Consumerism

 

Mandi Cox

Response Paper

17 March 2021

Consumerism

            In his essay The Eaters and the Eaten, John Berger explains his view of consumerism by describing the distinctions of the value and meaning of food and the ways that food is consumed within two separate cultures. In his paper he claims that “consumerism is intrinsic to nineteenth-century bourgeois culture” (370), and he uses the peasant manner of eating to contrast the bourgeois consumerist eating habits.

            Berger explains that within a bourgeois household or a home typical of a middle-class family, food was used to show social status rather than seen as a necessity. To the bourgeois food is abundant and disposable. They did not have to work for their meals, and you might not be able to tell the difference between a feast and a casual dinner on the table of the bourgeois. On the other hand, the diet of the peasant is seasonal, they would eat what they produced themselves and the food was not abundant nor disposable. A feast was had only when a surplus of food was collected. The peasant simply did not have the options that the bourgeois were spoiled with. I believe that Berger was trying to convey that because of the wealth of the bourgeois, food was made more available to them, but in turn their value of food became inflated.

            When girls had to make their own dresses, the dress that they made was cherished and loved. Today when you walk into a clothing store at a mall you can buy any color, style, or type of dress that you would want, but these dresses hold far less significance than one you would have made yourself.