Consumption: Buying Our Identity

Consumption: Buying Our Identity

As time goes on many things are changing: the weather, the seasons, our schedules, our lives. However, one thing that changes consistently is the band wagon of consumer society. One day you have the iPhone3G, by next week you’ll have to buy the iPhone 4G just to be in the “in crowd.” This roller coaster of different technologies, fashions, hair products, cars, and any other possible thing you can think of has led our society to mass consumption of new products. Through the pressures of not only society but also through the pressures of ads and media,consumerism manipulates its way through our lives and changes us by picking on our insecuritiesin order to keep us consuming their products.

There are many products made today that have been advertised to make life seem easier. Many of these items vary from simple toothpaste to a high speed car. Companies understand that many people today have been accustomed to having these products dictate tothem “the way” of fitting ‘in” with society, and so they do just that. Products’ use of this type of manipulative consumption is rooted back in the 17th century when innovations were at its prime. Something that Sterns pointed out in Consumerism in World History was the fact that when watches first came out, people started buying them even though they could not tell time. The fascination of being the first one in their crowd to have one was their motivation to buy the watch. This reminds me much of today’s society.

From my own experience, I have begun to realize how consumer society works. My brother is an “iPhone lover”. He buys every iPhone that comes out, but his reasoning for buying this pricy phone doesn’t seem to be legitimate. He buys this item to be a copy of those commercials in which a man talks about all the cool apps and the new settings the iPhone hasand how the quality of the phone has improved. My brother likes not only the attention he gets when he pulls the phone out,but also the feeling of fitting into the crowd. And this is exactly what companies aim for. They aim at people just like my brother whose desire to fit in influences what they buy.As we know the most basic and mundane way in which products do this is by advertising.

Advertisement has become a huge influence in the success of companies. By being bombarded not only through ads on TV and the radio, but through the advertisement ofeven our own friends and groups we have become a puppet waiting for the commands of our puppet master (advertisement) on what to buy next. Ads pick on our insecurities and fears in order to get to what they want us to do which is to consume. Cushman explains this in the Empty Self, “Ads seem to criticize and condemn the average customer, while glorifying the model, extolling a standard of beauty and mastery impossible to achieve” (29). This meansthat these advertisements make us believe that the life of the model could be our lives by “glorifying” the model and making it seems as if we will never be as good as them if we do not have that product. I’ve seen this trick being used so many times in many ads, especially in an ad that has to do with gel for hair. There’s this guy who has super spiky hair at the beach and even ends up catching fish with it. At the sightof this, his girlfriend doesn’t want to be around him. Then they show that through their product, he canachieve smoother hair so that he has more confidence not only at the beach, but with his girlfriend. Through this advertisement and many others we can see the role that ads play in adding to our insecurities.

However it’s not enough for these ads to show us what’s wrong with us through their commercials, but they’ve managed to have our friends criticize us for what we wear. I remember when I was in middle school my parents did not make enough money to afford any high brand shoes such as Nikes or Jordans or even Chuck Taylors, so I would always get my sneakers at Payless. This was fine until I realized that at middle school not being “in” was “sinful” (59). One day in class this guy started making fun of me because he had noticed that my shoes were from Payless. He told me, “Hey why do you have those cheap ass shoes, I’ve seen those at Payless.” That was the last time he ever saw me with those shoes. That same day I went home and demanded that my mom buy me expensive shoes.Through this use of making insecurities more obvious ads make us believe that we don’t want the products, we need them.

Ads add to our desire of wanting these products and lead us to the mass consumption problem we find ourselves in today. They have found that the "want" of the consumer can be turned into a "need" for the advertised product. Through their exaggerated and supposed “transformative-like” products, commercial ads make us believe that, “no you don’t want this product, you need it.” As Philip Cushman says in The Empty Self, these types of ads “offer the fantasy that the consumer’s life can be transformed into a glorious, problem-free “life”- the ‘life’ of the model who is featured in the ad” (29). This exaggeration of the product makes the consumer believe that in fact, in order to be “part of us,” as Bauman says, they “need” these products. For example, many times we see ads directed at obese people. These ads consist of diet pills, exercise kits, and even meal plans. They show the way in which someone loses 140 pounds by using the pill (or whatever they used) and instantly this product becomes a necessity to help them with weight loss. Or how many times do we see commercials where we see women wearing a certain dress that they “need” to get? They end up buying it, and by the next commercial the dress is now completely different. This is the point in the consumerism society. Although attainable, this life transforming product doesn’t stop there, it itself transforms daily.

As new products develop, the “needs” of consumers change.In The Art of Life, Bauman says, “The snag is: How long will the certificate stay valid?” Meaning how long will you last with this product until you will have to move onto the next product, because the one you have now is “just not ‘in’ anymore.” This is exactly what happened to a girl named Liberty. Liberty is twelve years old and at this tender age she already knows what her apparel must look like to be “in.”She decided to buy some shorts at her favorite store Topshop; however after buying them she realized that they were too short.She says, “I hated them…but then I read Vogue and I saw this lady in shorts- and they were my shorts from Topshop! Ever since then, I’ve been inseparable from them” (42). Liberty had fallen into the trap of consumerism. She loved the shorts after she had seen them in a magazinebecause they had been approved by an ad, but Bauman says that this love “won’t last long in Liberty’s long life” (42). And why is that? Because consumer society changes in order to keep us buying the most updated products. Through advertisements companies manipulate us into buying their products by making us believe that they are a necessity in our lives, when in reality not only are they not a necessity but they add to the loss of our identity.

In the consumer society, "I am what I have" is the operative definition of self. If we have a product that seems to be the most popular or hip then we are “in”. This approval of others in society is the incent that manipulates us into buying their products. Our insecurities mixed with the pressures of having what everyone else has or whatever is advertised leads us to believe that we in fact do “need” the products advertised. The fear of being made fun of or left behind in this band wagon of consumer society with our daily changing fashions, cars, and other things leads us to consuming all products persistently without noticing that in reality we are losing ourselves, our identity.