Branded by Alissa Quart

The book Branded, by Alissa Quart is an amazing book that talks about how much money, time, and energy is spent by our corporate culture to effectively change the lives and habits of teenagers. The book is written by, and she does a marvelous job of documenting the teenage-corporate-media relationship throughout American history. With degrees from Brown University and Columbia, her journalism and research skills are unparalleled. Every statement and point is backed up by countless facts, studies, and statistics that leave no room for doubt. These truths are coupled with sensitive and powerful real-life illustrations that further prove the book’s powerful message that relates to teenagers, culture, and money.

The book really made me realize what a strong effect the culture has on children. I guess I always knew this was true, but could never really understand why it was true until I read this book. The book goes beyond opinions and corporate bashing and instead focuses on hard evidence that has been compiled from what seems like years of research. The stories, policies, and tactics revealed of how corporations influence kids and teenagers are frightening, and society’s response (or lack of) is even more disturbing.

What surprised me most about Branded were the real life examples of how teenagers were being effected by corporate power and propaganda. One example showed of how the movie heroes and heroines of the seventies and eighties were teenagers who overcame the rich, snobbish bullies who thought that they were better than everyone else. Then the book shows of how a paradigm shift occurred and that now the upper class, rich, and snobbish people are the role models. They are what teenagers want to become today. Movie such as ‘Clueless’, ‘Varsity Blues’ and ‘She’s All That’ present the blondest, most stylish, richest, and elite people as the new heroes and heroines. In ‘She’s All That’, a teenager is even saved from individualism and ‘nerdiness’ and eventually in transformed in a supermodel beauty queen that eventually is accepted by her high school’s elite group. The message is powerful, and throughout the book you start to realize how deranged a teenager’s culture has become.

Another powerful Alissa Quart made that coincided with the one above is how influential style and fashion has become to teenagers. Branded makes a strong argument that shows how corporations and media are started to create teenage personalities for them to fit into. It can be seeing by the various cliques of today’s teenagers. For instance, the punk rock style not only means punk rock clothes, but also a punk rock personality that compliments them. Kids are going beyond fitting into clothes to fitting into the identity that their clothes represent. They are