The Mass-marketing of Working Class Culture
The fads of the father are visited on the son: we've all seen how adult fads are given down to children. We've seen how cargo pants have trickled down, thanks to the Gap, Baby Gap, and Old Navy (all corporations owned by The Limited, Inc.).
Cargo pants have always been a mystery to me. The attractive thing about them is storage (which I'll get to later), blandness and personal appearance. I only considered wearing cargo pants because they'd hide how chunky my thighs are. And they're beige and boring--they thus go with anything. I also don't understand this fascination with looking working-class (In a recent copy of Vogue, there were ritzy, high-priced versions of lumberjack clothing). There's absolutely nothing wrong with that and I don't want to sound like an elitist, because I'm by no means not working-class. I just wonder why this a trend, why white collar workers want to look like they work with their hands.
But this fascination with storage, with having so many products presents a problem. Cargo pants were designed so workers could essentially wear their toolbox. Today's kids wearing cargo pants don't need that space for hammers and nails. To avoid acknowledging that cargo pants are a silly trend, wearers unconsciously seek to fill their pockets. As Lacan might say, empty pockets remind us of our lacks.
Cargo pants only encourage the reckless. The Gap, like any other capitalist corporation, wants consumers to spend oodles of money. Providing more storage space in a pair of pants allows for children and teens to spend even more money filling them.
What the Gap has done is transformed the meaning of cargo pants. It is a redefinition: today's cargo pants wearers aren't laborers, they're spenders. Isn't that a glorious thing, the Gap may ask us. It's a way of showing how the upper class has always stepped all over the lower class, taking what aspects of its culture it likes and discarding the individuals involved.
We've seen this over and over, but it usually has been a race's culture that has been used while the individuals are considered meaningless by the ruling classes. This is happening again today with Latin culture. White culture takes what few things it likes (namely Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin, maybe a salsa beat, and some Tex-Mex food), and celebrates it as all Latin culture has to offer, ignoring debates about the "Latinness" of such aspects anyway.
Holton, Woody. Abigail Adams - A Life. New York, New York: Free Press A Division of Simon & Schuster Inc., 2009.
Culture of the elite refers to the national culture while popular culture refers to that of non-elites. Therefore the African contribution is often ignored or forgotten about because they were of a lower class. Critics against Gonzales' argument claim that he exaggerates the contribution of Afro-Puerto Ricans,and the importance of race, class and ethnicity.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (n.d.). The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Retrieved November 20, 2014, from http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm
Company also took the advantage of changes that started to appear according to the dress code at work place. In that times company accentuated 100% cotton in Levi’s jeans, as “baby boomer” who grew up were seeking for natural fibers.
Yearly, thousands die from not receiving the organs needed to help save their lives; Anthony Gregory raises the question to why organ sales are deemed illegal in his piece “Why legalizing organ sales would help to save lives, end violence”, which was published in The Atlantic in November of 2011. Anthony Gregory has written hundreds of articles for magazines and newspapers, amongst the hundreds of articles is his piece on the selling of organs. Gregory states “Donors of blood, semen, and eggs, and volunteers for medical trials, are often compensated. Why not apply the same principle to organs? (p 451, para 2)”. The preceding quote allows and proposes readers to ponder on the thought of there being an organ
You know what I just don’t get is how people are getting back into denim. I don’t see it much in school but out of school it is dennom everything. You see denim something everywhere, denim dresses to socks. I am totally not against denim, I mean i do wear jeans but I would not wear a denim dress or shirt. I just think it is so weird people used to hate wearing denim on denim. People would look at you weird if you have a denim jacket on with jeans, and now you are cool if you are dressed in denim from head to toe. I just don’t understand it! Why I think being dressed in denim from head to toe is definitely not flattering. I think if you decide to wear denim you should pair it with something that is not denim!
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art." The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Home. 2004. Accessed October 27, 2011. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/duch/hd_duch.htm.
Jeans were just one of the different categories of pants along with casual pants and dress pants, and jeans had dominated the category until the 1990's when sales had tapered off when consumers migrated over to khakis, cargo pants, and other types of pants. However, when new innovations in fabrics and style in the jeans category came to the forefront in 2001, people's tastes began to switch back over to jeans. In 2002, jeans sales were predicted to grow by 2-3%.
There are a few number of people that believes counter culture does not exists anymore. They claim that it is now merely a commodity that can be bought and sold like any other product. Some others disagree. Personally, I agree with the former group. This piece of writing will analyse this statement of whether counter culture is only a commodity or not. First I’m going to explain how counter culture starts and what is consumerism. Then I’m going to analyse how it is commodified and the connection between consumerism. Then I will discuss how the consumerism affect counter cultural group’s lifestyle in the past. Then I’m going to give a few examples of different counter cultural people and groups from different countries and I will state my counter-argument. Finally I will conclude my argument and state my opinion on this.
American Eagle has come out with many new types of jeans. They now have a variety of materials and styles to fit everyone’s personal needs or wants. Yes, it’s a short run because they applied larger amounts of labor and materials to their plant to create the
Here, they took inspiration from the belts on children's car seats, which are adjustable to fit a wide range of body sizes. This compensates for the variable sizes of astronauts in the program.
These individuals come from educated and sophisticated backgrounds and socioeconomically fall within the middle to upper class. This target customer won’t buy new clothing based on the fact that it might be worn out or too old, they buy habitually in order to keep up with the latest trending styles and innovations that money can buy. “Other than their poise and perfect coifs, you can identify members of this gym robot army by their brand of clothing. You’ve seen them at your gym, at the Whole Foods and in line for green juices; they’re the Lululemon ladies and they’re fancy as fuck.” (Blisstree) This consumer segment is also very brand and status orientated, and therefore views and wears Lululemon as a status symbol of high end and high quality, athletic
Another “distracting” clothing that we wear that adults think is “too distracting” for us to wear to school is hats. It’s the same with sweatpants how is something that we wear and see on a daily basis distracting? It’s not like wearing a hat shows off anything inappropriate.
Customers are being likely to consider prices when they want to purchase something in terms of what they consider the price have to be, concerning to what they think the price supposed to be with the actual price. Inconsistency in both direction maybe it is too high or too low may affect the customer to purchase the product from different alternative company. A consumer-based pricing strategy can be beneficial since it drives ...
Walking down the street in my brand new pants, I see an old man, little girl, high class businesswomen, and middle class worker wearing the same pants as I am, we’re all wearing Levi Jeans. Levi Jeans were invented by Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis, a Nevada tailor, who added metal rivets at points of strain to the commonly worn pants of the time in order to make them stronger and more desirable for the mining communities of California in 1873. These pants, called waist overalls, became the traditional clothing for the working men and laborers in the U.S. and then transformed into an everyday commodity for all genders, social classes, and people in society. This object is quintessentially American by representing that the country is made of immigrants,