The Crooked Codes of the Luxury Handbag: Narratives of Empowered Feminine Consumption in Africa

Abstract

This article critiques discourses about women consumers of luxury goods in Africa. It does so through the example of the designer handbag, which presented as a key theme in interviews with people employed in luxury sectors in major African cities. The luxury handbag symbolizes an overarching idea of women’s success, though women are narrated as taking different routes to achieve it. Employing the spatial metaphor of the “crooked room,” this article shows how luxury handbag-talk reproduces taken-for-granted ideas about what successful feminine consumers look like. The “crooked codes” of the luxury handbag refer to skewed expectations, routes, and rationales for the wealth-oriented consumption practices of African women. Luxury handbags thus symbolize the ways in which neoliberal ideology limits African women’s quest for economic inclusion. This article argues that this consumption distorts African women’s feminist goals while claiming liberation. HIGHLIGHTS The luxury handbag is viewed as a symbol of African women’s economic success. This understanding obscures the realities of access to economic equality for most women living in African contexts. Luxury consumption privileges wealth and does not offer alternatives for women’s economic empowerment. As evidence of women’s achievement, the luxury handbag reveals the limits of neoliberal views for women’s empowerment.