The Ecofetish: Green Consumerism in Women's Magazines

Surprisingly little research has examined environmental communication in the mass media from a feminist perspective, even as environmental communication (as a subfield of media studies) is experiencing rapid growth. This shortage is particularly interesting because like feminism and communication scholarship, feminism and green theory have often been intertwined. Theorists from both fields recognize common concerns: the fetishization of consumer goods, the twin subjugation of women and nonhuman nature to patriarchal desires, and the neoliberal reliance on divisive individualist discourse, to name a few. But perhaps because it is a relatively new area of media studies (research dates only to the early 1970s), environmental communication has not yet been the subject of much—if any—feminist analysis. Starting with a preliminary examination of environmental messages in the women's popular press (specifically, women's magazines), this essay addresses that lack.

Although long established, the relationship between feminism and environmentalism is certainly complicated. Beginning in the 1970s, ecofeminists identified a connection between the marginal status of both women and nature compared with masculine and economic interests. Through traditional feminine roles as mothers and nurturers, women have been theorized as somehow closer to the natural, nonhuman world. Some feminist theorists have embraced this linkage (Warren 1990; Plumwood 1991), while others have rejected it as restrictive and essentialist (Davion 1994; Seager 2003). More recently, women have been situated closer to the environment for a somewhat different reason. Because the majority of household purchasing decisions are made by women (Rodino-Colocino 2006) , there is growing social acceptance of the idea that women have unique environmental agency and an obligation to ensure that their families are living in an environmentally responsible manner. Thus we are seeing a surge in green commercialism that primarily targets women, who are now expected to take responsibility for addressing environmental problems that are largely the result of patriarchal capitalist expansion.

This phenomenon is played out most visibly in the media, where messages aimed at women are increasingly built around commodity-based solutions to environmental ills. Applying a feminist outlook to environmental communication studies helps make sense of these media messages and how they either reflect or distort—and ultimately affect—women's lived experiences. Most simply put, a feminist point of view is one that recognizes the deeply sexist attitudes encoded in social behaviors and belief systems (Hirschmann 2003); with respect to environmental communication, this might mean cultivating an awareness of how messages identify women either with the environment or in relation to it. Such awareness would serve two purposes: first, it would reveal gendered tendencies in environmental communication; second, it would help make sense of female audiences' reception and interpretation of environmental messages in the media.

More than forty years ago, economist Anthony Downs speculated that media coverage of environmental problems would be subject to an "issue-attention cycle," eventually falling out of public view: "We should not underestimate the American public's capacity to become bored—especially with something that does not immediately threaten them" (1972, 47). Downs's prediction has been at least partially supported by recent research (Trumbo 1996; Brossard, Shanahan, and McComas 2004). When environmental issues receive media attention, the coverage has often been sensational and event-oriented, lacking the kind of context that might increase issue salience among American citizens (Guber 2003). Further, the generic word "green" was adopted as an all-purpose signifier by the media in the 1980s, and used heavily in environmental issue reporting to indicate an ecologically responsible stance or behavior (Anderson 1997). The term has made its way into commercial discourse as well, employed to describe a wide range of household products, from biodegradable window cleaners to low-flow showerheads. Troubled by a lack of specificity in this secondary usage, Sandilands argued for a narrowing of the definition so that as an adjective, the word "green" would implicitly include "reference to the systemic problems of over-production and overconsumption" (1993, 45). However, such an association is rarely made clear in the mass media.

The issue of potentially misleading or oversimplified presentation of environmental problems is likely a symptom of structural flaws in...