COMMODIFICATION OF WOMANHOOD IN CONSUMER CULTURE: A MARXIST FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF MONI MOHSIN’S THE DIARY OF A SOCIAL BUTTERFLY

Abstract

The paper at hand goes through the commodification of womanhood in the satirical novel The Diary of a Social Butterfly by Moni Mohsin using a Marxist feminist approach. The novel is located in the high society of Pakistan, provides a satirical commentary on the consumer culture, social stratification, and patriarchal conventions, which cumulatively form and lock down female identity and identity. The study centers on the main character Butterfly, where women are depicted as consumers and commodities in a capitalist-patriarchal system where social worth is based on looks, marriage, and material exhibition instead of being an individual or a powerful person. Using a qualitative close-reading approach, the paper uses the Marxist ideas of commodification and commodity fetishism as well as feminist theories of Simone de Beauvoir, Nancy Fraser, Judith Butler, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to evaluate the nexuses of gender, class, and consumerism in the text. The analysis indicates that marriage, beauty ideals, and social performance are the mechanisms by which commercialization and exchange of women bodies and identity as social capital occurs. The satire and irony used by Mohsin do not solely reveal the uppermost layer and lack of morality of the elite Pakistani society, but also the critique the structural inequalities supported by the neoliberal consumer culture. The work is relevant to the current literature as it anticipates a Marxist feminist interpretation of the novel and the importance of consumerism in perpetuating gendered oppression in the Pakistani society of the modern era. It posits that The Diary of a social Butterfly is not limited to its local context but provides a larger commentary on the commodification of femininity in the world such that it is a key text to the cultural politics of gender in contemporary capitalist societies.