Uncrate, the Buyers Guide for Men is a website devoted to showing products presumably geared towards masculine consumption. I stumbled on the website a couple days ago, and I continue to visit it not because I find the items especially alluring, but because of how ridiculous some of these products are. The prices of the stuff they show vary, but the vast majority of the items are only affordable by individuals who possess a large amount of expendable income (not many men can afford a $190,000 speaker system)
Due to this unrealistic tendency, the website reveals how masculine consumerism is generally incumbent upon fantasy. Furthermore, this is a good example of how such fantasy is intrinsically linked towards a certain cultural sentiment, implying to consumers that the things white, upper class, and urban dwelling men want are the same things that appeal to all men. I suspect that this outlook isn't specific to this publication; which of these popular mens magazines truly caters to a diverse range of masculinities? Hence, Uncrate is contributing to a preexisting outlook about what the masculine consumer looks like, an outlook that is culturally pervasive.
Also, who says that Kanye West's latest album or DNA ancestry portraits are gendered products, anyway?
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