks to this article, we can now conclude that:\n<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Husbands and wives are engaged in a spending war against each other (the real <\/span>winners: retailers and manufacturers);<\/li>\n
  2. Because most wives now work, the average American family needs to buy twice as much stuff as they used to — for no other reason than because they can<\/span>;<\/li>\n
  3. Women are a bunch of irrational, appearance-obsessed spendthrifts who are driving families to penury and filling our landscapes by replacing perfectly working household appliances with less-functional and more expensive — but more feminine-looking — equivalents.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Blatant advertising disguised as news through the use of gender stereotypes — it’s like Parade Magazine took over the Globe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Funny how an article that starts out talking about how penny-wise wives check their husbands’ profligate stupidity (“We were newly married with no money to be spending on stereos,” said the only sane person interviewed in the entire article) evolves … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[415],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":550,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}