Claims that consumer-orientated and media-saturated cultures have given rise to `a new narcissism' have been repeatedly asserted within social and cultural criticism for the past 40 years. Within cultural studies there has been a recent proliferation of accounts of the rise of narcissism in analyses of consumer culture, celebrity culture and new media. Returning to key influential accounts of `cultural narcissism' that emerged in social criticism and popular media in the 1970s, this article interrogates the claim that narcissism is the pathology of our time. Focusing on the sexual and racial politics of narcissism, it demonstrates how narcissism acquired its meaning and force as a critical term through its stigmatizing attribution to specific sexual and social groups. The central argument is that the contentious cultural and political history of narcissism needs to be acknowledged within contemporary theoretical accounts of `cultural narcissism' and `media narcissism'.