Consumption as a means to claim social power.

In lecture we talked about how consumerism in America is a way to fit in or even obtain social power. People are many times measured by the amount of things they have or by how expensive their things are. Why is it that in our culture a person’s value is often times judged based on their materialistic worth?
Coincidentally right after our lecture on Tuesday I watched a video for another class called “Kids and Money”. The video fit in perfectly with what we had just talked about because it was about how people, more specifically children, feel about money and material things. It interviewed children from all different backgrounds including children from extremely wealthy families to kids from poorer families. However, the general attitude was the same for all the kids. They all thought of materialistic things as a way to fit into a certain socio-economic status. No one wants to come off as a poor person, so many times people live beyond their means in order to appear of a higher social and economic class.
For kids, the sense of belonging is a very important aspect in their lives. Especially in school kids are more than ever pressured to fit into a certain group. The popular kids are many times the kids with nice clothes and nice things. So kids think of how they look and dress as a way to fit in and be popular. In the video there was one girl who was the epitome of a spoiled brat. She had a more extensive wardrobe than most girls I know, and she was only about 12 years old. The only thing that she seemed to care about was her appearance. She said that in school girls with bad clothes were dorks and weirdoes and that fat girls were not popular. For girls, just having a good wardrobe is not enough to fit in; they must also keep up their physical appearance, all of which cost even more money. Just look at celebrities, who are the role models for many young women, they all have expensive clothes, perfect hair and makeup, and perfect bodies. These women have all of these things because they have the money to buy the clothes, maintain the hair and makeup, and pay for personal trainers. Whenever I see celebrities and feel insecure because I do not look like them, I just say to myself oh I could look like that too if I had the money to pay for the same treatments they get. So many people think that the better they look the more money they appear to have as well. This idea that a person can be judged on how good they look and how much things they have transcends all genders, races, and ages in America. In the video there were also boys who felt that the way they looked determined their social status. One boy said that race doesn’t matter and that only money matters in determining a person’s social worth. I completely agree with this statement. I think that social status does not have anything to do with what race you are because the most important thing in determining someone’s social status is how much money they have. Just because a person is white does not mean they are automatically of a higher social class, it is how much money they have that determines their social status. Since people do not go around telling others how much money they have, it is only natural that they try and portray their wealth through their appearance by how many things they have and how expensive they are.