Escaping consumer culture

I'm reading a book by Susan Gregory Thomas entitled Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds, and as you might be able to guess if you're a regular reader of this blog, my choir is totally enjoying the sermon.

The author covers a lot of ground, but the part I found most interesting was her review of the scientific studies on the effects that television, marketing, and 'characters' have on children from birth to three years old -- that's the "harms young minds" part of the subtitle, and her argument is quite convincing. It's fascinating and frightening stuff. But less effective, to me, is the "manipulates parents" aspect of the subtitle, especially the author's thoughts on marketing to Generation X parents.

Perhaps an important aspect of being a member of Generation X is denying that you resemble the offensively broad generalizations used to describe your generation. So I can't deny that I am a member of my generation, but the generalizations that this author makes about us -- that we were latchkey kids, raised by the TV, who begged for the stuff we saw on TV, which our parents then bought us to reduce their guilt at neglecting us -- just don't apply to me. During my formative years, either my mother or father or both stayed home -- I suffered not from parental neglect, but from overprotectiveness! -- and I really don't remember watching much television or wanting much stuff I saw advertised. I certainly don't have nostalgia for Strawberry Shortcake or other pop culture crap of the day.

"And maybe that's why," I thought to myself somewhat smugly as I began to congratulate myself, "I am so successfully avoiding the threats of the book's subtitle -- the manipulation that consumer culture uses to get Gen X parents to buy stuff for their kids. I am immune! I am above all that! I can see right through them ..."

Then I read this paragraph:

Generation X's twin penchants for attachment parenting and shopping have also produced the rise in popularity of mini-me fashions in the past decade. To Generation-X mothers, the cutesy, froufrou baby clothes of the past were tacky and foolish-looking; dressing their babies in traditional infant clothes somehow translates to a deeper sense of objectification, a neglect of the babies' personhood. The Gen-X mother identifies with her baby and wants to dress her in the same kinds of outfits she herself wore. (pp. 147-48)

So I'm just like everyone else after all, and I can stop congratulating myself right now. Even if I do buy many of Isaac's clothes second-hand, there's no escaping consumer culture. All I can do is try to stay aware, and try my best to resist.