Socy student vs. Scene kids

Before you go any further, read this.

Now, as a sociology student and self-proclaimed fashionista (ha), I found an alarmingly high number of faults with the article.

Lets start with the lite

“We hate Supre and Jay Jays because it's all mass-produced stuff, because everyone ends up with the same stuff, which is pretty lame." The girl on the right is wearing a shirt from Jay Jays, I remember because I myself have a skele-animal (featured on her shirt), for my birthday last year, and on the same day, Toni dear bought a skele-animal shirt (similar to the one the girl's wearing)... both from Jay Jays.

"She spends $50 a week on clothes" Wow 50 dollars is a lot. Before I locked my account, I usually spend 100 bucks a week on clothes and shoes, my dress for my birthday alone cost me $130.. wow $50 is a lot.

"It takes them two hours to get ready for a day at the shopping centre or skate park." I don't get it, teasing hair takes 5 minutes max, makeup... 10 minutes? Putting on clothes and finding a fugly tiara... umm... I say 3. That sure adds up to 2 hours

Now onto the sociology aspects of this riduculous article (WHICH WAS PUBLISHED IN THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD NO LESS, If they publish shit like that, I think I should be the person who write all the front page stories).

Back to the "We hate Supre and Jay Jays because it's all mass-produced stuff, because everyone ends up with the same stuff, which is pretty lame." quote, mass-produced, as Jelly pointed out, everything now is mass produced, hair, skin cells, everything. Unless you make your own clothes, everything will be mass produced (or if you spend about 1000 bucks on a unique shirt by some designer... but hold on, they can only afford to spend 50 dollars a week!). Not even making your own clothes now I think about it, fabic is mass-produced as well!

" People just wanted to "look different"", oh okay... I'm sorry but it's impossible to look different. Identity is also mass produced. I'm gonna quote back on my socy assignment from last sem:

How individualised a person can be is limited by what they can consume, some of these restrictions that limits the consumer are such as what is available on the market, the consumer’s financial status, and what a society considers as acceptable – the social norm.

-Skip Skip-

While there seem to be many choices on the market that the consumer can choose from, through a critical view, real choices regarding consumer objects are actually quite limited. In examples given by David Pearson (1993), while there seem to be many different car companies from which the consumer can choose when buying an automobile, the consumer will immediately think of buying a car. This is because of what is available on the market and what the society deems to be appropriate for the city’s roads. The way today’s society is constructed, it is expected that what the consumer buy can be accepted by social norms, such as what kind of automobile a person drives, what that person wears and what kind of estate the person lives in.

It can also be argued that media teaches people how to present themselves in society (Marjoribanks 2007). Social norms are often set by what is presented in the media through TV programs and movies. Such examples are the desirable fashion trends and the stylish-yet-environmental cars celebrities own. Interestingly what is considered desirable is often costly, and in a Marxist point of view, media is encouraging people to commodify themselves, and hence increasing the incomes for the companies which produce these desirable goods.

Media is often considered to be a site where identity construction occurs because it is the centre of a person’s life, both socially and individually (Marjoribanks 2007). Media provides a portrayal of what is the social norm for relationships between people through TV dramas like The O.C. and Dawson’s Creek because these shows mainly focus on the relationships between characters and their emotional experiences (Marjoribanks 2007). Not only the consumer’s identity is shaped by what they consume, their relationship and what they perceive as a society’s social norms are shaped by what a person consume

And to bring it back home to the original point:

Granted there are changes in class identity and local culture, the fact that what one can afford still underpin how much freedom one has in creating their identity. The social group to which a person belongs can also determine what the identity a person creates through his/her consumption. For example, if a person’s peers are part of the punk-rock music scene, the clothing choices, hairstyles and attitude is likely to reflect on what it is acceptable in that particular sub-culture. Having said that, it can be concluded that while people have the freedom to choose their identity through what they consume, it’s what is available for a person to consume on the market and what is deemed appropriate for a consumer to consume that restrict how individualised a person can be.

I don't know if any of that made any sense, but what I'm trying to say is... People who label themselves are retards who need to take sociology and become wise like me... HAA no. I'm saying Scenes, Emos, Goths, Preps, Skaters, Cyber-punks, whatever, they're all labels, and labels are for soup cans. They all say they want to be their own person, but how can they when we live in a society like ours? We're in post-modern, where globalisation made us all into clones.

And with that, I will now go change for work

Tiffi