Commodify Your Dissent, By Norton And Frank

Shopping, a common activity conducted by almost everyone at least once a month, is such a normal subject in our everyday life, one barely puts any thoughts into the potential semiotic explanations behind it. According to the two essays, “The Signs of Shopping” and “The Science of Shopping,” Shopping has significant impacts on one’s self-identification. It is a two way straight, the consumers’ shopping styles can also influence the economic status of the retails businesses.

The phenomenon of consumerism is quiet powerful due to the impact on individual’s lives. Society has come to the point, happiness is associated with consumption. However, the way consumerism works, is if the items being purchased gives temporary happiness. There individuals are always buying the latest products to remain happy. In the text, “The Cult you’re in” Kalle Lasn, discusses a cult-like nature of consumer culture on Americans. Lasn uses the work ‘cult’ as a metaphor; he does not mean an actual cult but American consumers seem to be in a cult-like nature. The ideal example of Lasns argument is the text, “The man behind Abercrombie and Fitch”, Benoit Denizet-Lewis, goes in great depth of the life of the CEO, Mike Jeffries, of

This includes a story of her mother who waltzed into a social service agency dressed in an impressive outfit to set straight an issue that her elderly neighbor had trouble with over the past year in a single day (Cottom 1012). To elaborate, she justifies why poor people ordinarily make the choices they do, while conversely questioning them. In her text, “The Logic of Stupid Poor People”, Cottom declares that “We want to belong” (1013). I agree that we want to belong, if you belong you are safe. At one point, her first professional job manager decided she was accordingly “. . . too classy to be on the call center floor.” (Cottom 1014) This proves that putting money into a brand name suit can have a positive influence on others, in this case she gained a high pay raise and her workload was decreased. If poor people spend money on classy outfits, the rich people will perceive them as their own.

A famous writer for the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell has written an article, “The Science of Shopping”, which is based on Paco Underhill’s study of retail anthropology. The intention of a retail store is obvious- that is to attract customers and convince them to perchance as much as they can. There is so much knowledge that we can study, such that how the environment affects people’s thinking. These are tiny details that we don’t usually think about. The reason of how Paco Underhill success is because he notices these details. Details determine success or failure. Paco Undnerhill—a talent and passion environmental psychologist, provides us a new point of view of the science of displaying products,

There was a time when social classes were most easily identified through material goods and possessions. Whether wealth was gained through inheritance or hard work, it was the luxury items that made the most visible and tangible statement regarding a person’s social status. Men could rely on a large house or expensive car to proclaim the success they had earned. It was much more common to see women adorned in jewels, designer clothes, and furs as symbols of her upper class status. The extravagance of a woman’s appearance was a reflection of the success of her husband, so it was natural to indulge her desire for expensive material possessions.

Over the course of the history of clothing styles and production, one thing has never changed: a person’s wealth directly influences

Norton, Anne. “The Signs of Shopping.” Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular

Everyday thousands of retail stores throughout the United States open up their stores in the morning for the sole purpose of attracting customers and selling them merchandise. For this assignment I decided to do a store analysis of the retail giant Wal-Mart. To begin with I will evaluate the store layout and design. Next I will explain the visual merchandising techniques used that Wal-Mart uses. Finally I will discuss the problems and recommendations that I have for Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has continually been a leader in the retail industry, and it all starts with the layout of the store.

For generations, Americans has been brainwashed by the media to believe that what is displayed on television is the ideal perception of what real beauty have manipulated American citizens of what style looks like. Furthermore, with their many brainwashing strategies, that means more and more consumers spending beyond their budget. Our perspectives have been heavily influenced by what they believe is nice, but can we afford it all? With unrealistic combination of goods in store, plazas, and mall, consuming has become a bad behavior of some. In support of my argument of the “Overspending”, author Gladwell’s article “The Science of Shopping” also argues that stores adjust to fit the needs and wants of the shopper are evidently presented. With that being said, we have no idea when we are being manipulated into unrealistic shopping behavior that is influenced by the way the advertisement is presented in visual sight. Author Gladwell gets a “retail anthropologist” and “urban geographer” named Paco Underhill to give breakdown points of how he helps brand name stores influence consumers into persuasion of buying more. However, most of us fall short of that discipline, while being persuaded to overspend during our store visits.

Fashion reflects the attitudes of a society more than any other art form. Like art, fashion is a material record of the ideals that swayed the nations at the time of their creation. Through examining the styles, and tastes of a particular era, we can realize where the interests and priorities of a time lie. As Frank Parsons wrote in his 1920 study, The Psychology of Dress, "There is surly no better field in which to trace the devious paths of human thought than in that of clothes, where man has ever given free play to self expression, in a way which, thought not always a credit to his intelligence, is yet quite true to his innermost self, whether he will acknowledge it or

In her analysis of Fight Club, Renee Lockwood identifies the defining role that consumerism plays in establishing modern identity asserting that “modern consumers able to choose from a vast range of identities through products and labels” (Lockwood, 2008, p. 329.). Explicit examples of society’s dependency on consumerism is constantly portrayed through makeovers, where an individual gains a plethora of confidence and social acceptance through the modification of their sense of dress. Thus, we live in a world defined almost entirely by what we own hence the propensity for people to change their identity from time to time.

During our life we construct many different identities of who we want to portray ourselves as to the rest of society; fashion plays a vital role in generating who we are. With the ideas from Storry and Childs they state that “the way that we dress can either serve to confirm or to subvert various facets of our identities, such as our gender,

Ever since their invention many centuries ago, clothes have been used as a way of communicating. The message communicated relies on a number of factors including the social background of both the communicator and the receiver, and the context in which the message is communicated. Although at times the exact message or symbolism one is trying to portray may not be clear, it is evident that clothing has long been embraced as one of the best ways to project one’s desired personal image to those around them.

In “ The Name of the Wind” Patrick Rothfuss once said, “ It’s like everyone tells a story themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” Our identity is what we know ourselves by how others view us in the world. Their many identities that we have some examples are race, gender, fashion, class, sexuality, etc. All these identities shape the way we think, act, and view the world. We may not know it, but our identities impact one another either in a negative or positive way. Either we make our identities by our interests or what we feel like we should be viewed as. Some let others make their identity for them, they’re influenced by what they see on T.V. mainly by what celebrities are wearing. I know for me when I was younger I would watch all these NBA games and see these players wear Jordans. Jordan 's back when I was a youngin and still today where cool shoes you had popularity if you had Jordans. All the cool kids had Jordan 's and I wanted to be like that a cool kid. So I acted like someone I wasn 't, buying many pairs of Jordan’s (which are expensive) so I can fit in and so everyone can know me as a cool kid because as a little boy at Colonia Middle School I wanted to have recognition as the kid with the expensive shoes and the showy clothes. Also, I was pressured by my surroundings to buy these items because I saw a lot of kids being bullied for wearing inexpensive clothes and I didn 't

In Orderly Fashion, Patrik Aspers discusses the social order in the fashion industry. In Sharon Zukin’s Point of Purchase, she examines consumerism through the twentieth century, which brings the arguments of the above-mentioned authors into synthesis.