We represent modernity as a productive society, while postmodernity is a consumerist society. Postmodern skiing, interpreted as recreational culture, is commodified and becomes an object of consumption. In these postmodern times, we have become ‘snow consumers,’ enslaved to the pursuit of happiness while consuming everything that the mountain has to offer.
Consumerism is a distinguishing feature of postmodern skiing, being the main method of self-expression and self-fulfillment, which defines our identity as ‘dissatisfied consumers’, i.e., constantly anxious for novelty and dependent on brands.
This overwhelming consumerism leads to an ephemeral way of living the pleasures of skiing, creating an existential void that we try to fill with the material that soon loses its appeal, being discarded and replaced. In postmodern skiing most things become obsolete and dispensable, people and relationships included.
Today, the duration of a product is no longer valued, just as a gratification does not last because it must be replaced with a new one. Everything is disposable (skis, boots, clothing), since they are substituted before they reach the end of their useful life because new technologies make them imperatively ‘obsolete’.
