This is such a fantastic book about social and class signaling. I read this book a while back and think about it regularly, so I wanted to give it another read. The author breaks down the history of social theories around conspicuous consumption, but she’s more interested in “inconspicuous consumption”, which is far more discreet. She highlights how people do arbitrary things that say to the world, “Look how educated and well-informed I am. That is why I do this thing.” This was something that lower classes started doing because if you’re broke, you can’t go out and buy expensive things to showcase how amazing you are. Inconspicuous consumption is more about the activities you do, where you buy your groceries, what you read, etc.

The book is extremely interesting because we’re always trying to showcase our status, but the author discusses how this does a lot of harm. A great example she gives is with breastfeeding and parenthood in general. There are things people do to show status and look down upon others although there are no real benefits, which further divides the classes and isn’t really helpful to anyone.

I can’t recommend this book enough, and I’m going to go buy this author’s other books because I’m sure their just as amazing.