I’m straight thin, but I’m gay fat.
Gay men are prone to face face the same dysmorphia that some straight teen girls face, due to excessive marketing. Today in Sociology class we watched a very intriguing PBS-Frontline documentary titled The Merchants of Cool which talked about media and fashion companies studying and marketing to teens. Link (~53mins long): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/
Some of my notes:
- This generation, containing the largest number of teens in history (larger than the baby boomer generation), is the most studied generation in history.
- “Cool hunting” is a tool researchers use to find out what teens think is cool, paradoxically, once something is found to be cool and is brought to the mainstream, it gets killed.
- Companies studying teens believe they are in a sense “following” the cool culture, responding to it. However, media and teens create a giant feedback loop. Media markets “cool” to teens while teens actually create the “cool.”
Some questions raised in class that I am still thinking about:
- What is teen culture?
- How is “cool” discovered?
- Who decides what is cool?
- How can “cool culture” be marketed?
- What happens to “cool” once the media markets it?
- What is the “feedback” loop?
