2.7.03
Label Lackeys
-- OR --
Smug Overdose
I was in the sixth or seventh grade when I found myself in dire need of a green and white striped rugby shirt, pompously emblazoned across the chest with the letters b-e-n-e-t-t-o-n. I wore it so often, my dad often jabbed me by asking, "What is that your uniform or somethin'?"

Sure, Dad was only mocking my tendency to over-wear the welcome of especially beloved garments. But it turns out his snide remark was more poignant than I once thought. Although by the end, the shirt had become more like a pacifying blankie in its stained and rumpled familiarity, it began as an outward statement of cool and an effort to establish status, sorta like a native costume of brand obsessed teenagedom.

If brand obsession for the sake of brand obsession had a spokesperson, she'd be sixteen-year-old Shakima Ebony Swain. When she was younger, her neighbor wondered why she'd get so decked out just to sit on the stoop. Back then, Guess and Jordache were her passions. According to her 1/23 autobiographical radio piece featured in New York National Public Radio station, WNYC's Radio Rookies series, back in the day even her mom was concerned with "turning the niggas on" by donning designer duds. But that was when mom dated a man who brought home the benjamins they needed to feed their bling bling addiction.

Now, Shakima, her thirteen-year-old sister, Tamika, and their mom don't have the cash to support their habit. But that doesn't mean they've kicked it. During her honest yet somewhat unsettling audio chronicle, Shakima interviews her younger sibling:

Shakima: Do you wear name brands?

Tamika: No.

Shakima: Why not?

Tamika: 'Cause I can't afford it.

Shakima: How do you feel about that?

Tamika: I feel …(long pause)…embarrassed. (With conviction) I feel embarrassed.

Shakima: Why do you feel embarrassed?

Tamika: Because it's like, I'm comin' into school, right? People wear Baby Phat jackets, Baby Phat clothin' and Tommy Hilfigah, Fubu….They would wear Jordans and I would come into school wit' Pumas.

Shakima: (Laughs) Pumas? That's old fashioned.

Tamika: I feel, like…I feel poor.

Shakima goes on to second her sister's emotion, stating, "So do I. I feel like we're at the bottom now. Rock bottom."

Living up to the way we think others perceive us can be a burden sometimes, and not just a financial one. General George Patton bore a similar brunt of his own brand. Legend has it the WWII commander self-designed his eye-catching uniforms which he wore to convey a confidence he didn't always feel inside. Patton admitted that keeping up appearances, sometimes even wearing two pistols at once, could grow tiresome, and he acknowledged that it may have been his own fault. "However that may be," he once said, "the press, and others have built a picture of me. So, now, no matter how tired or discouraged, or really ill I may be, if I don't live up to that picture, my men are going to say, 'The old man's had it. The old son-of-a-bitch has had it.' "

Like Patton, Shakima feels weak and insignificant without her flamboyant, ego-puffing plumage.

While Patton's costume was worn to compensate for some self-perceived inadequacy, Shakima's fashion fascination seems to be driven primarily by the poseur protocol of her peers. If Pumas weren't considered "old-fashioned" within her social circle, chances are Shakima wouldn't think they were either. Her brand embrace is a fickle one, inspired by the capricious whims of the materialistic masses. It's not the Louis Vuitton clutch that she covets; it's the social ranking attained by the ability to own the overpriced symbol of luxury. In essence, her branded appearance is dictated by others, not herself.

When prestige is based entirely on the possession of the vacant symbols of opulence as opposed to one's own personality, actions and accomplishments, it's no surprise that the outcome is poverty. To steal a line I heard the other day: it's not what you put on your head, but what's in your head that matters.



Post-Mao Muse
-- OR --
China Drinks the Kodak Kool Aid
For those Chinese people who lived through Chairman Mao's oppressive rule, work not only required toiling in the fields or prison camps; it required exuding the spirit of the revolution through song.

Tunes with lyrics like "Chairman Mao's dewdrops nourished me, I'm full of energy working for our revolution" must have made an indelible impact on the Chinese, for it seems as though some of them just can't shake their labor-luvin' pasts. Apparently they didn't get the memo that the taskmasters of China's new capitalist revolution, including corporations like Yum Brands' KFC and Procter & Gamble, don't demand undying devotion. Consider this scenario as described in a 1/9 Wall Street Journal article (Cracking China's Market by Leslie Chang and Peter Wonacott):

"Under a tropical evening sky in Xiamen, executives from Eastman Kodak pile out of a minibus to be greeted by hundreds of cheering workers. They climb to a stage festooned in red-and-gold Kodak colors, and a worker reads a poem commemorating production of the 20-millionth Kodak disposable camera in this seaside city. 'Kodak, I love you,' he gushes."

This cult-like veneration may seem pathetic to us cynical Americans, but just think: here in the states, even our rappers don't have to get paid to drop rhymes about Nike, Burger King, Rolex, Lexus and Courvoisier.



Man's Best Pawn
-- OR --
Dairy-Free Humble Pie
Usually the killing of our furry friends is what drives People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to launch its issue awareness ads. This time, however, the death of a little Scotty dog shut down a whole campaign.

As featured in a 1/16 AP story in The Jersey Journal (Death of Whitman's dog ends billboard campaign), PETA's plans to unleash its billboard campaign to protest the Environmental Protection Agency's use of animal testing to determine chemical toxicity was stopped dead in its tracks.

As displayed on the PETA site, beside a horn-enhanced image of EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman (PETA refers to her as "NJ Devil to Animals"), the ad reads, "If you think EPA animal tests are fine, why don't you have your dog, Coors, be poisoned in one?"

Mere days after PETA unveiled the campaign, the animal rights group ended up with its tail between in legs when Whitman informed PETA in a letter dated 1/9 that her rocky mountain mutt had just been euthanized because "She had cancer and was not responding to the treatment."

Hmmm…that's odd. PETA didn't seem to be bothered by the idea of Coors being poisoned. Why would they let the fact that she's dead stop them from continuing their creature crusade?

Whitman's letter notes, "In fact, in 2002 and 2003 combined, EPA will dedicate more than $7 million for research on computer simulation, modeling, and new molecular biology approaches that hopefully will produce alternatives to the use of animals in testing." She continues, "I would hope in the future we can reduce the extreme rhetoric and instead focus on the facts that will help us achieve solutions to our challenges."

Apparently PETA president, Ingrid Newkirk had decided the first personal attack on Whitman was not enough. In her 1/14 correspondence, she writes, "…the US Congress ordered the agency that you now head to spend more money on alternatives to animal use, to modernize, but it has not done so. In this regard, your tenure is a disgrace and a disservice…."

Whitman has been heading the EPA for only about two years now, and we all know government agencies move at a glacial pace. To assume that changing the status quo is easily done, or that the EPA has not taken steps to act on congressional legislation is naïve. To generalize one individual's job performance as "a disgrace and a disservice" based on the way a singular issue has been handled by an entire agency's worth of people is downright demeaning to the intelligence of anyone Newkirk is attempting to inspire through her reactionary diatribe.

Yet again, by showing such little regard for a human life, PETA has displayed just how backwards its logic really is. One would guess PETA's top dog would have more consideration for someone who's just lost a pet, but alas, Newkirk makes no bones about which animal life forms deserve to be treated with respect and kindness.

Heaven forbid the PETA proselytizers get off their soapboxes for long enough to show a little shame. I guess strict vegans can't even put their feet in their mouths for fear of eating flesh. I hear embarrassment tastes like chicken anyway.


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