Shopping Around investigates the issues of contemporary popular narrative, feminine pleasure, and consumer culture, viewing the permutations of the feminine subject as a textual construction evolved through everday life. A wide spectrum of texts are examined, including The Taming of the Shrew , Moonlighting , Vogue , Jane Fonda's Workout Book , and Harlequin romances. Radner contends that feminine culture is neither a repressive tool of a male conspiracy to keep women in their place nor a form of resistance to a dominant patriarchal order; women do not shop because they are shopping addicts narcotized by the media, or because they have the urge to challenge masculine hegemonic control. Rather feminine culture is best understood as a strategic and dynamic system of investment and return. Shopping' is pleasurable in terms of an affective economy that is regulated not only by gender, but by sexual identity, race, ethnicity, and class. Shopping Around raises these issues in the context of everyday cultural practices such as applying make-up, reading magazines, watching television, and working-out, providing a unique introduction to postmodern feminist and cultural theory. Hilary Radner is Assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame. She is coeditor of Film Theory Goes to the Movies .