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The Victim
You could call me a shop-a-holic, as most of my friends do, but I call myself a lover of fashion. Sitting in my room, I look in my closet at all my belongings and wonder what else I want to buy. Abercrombie, Guess, J Crew and Ralph Lauren are just a few of the name-brand items that clutter my room. And I want more. I've never stopped to question whether I'm getting what I'm paying for, though I've always been a "smart" shopper, a sale shopper. But, as I learn more about my future field, marketing, I realize that I am a victim of advertising. All the things I want and buy are influenced by what magazines, television, and other advertisers tell me I need to buy.
Everyone wears clothes. They can be a statement, a style, or a definition of who you are. They can also be a simple necessity. For me, clothing has meant different things. As a child, I wore what my mother gave me or the hand-me-downs from my sister. I never questioned how I looked, but I liked to dress up.
In middle school, I became more concerned with my appearance, like most girls. But as I progressed to high school, advertising became a big influence. Boys began to notice girls, and all the girls wanted to look good. The clothing in high school became something that defined you; it identified you with a certain group. Wearing Abercrombie jeans meant you were the preppy all-American girl, a Guess shirt meant you were the snobby rich girl, and anything worse or less than that was unacceptable.
In college, advertising hit me in a different way. College is a place where typically no one knows you at first, so you can be whoever you want to be. There are so many students and such a variety of people that clothing begins to define you less and less and your personality begins to define you more and more. Everyone is growing and changing and beginning to learn who they really are. Yet my friends and I still turn to advertising, now not only to stay in fashion but more so to find our own style. In my quest for identity, the style of clothing I choose reflects me. It shows my personality and shows what type of person I am.
Despite my choice to have my clothing reflect and not define me, I remain a victim of advertising. Although I look to ads for the upcoming styles, I am still affected by the underlying images behind them. Advertising reflects society and also adds to societal definitions. Advertisers show us people around us, yet they choose only a certain look. By showing us just these people, they are defining those few as the beautiful people. Advertising feeds off human insecurities and makes us want to be like these beautiful people. Our insecurities with wanting to be popular and wanting to be loved are used against us. Society fosters the fascination that we should not be who we are, and advertisers use this to influence us to believe certain messages. If we do not look like the models, we are not beautiful. If we are not thin and curvy we are not attractive. Even if we have great personalities, most people will not like us if we are not physically beautiful.
Advertisers use our weaknesses to tell us what is new, what we should be like, what is cool, and what is hot. Because human nature makes us want to be popular and glamorous, we follow the lead ads give us. Is it the victim's fault for believing, or the fault of society for allowing advertisers to do so? These are the questions I often ask myself as I enter the field of marketing. It is very easy to use human insecurities as a means of targeting consumption, but is it right? How will we ever know unless we step back and stop reading magazines and watching television? Until then, I will remain a victim of advertising. And so will almost everyone else.
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