This collection provides a range of different perspectives on women as consumers. It focuses on popular culture and its female consumers; this includes examinations of popular media and their targetting of female audiences, issues and themes associated with produce purchase.

Introduction, Maggie Andrews and Mary M. Talbot; "all the world and her husband" - the Daily Mail, 1896-1936, Deborah Ryan; new disciplines for women and the rise of the chain store in the 1930s, Janice Winship; modernity tamed? women shoppers and the rationalization of consumption in the interwar period, Mica Nava; "the greatest invention of the century" - menstruation in visual and maternal culture, Alia Al-Khalidi; the historical romance and consumption of the erotic, 1918-1939, Sallie McNamara; "a material girl"? adolescent girls and consumer culture, 1920-1958, Penny Tinkler; Mrs Housewife and her grocer - the advent of self-service food shopping in Britain, Barbara Usherwood; decisions in DIY -women, home-improvements and advertising in postwar Britain, Jen Browne; "as seen on TV" - design and domestic economy, Alison Clarke; advertising difference - women and "consumer citizenship" in Western Europe, Anne Cronin; strange bedfellows - feminism and advertising, Mary M. Talbot; "thanks for stopping by" - gender and virtual intimacy in American shop-by-television, Mary Bucholtz; a self off the shelf? consuming women's empowerment, Deborah Cameron; fashioning the career woman - power-dressing as a strategy of consumption, Joanne Entwistle; "non-occasion" cards and the commodification of personal relationships, Jane Hobson; girl power and the postmodern fan at Boyzone conferences, Maggie Andrews and Rosie Whorlow.