My colleague Maria Carolina Zanette and I have always been intrigued by how consumers, in particular women, relate to fashion products. We use clothes to express ourselves, and to keep ourselves connected to the many dimensions of our identities, and to improve ourselves (have you heard of dressing for the job you want?).
Recently, we studied how the extended materiality of consumption objects—that is, the materials, designer intentions, and marketing efforts that make a product—may
trigger identity conflict for consumers. We found that this happens when such products are
carriers of contradictory institutional logics.
Institutional logics are socially constructed patterns through which social reality acquires meaning, producing and
reproducing material and symbolic practices (Friedland & Alford, 1991;
Thornton & Occasio, 2008). Consumption objects are infused with
institutional logics (Dolbec & Fischer, 2015; Ertimur & Coskuner-Balli,
2015; Slater 2014) and transmit them through their usage in diverse functions
and routines, thereby acting as institutional carriers (Scott, 2003). As
marketers attempt to secure legitimacy for their products in markets that are
characterized by multiple sources of institutional pressures (Ertimur and
Coskuner-Bali, 2015), they offer consumption objects that carry contradictory
institutional logics.
We collected and analyzed qualitative data on body-shaping undergarments (i.e., shapewear), which carry the contradictory logics of constrictive femininity and flexible feminism.
We collected and analyzed qualitative data on body-shaping undergarments (i.e., shapewear), which carry the contradictory logics of constrictive femininity and flexible feminism.
The first
institutional logic of shapewear is what we refer to as constricted
femininity. Femininity relates to domesticity (MacLaran, 2012), modesty,
and self-discipline (Bordo, 2003). Hence, this logic is rooted in socially
constructed beliefs that the ideal role for women is that of a docile, domestic
subject (as favored in patriarchal societies) and that the female body should
be tamed, controlled, and pressured into fitting restrictive standards. A
symbolic image for the logic of constricted femininity is that of a woman in a
corset: as her social role is domestic, she does not have the need for movement
or action, she should not overindulge in food, and her main goal is to look
beautiful, decent, and modest (Steele, 2001).
The
second institutional logic carried by shapewear is what we call flexible feminism. Roughly, the term feminism covers a wide range
of movements and ideologies promoting gender equality (Offen, 1988). The logic
of flexible feminism is rooted in a recent ideological wave of feminism
labelled “choice feminism—the idea that feminism means women can individually
choose whatever they wish and consider it an inherently feminist act” (Cross,
2015). Unlike the typical second-wave feminist woman, which would manifest
herself against both physical and metaphorical constrictions (including
shapewear), the choice feminist can decide whether or not she will wear
shapewear—and either option is fine, because she is the one making the choice
about her body and her appearance. She is choosing and mobilizing market
resources to achieve her individual goals (Budgeon, 2015).
Choice feminism has
been rightly criticized for disregarding limitations set by intersectional
subject categories (Gopaldas, 2013) and not considering that, in most
societies, options available to most women are limited and determined by power
structures, making choice a misnomer. In response to choice feminism, sorority and
positiveness movements have emerged, mostly grounded and spread on social media
(MacLaran, 2015). However, coopted by corporate logics (Prügl, 2015), these
act as a superficial representation of female empowerment. A symbolic image for
the logic of flexible feminism is the woman who “has it all”: a career, a
relationship, a family, and a life of her own. She leads a dynamic, productive
life and hence needs to be in constant movement, to present herself faultlessly
in many circles. She looks and feels empowered, confident, and comfortable in
her skin.

Overall shapewear is paradoxical: It acts constricting one’s body to adjust and adapt it to both fashion and traditional female roles of passive beauty while also promising empowerment, confidence, and comfort. These contradictory logics are at play in the interactions between consumers and shapewear, which we unpack in the article published on the Journal of Business Research: "To Spanx or not to Spanx: How objects that carry contradictory institutional logics trigger identity conflict for consumers.
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