Since moving to Singapore, I can’t stop thinking about consumerism.
I mean, of course not: I’m literally living in it. I can’t even access the nearest subway station efficiently without traversing not one but two stories in the local mall near me, Bugis Junction.
Unlike the last three cities I’ve lived in (NYC, Boston, LA), where it was exceedingly uncommon for me to even enter a mall, here in Singapore, I’m reminded malls are not just shopping spaces. Open late and often buttressed between a grocery store, subway station, and (several) food courts, these are nothing short of a conglomerate manifestation of that illusive “third space,” expanded from the size of a Starbucks to multi-floor mazes. (I do not mean this remotely metaphorically: some malls boast over 360 shops!!!)
In a country smaller than the size of NYC, there are over 170 indoor malls as of 2020 (with plenty more under construction). Anything you may find sprawled across a strip mall has been consolidated into one: global chains like Uniqlo and Paris Baguette, yes, but also the alterations auntie who fusses over the neckline of my dresses, the thrift shop where I browse for 70s-era pants, the acceptably average yakitori stall I’ll frequent before boarding the train, the local outpost of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) empire Koong Woh Tong where the shop uncle still brews each batch of 24-herb tea in-store.
The concept of “going to the mall” offers a lot more than an air-conditioned escape from the constant humidity (or, during the monsoon season, afternoon thunderstorms). It is the place where routine acts of consumption unfold; and in them, how we learn who we are to each other, and where we fit within our communities.
This is true no matter what time of day I go. Once I pass those very hygenic, touchless glass doors, I find myself navigating an ensemble production of daily lives just like mine: colleagues sipping kopi-o (sweetened black coffee) and sighing over the news, couples browsing sunglasses with a McFlurry in hand, familial debates over monthly spending at one of the (many) homeware kiosks.
To consume has become the prerequisite to full participation in today’s society, be it through material goods or edible ones. Malls, then, serve as critical sites for identity construction, offering countless opportunities for us to transact as the person we desire to embody. Every purchase allows us to be — for just a moment — the main character, the hero, in a society where the will of any one person is becoming less and less central to the plot.
(You know, like societies where no number of calls to legislators seem sufficient to halt military spending on a genocidal war.)
The accelerating demand for these sites of consumption shows it is working, too.
The more powerless I feel, the more I find myself anxiously prowling through the mall on makeshift errands when, really, I have no business being there. I use the word “prowling” because it is impossible to merely walk through malls. With or without premeditation, the space between the glossy floors and onslaught of signature scents shapeshift into a setting where I begin looking for something.
I suppose that actual thing depends on what I believe myself most deficient in. Consumerism has moved far beyond selling the idea we don’t have enough; what it promises now is a chance to be enough. This manufactured satisfaction isn’t far away, either: I can conquer any illusory enemy with just the swipe of my credit card.
When the government itself has proclaimed eating and shopping as “national pastimes,” it’s only fitting that, here, this psychic war would be characterized as a form of hunger. Thus, its battles are enacted through literal consumption. From display shelves brimming with pastries promising an ‘around the world’ flavor adventure in carb form, to the not-quite-rhythmic ttttssing tsing tsinggg of ten teppanyaki chefs cooking up ‘executive’ lunch sets for middle managers during mid-day rush, malls are overflowing with acts of ego soothing.
At once fantastical and indoctrinating, every bite is advertised as a chance to eat my future anew.
In the downstairs concourse, 22-carat French gold egg tarts assure me nothing short of joy at four for $22.80. I imagine touting them at a party, plucking each pastry from its custom seat, feeling both opulent and different in my purchase to fit in.
Even countercultural boldness is consumable here. I’ve long yearned to have a lightning wit that never misses, and for under $5 I can. All this against the backdrop of heritage yore, boasting of its own staticity since 1944 — despite the minor fact that this shop has since expanded into 120 franchised stores in 10 countries.
Ads are like funhouse mirrors to spaces we know, turning topsy-turvy our perception of a place to be into one with the intention to do (that is, consume). The same kopi-sipping colleagues at (another) local coffeeshop take on new meaning when silhouetted against a giant poster announcing, “Let’s Meat Up.” I look at the tables, packed until 10pm every night, and wonder if eating their combo set could distract me from the reality that I don’t yet have friends to meet up with.
Once unleashed in a mall, I can’t unsee these ads, can’t unhear their noisy commentary augmenting my reality. In effect, ads are no longer aspirations but reprimands. We are not supposed to be happy until the little asymmetrical machine has beeped green on our purchase, our triumph enshrined in tissue paper and a box for others to see and yearn for.
Within today’s cultural current, our consent to consume is never asked and repeatedly manufactured.
It’s taken for granted that physical — tangible or edible — relief is both possible and sufficient for our psychic woes. To that end, malls no longer require any further context to explain their existence. They are a “third space” now recognizable anywhere, relevant everywhere — as natural as the instinct to want “more” from life.
I wonder if this isn’t the physical manifestation of social media’s virtual “context collapse,” where giving differentiated attention is no longer the norm. I find it eerily intriguing to characterize a physical place in this way, where once inside, we are treated as interchangeable, mechanical replicas, shepherded using the same rotation of insecurities.
What is the toll of perpetually seeing ourselves as somehow broken or deficient, of treating our lives like a match on constant offense, chasing down a shifting target to find and “fix” what maims us? Consumption sees happiness and peace like a one-time match, an all-or-nothing instead of an internal practice. With our bodies becoming the latest battleground, we’ve become so entrenched in devouring metaphorical victory after victory it seems incomprehensible to consider: we have no need for an enemy.
Enemies always serve a purpose. The war relationship is a symbiotic one in which the enemy on one side serves some need within the enemy on the other side, even while both protest this fact and claim they only fight because they have no choice.
-Troy Chapman, I Have No Need For An Enemy
Like everyone else, of course I want to be the protagonist. The great irony is that attempts to fulfill my need to feel in control, which possesses me to prowl around the mall, is also what invites me to be less and less in charge of my own lived experience. To see beyond enemy lines, then, means to stop reviewing myself as impotent, useless, insignificant, and instead, to begin looking at myself with attention*.
I long thought I lived my life along a simple principle: I matter.
But as I force myself to struggle past the smell burden** and overlapping noise pollution of two dozen-plus stores on every floor in pursuit of mythical validation, it dawns on me that, perhaps, I never really believed that statement to be true.
‘I matter’ is not some sort of fractional concept, dependent on a base context — “to my partner” “to my family” “to my industry” — for meaning. ‘I matter’ is an integer*** meant to withstand my spectrum of self across contexts. Enacting ‘I matter’ does not require me to “do” anything the way these ads implore — it is not a winnable trophy offered at Bugis Junction. ‘I matter’ is already very much alive, waiting for me to be quiet and still enough to feel it: a deep sense of compassion for being such a frustratingly contradictory human.
This year, I’m challenging myself to no longer fall prey to manufactured enemies on my road to peace. I’m slowing my pace to decipher what my needs are, not those presented to me as the next obstacle to sustained self-esteem. Come November, when I leave Singapore, I think I’ll know I’ve made some progress when the mall can be a site where I can eat, but not be consumed.
* Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing is an excellent read on what it means to pay attention to attention.
** One of my professor advisors here at the National University of Singapore, Audrey Chia, calls the sense of overwhelm by too many smells in one place its “smell burden.” She typically works in hospital settings where that term refers to a very different set of smells, but nonetheless I found it also very relevant to malls.
*** Fun fact, the non-math definition of an integer is “a thing complete in itself.” Poetic, isn’t it?
Memes From the Last Few Weeks
Personal Things from the Last Few Weeks
Listening to: Troye Sivan
Watching: Films at The Projector; most recently The Persian Version and Boy and the Heron
Reading: Inheritance by Balli Kaur Jaswal and Messy Roots by Laura Gao for two separate queer book clubs!
Eating: All the local specialties in Kuching, East Malaysia, where I went for a short vacation this week.
Drinking: Soy milk and grass jelly everyday, baby!
Nice thing I did for myself this week: Taking some time every morning to write leisurely in the Journal of Radical Permission while drinking my mushroom coffee, even when I’m feeling anxious to start working.