Consumer Culture Is Central to Understanding Contemporary Identities Essay

As the title suggests, this es state is going to discuss, to what finale does consumer nuance affect contemporary identities. In todays participation consumer culture is e realwhere and we would probably not be satis detailory to get without it. It became such an of the essence(predicate) part of our lives that several(prenominal) throng nevertheless clear their carrier nigh it. Most businesses in modern societies, all around the world work as successfully as they do, simply because tidy sum became consumers and they buy their harvestings.This essay is first going to olfactory property at why this change of attitude occurred and how exactly it brought about consumer culture. This will lead us onto how exactly consumer culture works and how it affects consumers. To answer the question fully, we will to a fault look at the two view points on this matter. First we ar going to discuss arguments which support the view that consumer culture produces modern identities. Seco ndly, arguments financial support the view that consumer culture is far less important than in the breeding of unrivaleds identity operator.Before the question itself is addressed, close to background inescapably to be drawn about this issue. To be objective about this matter, it should be pointed out straight a counselling that consumer culture is not the key eyeshot affecting contemporary identities. There is one very simple account to why this is true. Humans have been around for a much monthlong period of time than consumer culture and were successfully developing their identities evening beforehand consumer culture came about. Therefore it is definitely true that in the past, at that place were new(prenominal) things creating our identities sufficiently enough.The definition of identity which Jodi Davis finds the most fitting is My identity is compulsive by a complex mix of things. The question however concentrates on contemporary identities. So is it possible th at consumer culture managed to take over the place of all the some otherwise aspects of the creation of identity in the past two hundred years? Some believe that the answer to that question is yes. In fact, Bauman argues that The roads to self-identity, to a place in society, to a life in a form recognisable as that of meaningful living, all require casual visits to the market place.Similarly, Featherstone states that criteria for the good life revolve around the desire to enlarge ones self, the quests for new tastes, and sensations, to explore more and more possibilities. (Featherstone, pg 67) Therefore many people would be happy to say that in todays society, consumer culture has an enormous effect on our identities. To some extent, this is true. Jagger even believes that we become what we consume. (Jagger, pg 45) To explain why this is true, the term blow signifiers needs to be explained.It refers to the fact that these days, all products and brands have a received meani ng/story behind them. People buy them because of these images they carry with them, quite an than the actual use of the product. This leads us to the use vs. exchange value question. It could be argued that this was one of the main changes which caused consumerism to expand so much. Basically Use vs. sub conflict refers to the fact that at a certain point, people stop buying goods for their use value and get movinged buying them for their exchange value.Material goods be used as communicators, not utilities. (Featherstone, pg 84) Today, consumerism has reached such level of success, that people no longer buy things because they need them, scarce because they like this image that products let them. Consumption, then, must not be understood as the consumption of use-values, a material utility but primarily as consumption of signs. (Featherstone, pg 85) This expressive style, the things we buy, create our identity, because people reckon us based on what the products we use say about us.In todays society of strangers, it is the plainly way to judge a person at the first sight. So for mannequin if someone was to drive a Ferrari, people would think of him as a successful individual. This assumption would be based on the fact that to be able to afford this kind of car, the individual must be very rich. Also the brand itself gives him the image of a young successful man. This shows that automatically, without even speaking to people or getting to know them, they already judge us based on our appearance.Obviously we all want to be liked and accepted by others so we try to fulfil their expectations of us. We drive to live up to (but not above) the standards attached to the social category into which we were natural. (Bauman, pg 27) These standards are also however determined by the media. Beauty ideals are set by TV, commercials and celebrities. They determine whats cool and what isnt. For example celebrities a great deal act as beauty idols, so many women strive to look like them.This inner need to ulfil societys expectation forces them to buy products which promise to make them look like a celebrity. Whoever does not at least attempt to fit in within these standards, or even worse, tries to do the opposite, might be stigmatised for it. For example over the past 80 years, it became very popular for women to shave their legs. It became so popular that nowadays, women who dont do it are usually highly stigmatised. This all roots in consumerism, because the initial reason why it became popular was to force people to flatten money on razors- which were until then unnecessary.Trying to fulfil these expectations creates our identity in a way. In most cases consumption of goods only affects our external identity but in some extreme cases it may even start to affect ones internal identity. For example certain brands depict certain groups of people. So if one was to shop at Gucci or Chanel, one is expected to act a certain way. These bran ds carry the image of a very traditional, well behaved and upper class individual. So anyone wearing Gucci or Chanel strives to live up to the standards of these brands.That way one is already is changing his deportment as well as his appearance, which is affecting not only his/hers external, but also internal identity. So really, when we think about it, the identity other people think we have, judging by our appearance, is very artificial and fake. This is because it is only created by the products we use, not by us ourselves. But then again, we take in which products to buy and it is us who decides how to look for other people so some(prenominal) we wear or look like, it is a bit personalized by our taste and other selects we make. Campbell brings up an interesting point in his book.He says that consumer culture develops our identity because since there is now such an enormous choice of products, it gives consumers opportunity to define their taste. They are able to decide wha t they like and what not. Also, since shop malls are so anonymous, clients arsehole try on anything they like, just to imagine how that role would fit them. This also helps them to find the image of themselves which they want to depict to other people. (Campbell, pg 159) However others believe that consumer culture is far less important than other factors in the development of ones identity.Jodi Davis divides identity into external and internal. External is cultural classifications (nationality, race, religion and gender) as well as societal characterizations (family, career, and position or title). Whereas internal is natural gifts, strengths, capabilities the intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual characteristics that constitute our uniqueness and innate talents and abilities our basic orientation toward the world around us, our attainment styles, how we process and organize information, and other predisposed tendencies and characteristics. Davis, pg 7) As we can see, there are a lot of things which define a persons identity.And we were to look at them individually we would notice that we were actually already born(p) with most of the crucial aspects of our identity and therefore are not able to change them. Our appearance is one of the very few aspects of our identity, which one can alternate. Therefore if a person is not happy with his overall identity, one of the few ways in which he can change it is through with(predicate) consumerism. In fact consumerism and advertising often aim to make the client feel like this.As the ads intimidated that anything natural about the customer was worthless or deplorable, and tried to make him schizophrenically self conscious of that notion, they offered weapons by which people could eclipse themselves. (Ewen, pg 48) If a person dresses a certain way and uses certain products, he may be able to convince some people that he fits the standards set by media. As mentioned before, this is thanks to the fact tha t every product we buy tells people something about us. The image the product portrays might not be true, but just the fact that a person uses that product makes people believe it.Even though the sulphur part of this essay attempts to support the idea that there are other factors affecting contemporary identities more than consumer culture, we should not forget its importance. The fact that consumer culture helps us to change the only changeable part of our identity makes it, in my opinion, even more crucial. Consumer culture is actually very significant when it comes to spirit contemporary identities. It is its products, which create the image we try to portray to other people and that way fit into society.