Consumer culture, the mobilisation of the narcissistic self and adolescent deviant leisure

The purpose of this analysis is to investigate the consumer packaging of adolescent deviance through commodified leisure. It argues that under conditions of neoliberalism, deviant leisure is commodified by industry, emptying deviance of its political potential, selling it back to adolescents in the form of narcissistic self-identities. These self-identities appear to challenge authority, albeit produced within youth culture and marketing, purchased and consumed in the belief that it is resistance. Forms of adolescent deviance and narcissism are normalised as challenging, exciting and risky while providing associations with power, wealth, celebrity and physical beauty. In the final analysis, we explore some possibilities for the resistance of market-based constructions of self-identity for adolescents in western consumer cultures. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC