Branded Reading Chunk #2

In this 2nd chunk of the non-fiction book by Alissa Quart she explains how video games, colleges, movies, surgeries, music videos, and models are also things that brand teens. She explains how these things influence teens without them even having a clue that they are being influence by these big corporations. Video games have influence the teens by putting brand names in the games such as Quicksilver in skateboarding games, making the teens want to go and buy the gear that has the Quicksilver brand on it to fit in. Movies also brand teens in a different way. Most movies are about makeover and show that when an ugly girl gets a makeover and become pretty she immediately gets socially accepted, which in a way influence kids do want to do makeovers to their oneself in hope that the same will happen to them. Also most of these teen movies mention certain brand names and the teen watching them are influence to go and buy the brand name that was mentioned. If a teen sees his favorite celebrity with a cosmopolitan magazine they are most likely to get influence in read that same magazine. The makeover, celebrity mentioning brand names, and products shown in the movie make teens become branded. Another way of getting branded is getting plastic surgery done to make their breast bigger or their noses smaller, in their own way of fitting in. These teens see how many of their friends become what they call "pretty" overnight by getting a nose job or a boob job and get influence that they should do it too. Many teens are also influence by their mom who had plastic surgery before. These teens are branding themselves by trying to look like the girls that come out in music videos or celebrities who have had surgery done to them. This is branding because they pick their doctor according to which celebrities they have done plastic surgery to, if it is someone as Britney Spears they are more likely to want that doctor than a doctor who has never done plastic surgery to a famous celebrity. Many girls instead of getting surgery and liposuction to have the perfect bodies follow a different brand which is the Pro-Ana teens. These teens are a group of girls who talk to each other over the internet influencing themselves to be anorexic in order for them to be as skinny as the models in magazines. The need for these girls to be skinny is so far that they each help each other starve themselves by giving them advice such as to stay in a cold room freezing to burn calories. These girls are branding themselves by being anorexic in hope to look like the models in magazine, commercials, and billboards. Colleges are also a type of branding, by trying to get into the best college, a college that is well known in order to succeed in life. Many of these teens struggle hard to get into the best known colleges like Harvard. Many of them get tutors counselors and spend thousands of dollars on them in order to learn more and pass SAT to be able to get into the college of their dreams. Quart shows how many thing may not seem as teens getting brand but when you look into it, many of these things are a way that teens brand themselves, to fit in socially or either become the best they can be.

Questions
Clarification- Does the way that these teens become branding(through movies, video games, models, surgery, etc.) has a negative or positive effect on them? Why?
Application- Do you think that being a King/Drew student makes you become a "branded teen" because it is a magnet high school? Why or Why not?

Branded Reading Chunk #1

In her first non-fiction text, Alyssa Quart argues that teens and tween get easily manipulate by corporations to buy unnecessary products. They go and purchase products that are being announced on TV or products that their friends have in order to "fit in".The corporations now look at the teens and tween as their number 1 consumers and try to appeal to them to sell their merchandise. Since the 1950s corporations have been advertising to children, like when TV first came out they made kids persuade their parents into buying them a TV. Now a days there are trend spotters which are teens who tell famous magazines and corporations what is in style and what is not in order for them to be able to get the teens attention. She explains how brands are advertise so much that kids poke fun at each other is the brand they have on their bag is a rip off, and how now even their underwear has to have a brand on it. She states that brand advertising keeps growing and growing that kids want everything bigger and better, sometimes they want to look 10 or even 12 years older than what they really are. Also she compares how parents, especially moms, get easily manipulated and buy these products, they buy it for their kids because they asked for it or even for themselves because these name brands they feel makes them look 10 years younger. She says that these corporations are not only involved with persuading teens to buy the best clothes, handbags, or make up but also by telling them they need to have the best party, which can cost up to $300,000. These marketers sell more with their peer-to-peer method which is that a teen talk to her friends about the brand of product she has and in a way persuades her friend to want it to and go out there and buy that products either being Avon or Mary Kay. Alyssa Quart points out how the marketers or corporations use these teens to make money off of them and how name brands influence teens to not have an identity of their own.

Questions
Clarification- Do you think the trendsetters get bothered with the fact that the marketers are only using them to get money out of them and their friends?
Application-Would you yourself become a trendsetter? Why?

Quote
"The standard "pretty and popular" refrain has changed. Now teens judge one another more for the brands they wear and how much money they or their families have"(pg.14)