Can't Buy Me Love: Commodification and Redemption in F. Scott Fitzgerald's “The Popular Girl”

F. Scott Fitzgerald's popular magazine fiction story “The Popular Girl” mirrors in its commodification of characterization, language, relationships, and plot points the same commodification in the author's career, personal life, and national societal experiences in the jazz age. However, the story's emphasis on social and cultural capital—and that of the author and his country—cannot be fully understood through discussion centered strictly on commodification/consumerism or social class alone. Pierre Bourdieu's theory of the interplay of economic and cultural capital can be applied to explain the actions of the main character, Yanci, and by extension Fitzgerald's and 1920s America.