Most people wont know that this project began as part of an assessment for Uni where I had to join a social network (Obviously Tumblr) and participate in the community (Creating this blog). I also had to blog back within the class and talk about how the project was going etc…So given that, I thought perhaps I would share with you my final blog post about my experiences on Tumblr and about my project (this was only about a month or so into the project). There are some references to compulsory readings from the class but I am sure the rest of it will make sense. Would LOVE to hear your thoughts on this.
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When we make a choice, we often believe that it has been made independently, uninfluenced by any other factors, because it is OUR choice. However we sometimes fail to realise that the consumer market, commercialisation and the media, almost always influence the choices we make.
Patel (2007, p. 2) states:
“Our choices are not entirely our own because, even in a supermarket, the menu is crafted not by our choices, nor by the seasons, nor where we find ourselves, nor by the full range available, nor by the full spectrum of available nutrition and tastes, but by the power of food corporations.”
While supermarket isles appear to convey a world of freedom, abundance and choice, their contents have already been specially selected by consumer corporations for our use. We may, for example, be selecting one type of apple from the five or so that are available to us, however another company has already selected those five kinds from the hundreds that actually exist in the world.
Similarly, networks can often convey a sense of freedom and choice, however our decisions are once again guided by other factors. Tumblr has a link called ‘explore Tumblr’ (http://www.tumblr.com/explore ) which takes you to a page with a list of what would appear to be ‘random’ blogs. This, however, is unlikely to be the case. The blogs that appear first on this page are probably sponsored by advertisers, who pay for the privilege. You may think you are making an independent ‘choice’ to click on, or follow one blog over the others, but the shortlist of blogs that appear on this page have already been chosen for you.
My blog, The Great Wardrobe Challenge (http://thegreatwardrobechallenge.tumblr.com/) revolves around clothing and fashion, and I am starting to recognise considerable similarities with my purchasing habits, and those desired by the consumer market.
-Has the consumer market driven into our minds that we feel better if we have new clothes?
The fashion industry has always heavily influenced choice, particularly that of young impressionable, self-conscious women who desire nothing more than to fit in! Fashion can make you feel as though you belong to a group (or abstain from certain groups), but mostly it is perhaps the best-known form of self-expression.
“The dress of an individual is a kind of ‘Sign Language’ that communicates a complete set of information and is usually that basis on which immediate impressions are formed” (Kiran, Riaz & Malik, 2002, p. 377).
But just as individuals feel they are making an independent choice about clothing, commercial and consumer companies dictate what is fashionable and shape social norms which ultimately “governs [the] clothing behavior of any group of people to some extent” (Kiran, Riaz & Malik, 2002, p. 377).
This instantly made me think of a particular scene from The Devil Wears Prada, where Miranda Priestly says to Andy:
“This… stuff’? Oh. Okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select… I don’t know… that lumpy blue sweater, for instance because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise. It’s not lapis. It’s actually cerulean. And you’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent… wasn’t it who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it, uh, filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff” (IMD, 2011).
This project has proven to be an extremely valuable experience for me, forcing me to re-consider my lifestyle ‘choices’, asking myself why I ‘choose’ to follow certain fashion trends and ultimately posing the question “is there such a thing as too many clothes?”. For me, clothing is my identity (It would appear that I have a lot of identities) When I wear a certain outfit I become someone, and perhaps it is too soon for me to come to a clear decision, however I am willing to see the project to the end (For a full critical analysis of my project so far please refer to http://thegreatwardrobechallenge.tumblr.com/post/9990758424/quarter-way-through-mark-and-perhaps-a-few-home).
