Argumentative Essay: America's Newest Day

America’s Newest Holiday Modern day America is surrounded by advertisements, open all-night restaurants, and online shopping sites accessible at any time of the day, providing everyone with an unlimited access to consumption. In the picture, Holiday Shopping, taken on Black Friday by Charlie Riedel, the audience sees a mother and daughter shopping for computers at a Best Buy. The young girl is laying flat on the bottom of a shopping cart and appears to be exhausted, while her mother pays more attention to the technology than her own daughter’s needs. This photograph embodies how the need for consumption has become a higher priority to American shoppers than their biological need for sleep and their own family values. The focal point of this photo is the distant relationship between the young daughter and mother. The photograph’s viewers are drawn to the neglected girl desperate for her consuming-obsessed mother to provide her with the attention she seeks. The strategic placement of Riedel’s photo enhances the idea that this woman’s family values have been compromised. By

The argument that consumerism is becoming more important than our biological need of sleep. This concept is represented in this photograph by the young girl sprawled out on the bottom of a shopping cart. Assuming this girl is being kept out past her bedtime, this mother is putting her need for consumption above her daughter’s need for sleep. This mother has allowed her values to be obscured by putting her need for consumption above the needs of her own daughter. In Clive Hamilton’s article, “Observations on Late Consumer Capitalism,” he states that the consumer market has made its way into places that it does not belong, that of people’s social and personal life (Hamilton