One of the Crowd

Today I was sitting in the b-school looking at the Wall Street Journal. There was an article called "Designs to Set Us Apart From the Crowd". I thought the article was overall interesting. It focused on five companies that allow consumers to customize their item. The stores were, Steve Madden, Nike, Oakley, Converse and Feddy and Ma. The thing that struck me when reading the article is how much of an influence the media has. It is not enough to have the newest and best, you now need the newest and best that was additionaly designed especially for you. It is consumerism at its worst. It is amazing how much people think they need based on what the media tells them. People are constantly being told that the $50 sunglasses are not good enough instead they need the $250 pair that has been customized. It is such on unrealistic standard that people think they need to live by. I recently read an interesting case study studying for a test. The study focused on the island of Fiji and the body image that women on the island had. Prior to 1980 women in Fiji thought that bigger was better. They did not want to be stick thin and eating disorders were unheard of on the tiny island. In the 1980s their views changed, eating disorders grew dramatically and most young women on the island were on diets and suddenly unhappy with themselves. The change on the island was that TV was introduced. In just a couple of short years hundreds of years of precedent was changed and women had a new standard that they were encouraged to live by.