America's Consumer Culture

America has become a consumer culture. The American people tend to find themselves buying consumer products for no particular reason. I personally believe, we are what we buy. Americans have a habit of showing themselves threw their products. The products they buy say a lot about the person’s identity. People have separated themselves apart by the merchandise they consumed.

A Person’s clothes can quickly label a person and put them in a distinctive group, for example if a person wears all black and has long hair that person would likely be considered a metal-head (a person who enjoys metal music) by society. People find themselves socializing within the same group of individuals. This is just something that we all have been conditioned to. We are more comfortable talking to a person with similar interest, such as music, fashion and food as appose to a person with nothing in common.

It is not just clothing that defines a person. Gadgets, such as IPods, cars, phones and computers can also identify a person. For example, a person driving around in a Mercedes this automatically means he or she is wealthy. The Mercedes Benz is the top of the line luxury car that screams out wealth to society. The same could be said about a person driving around in a beat up Volkswagen. The person will be automatically being seen as someone with little money, struggling to make it in the world. This is just how society is the more you have the better you

are than anybody else.

My cousin, Steven does not socialize with people outside his world. He constantly tries to find people who have some of the same interest has he does. One of the first things he tends to look at is how the person is dressed and quickly judges them on their appearance. This is one of the ways he usually makes his friend somebody with similarities to him he would most likely approach. I personally asked him how you could be so shallow. Steven replied, “it makes me feel a lot more comfortable knowing we have similar interest”.