Doing What You Love in the Age of Mass Debt

Abstract

[This paper examines the relationship between student debt and the changing terrain of work in U.S. culture, while attending to how these shifts mark a speci cally gendered, racialized phenomenon. Drawing on the AAUW’s 2017 report on student debt, this paper examines the figure of the fashion intern in order to think about how the gender and racial inequities in student debt collude with what Angela McRobbie terms ‘the feminization of work’ to effect a gendered, racialized form of indebtedness. I assert that the ‘do what you love’ ethos described by Miya Tokumitsu contributes to the proliferation of feminized work in the culture industries, such as fashion, and the perpetuation of racial exclusivity within the industry.]