The Visible Lifestyle

In “The Fashion Industry: Free to be an Individual” by Hannah Berry, Hannah emphasizes how social media especially advertisements pressure females to use certain product to in order to be considered beautiful. She also acknowledges the current effort of advertisement today to more realistically depicts of women. In addition, these advertisements use the modern women look to advertise products to increase women self-esteem and to encourage women to be comfortable with one’s image.

Americans see and read about celebrities all the time, either through online advertisements or through massive popularization on social media such as Instagram and Twitter. Through the internet, we can always keep up to date with what our favorite celebrities are doing or wearing. Celebrities post their outfits of the day on their profiles for their followers to see. If a pop icon begins to advertise a type of shirt or jeans, that item of clothing instantly becomes a trend and due to their popularity everyone wants to dress and look like them. Therefore, people begin to see that everyone around them, in the streets or at school dress alike. For instance, a type of shoes such as stilettos is popular in one generation and not popular the following generation due to the evolving style of popular icons through social media. Popular icons can also change the perspective of body images in the American identity. If most of the celebrities have a certain body image that is widely popular, such as having larger appearing eyes, that body trait will begin to become more popular in the society. More people will pay to look like those celebrities by plastic surgery and different cosmetic procedures. Therefore, if a mass popularity begins to look or appear the same, that trend will become a part of the American identity. For example, in the

A society based widely on buying the newest most expensive version of an item to gain respect from the people surrounding us. Ads, and people of importance commonly a famous actor or singer, or someone well known in our communities they often influence consumers in the generation it is intended for. Those consumers then look to those people’s actions whether it is addictions, depression mental health issues or way of thinking as normal. While no initial change occurs it becomes more common for that way of life to be talked about and in some cases to happen changing our society in the long term. These effects take place over years and it is not based on one person rather than multiple who have been brought out by our consumer based

For the longest time now, advertising has played a huge role in how we identify ourselves in the United States with the American culture, and how others identify themselves with all the cultures of the rest of the world as well. It guides us in making everyday decisions, such as what items we definitely need to invest our money on, how to dress in-vogue, and what mindset we should have to prosper the most. Although advertising does help make life easier for most, at the same time it has negative affects on the people of society as well. Advertisement discreetly manipulates the beliefs, morals, and values of our culture, and it does so in a way that most of the time we don’t even realize it’s happened. In order to reach our main goal of

In today’s mass media, it is quiet common for advertisers to assimilate class into their commercials. These advertisements portray a certain level of elegance because of the sophisticated choice to use classical background music and thick European accents. On the contrary, other advertisers take the common-folk approach by structure these commercials around the western concept. Both of these advertising tactics supports an American paradox. As argued in Jack Solomon’s “Master of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising”, the contradiction lies in the desire to strive above the crowd and the quest for social equality.

The rise in advertisement played a key role in the rise of consumption. Thanks to well-developed advertisement campaigns, America redefined what a necessity is. Advertisers encouraged Americans to actively work towards maintaining a high social standing. “Advertisers made no secret of their intention to promote novelty for its own sake, in the hope that consumers would exchange perfectly serviceable goods for goods that conformed to the latest fashions” (Lasch, 2000). Consumers devoured this advertisement scheme and began to rapidly increase their spending. Many advertisements for common, household products made claim that they could make the normal appear comparable to the high end. For example, Lux, a soap company, ran an ad in 1920 that depicted two women talking - one of the women complemented on the other on the quantity of sweaters she owned, only to find out that it is not a new sweater, but rather her old sweater that Lux soap made it look brand new (Lux)! Men and women alike began to believe

Appearance versus Reality in Alice Walker's and Zora Neale Hurston's Everyday Use and The Gilded Six-Bits

I resonated with Diana Kendall’s, “Framing Class, Vicarious Living and Consumption” article. This author’s choice of language had a huge impact on me. It helped convey the message of the article in a much smoother way. The media has people thinking they can be rich and famous like the people in the television shows. With her language and choice of words, she was able to eloquently portray that TV shows make us feel as if we need to have what the celebrities have, so we buy into what they sell and we feel like we are living a life just like theirs. Living like this only makes us acquire debt, because we are spending money we do not have in prevalence. It does the exact opposite we will only end up being poor and not reach the same status as

It is believed that there is a tension between social classes in America. Typically, people of lower classes choose to imitate those of higher social status. As a result, advertisers have a tendency to take advantage of this tension in order to profit from people of the lower and middle classes. In "The American Upper Class," G. William Domhoff says that "exhibiting high social status… is a way of exercising power" (Domhoff p.34)," which is something important to all social classes. According to Judi Puritz Cook, author of "Consumer Culture…Sales Discourse," advertisements in print as well as in visual media seem to create "the promise of status mobility through consumption (Cook p.373)." In the article, Puritz explains how television

These days we are surrounded by the latest technology: smartphones, hybrid automobiles, and robots that clean your floors. Companies are constantly finding ways to capture your attention; to keep upgrading and spending endless amounts of money on items that you don’t need. In “Honestly–You Shouldn’t Have” by Anna Quindlen, the reoccurring theme of materialisticness is mentioned and is applied to every American, starting from the Industrial Revolution up until now. In reality, having these upgraded objects and over expensive clothing represent how socially insecure they are. They simply cannot live looking poor or old fashioned, they need to show others that they are not bottom feeders. People see what they have and know there is a better model

From IPhones to new cars to discounted food, advertisements and the desire for the newest or cheapest items surround humans every day. Socially we are held responsible to not only “keep up with the Joneses” anymore, but also the Kardashians, Gates, and Walton families. Today’s society has proven that the desire to have the newest items for the most affordable prices stands more important than our true happiness. Joseph Turow provides in his article, The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry Is Defining Your Identity and Worth, which the advertising industry has greatly affected your consumption habits and the prices you look for. James A. Roberts grows on that idea, in that with the help of these advertising firms, you continue to run

Perhaps the reason luxury clothing buyers advertise designer clothing logos on their bodies is because they’re trying to advertise themselves. In a study geniusly titled “The Rival Wears Prada” four evolutionary psychology researchers find reasoning behind why people, women specifically, frivolously spend their money on designer clothing. Hudders, DeBacker, Fisher, and Vyncke cite several studies about why the male species would also indulge their money into overpriced clothing solely to attract women. These studies show that men not only limit their spending to clothing, but also invest large sums of money on expensive cars, watches, and even pens attempting to signal to the opposite sex that they are

How does American society define one’s self-worth? By how they look, what they drive or simply what they buy? In today’s consumer centric American culture, our goods represent us as Americans as well as the American cultural identity that revolves around materialistic goods. In which a typical American works from 9am-5pm to earn a sufficient amounts of money to buy and display his self-worth through a variety of cleverly advertised goods. In which the advertisement depicts a perfect world that is free of pain, suffering, where the typical American can escape his routine life and experience ephemeral “freedom”. To this very purpose of freedom that our founding fathers wrote the constitution to which today’s conformities ideals and societal norms

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.

A ‘commodity sign’ invests symbolic meaning in products or services as a signifier with an image as signified. In recent times, consumer culture is driven by our desire for superfluous wants, causing the production and consumption of commodity signs to become more specialised according to the notion of capital. Capitalism is characterised by economies that are based on open markets and the ethos of individuality over community. French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (Distinction 1984) introduced the schema of subcultural capital, which ‘confers status on its owner in the eyes of the relevant beholder’ (Thorton, 2006: 100). Therefore people have the idea that they can buy subcultural capital, as it is seen as self-revealing, in order to impress people or become someone else (Frith, 1996: 5). Thus advertising was developed as a strategy in generating demand in a contemporary consumer culture. Mass marketing has split the unity of signifiers and signified into a language of appearances and images of which we realise as either visible, physical connections or indirect connotations to that which they represent.