JBC Chapter 10 Branding/The Self and Social Interaction
Just reading the first few pages in this chapter made me remember my days when I was an Instagram ‘influencer’ and how branding yourself and promoting yourself was a craft I learned. It was also more about brands wanting to work with you and then those brands would equate to who you were as a person. On the Internet for me it got really tiring when you would get certain brands and want to show a product just to be relevant;but you would not have any interest in the product. I ended up quitting because I hated being so fake and always having to think about my own self-image. I did not like having to pit my self-image against others; just to get those brands’ deals and higher amount of likes and followers… it was just so tiring!
It’s not written in this book but a great addition would be influencers and how huge of an impact influencers have on other people- literally. An influencer’s job is to influence other people to buy what they have and wear- to make others want to look like they look and shop where they shop, etc.
Additionally, reading this chapter made me realize when I was younger, how big of a deal it was for people to copy me. In a negative way it really would piss me off because it is in our self that we think is our identity. But in a sociology terms, I’m just doing my part and helping others find themselves in things that they might not have noticed or been aware of before or even liked before. I saw that what I did or wore; made them closer (maybe) to their sense of self or this everlasting journey of finding the self.
I really like how it says in the reading that sociologists say that we have “multiple selves”, because I’ve always thought of myself as a Chameleon because I do tend to change the way I look or how I act drastically in certain situations or around certain people whether that means going from wearing plain clothes at school; to blend in or wearing a leotard and being on stage as a ballerina; or even from ballerina to hip hop dancer right after that performance or even working in Target- wearing my red and khaki, being quiet and just trying to get my job done to going to an anime convention and being in full cosplay and doing photos shoots and being loud and making lots of friends. The “I am a..” statement I feel like for me would go on forever.
I also feel a lot of my attributes until a couple years ago were stigmas, ie; being from a western country and watching anime and even dressing up as those characters(cosplay) or being a girl who plays video games, to in the end, being classified negatively as a nerd or a ‘weeb’. But- oh how times have changed! now cosplay and girls who game is considered sexy and a lot of women are using that to their advantage and make successful careers. Even though I would say they damaged the fun in the process by making it over-sexualized. Turning the page and seeing the picture of American Apparel really brought me back- probably was my first brand that I knew I needed to identify with to help my sense of self. American Apparel actually for m, lasted through many stages in my life even to this day. I found it because of the YouTuber in 2008 would wear only American Apparel and I wanted to be like that YouTuber I even cut my hair like him but then I also stuck with the brand because of my love for basics and when I started becoming an influencer. The fact that I wore American Apparel was a huge part of my sense of self and online presence almost every single clothing item I would ever wear was American Apparel and at the time people thought that was ‘aesthetic’. Also terms like ‘pale grunge’ came about. To be popular on the internet around 2015-2017 and even now, all you needed was really pale skin, an American Apparel tennis skirt, and one of their plain crop tops all either black or white of course– no colored clothing! Maybe throw in some ‘Nike’ socks and that was all over Instagram.
necikait 