Week #6

When I was in elementary school and middle school, I don’t remember there being any advertising aimed at us, the students. Not until the very end, anyway. When I was in eighth grade, the gym got a new scoreboard, and it was sponsored by some company, but I can’t remember who sponsored it. I do remember, it was a big deal that the company’s logo had to be on the scoreboard. A lot of parents objected to that, but there weren’t really any other options. The gym didn’t have a scoreboard, and that was the only way the school could afford one.

Unfortunately, like the essay says, “there’s a huge gap between what schools need and what they can afford” (125). It costs a lot of money to educate children, and it’s too bad that they have to deal with advertising in order to get their education. Schools have to be inventive when it comes to how they are going to afford upgrading the computer lab, or purchasing new textbooks. I’m sure it’s a tough decision for administrators to make, but it seems to me like they are backed into a corner. In California, with the budget crisis as it is, it may be the only option. I’m not saying I agree with advertising in schools, I’m just trying to see it from another angle…what if I were in charge of making the decision to allow ZapMe! Corp. into my school in exchange for a brand new computer lab? What would I do?

Week #5

A little more on the Social Action Project…

I had a couple more ideas over the weekend that I want to look into and see if anyone else is interested in.

1. My friend is involved with the Community Clean Water Institute, and they do beach and creek cleanups every so often on the weekends. He’s the program director, so I could probably just email him and get a schedule of the next few that they are doing, if anyone is interested. After tossing around a lot of ideas, I think this just might be the one for me, because I can see it being really eye-opening and impactful, and it will most likely fit my crazy schedule. If you’re interested in this, leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as I hear from him.

2. My mom is a pre-school director, so I called her to see if she might be able to connect me with volunteer efforts related to children. However, she didn’t pick up the phone, and I am waiting on a call back. I’ll post any info I get from her as a comment to this blog.

Please, let me know if you are interested in either of these, and I’ll get back to you with any info I get. I’m still undecided on what I want to do, but I’m going to try to commit to a topic this week, so I can get started before everything in my other classes starts to pile up.

Week #4

Over the past week, I have been trying to come up with ideas for the social action project, and I haven't come up with much. I have seen two other people post their ideas in the blogs, and I'm really curious to see what others are thinking about doing.

I tossed around ideas like getting involved with the food bank, a literacy program for younger children, or the Humane Society, but that was about it. I wish I had been able to come up with more, and I feel like a discussion about the topic would really help us to generate ideas and start to form groups. Is anybody else with me on that?

I really want to do something meaningful, but at the same time, I have to be careful not to get in over my head since I'm carrying 17 units and working pretty much full-time. If anybody has any ideas, I would love it if you posted them so we could talk about it.

Week 3 Reflection

Week three already...wow! We've been having some really good discussions in class, and I love it. I think it's great that we are able to take on these extremely controversial topics and be so open-minded about them. The small group exercise we did in class on Wednesday really got me thinking, especially after hearing what all of the other groups had to say. To me, free speech is a trickier topic than pornography. I know exactly where I stand on the issue of pornography, but I seem to change my thoughts every so often about certain types of free speech. Here's what I took away from last week's readings and that exercise: I now know that I need to educate myself more on free speech, the First Amendment, and conduct vs speech. I ought to be paying more attention when these types of issues come up in the news. I don't consider myself ignorant, but I do need to pay a hell of a lot more attention.

Reflection 1

I had a really positive experience with the SAC this week. It was a good exercise to get us into "critical thinking mode." It's been a little while since I had to sit down with a topic and deconstruct the argument of a writer. We did a lot of that in Lauren's English 1A class when we read the critical essays about Huck Finn, and that was last fall, so it's been a little while for me.

I felt that our group did a really good job presenting the main points of each author, and everyone was very well prepared for the discussion. Because of that, we were able to have a really good conversation about both sides of the issue. We were all very respectful of each other's feelings, and no one was attacked, or felt that they needed to explain why they feel the way they do about this sensitive topic.

Hello!

Hi everybody! My name is Lisa. I work at Starbucks and I've been going to the JC for a year now. My major is Social/Behavioral Sciences, and I hope to get my BA in Psychology, and my MA in counseling. My ultimate goal is to be a guidance counselor in a continuation high school, or a community college like this one. I went to Analy High School, but I graduated from Laguna. I took Lauren's English 1A class last fall and it was a really good class, so I'm feeling pretty good about this one. Nice to meet all of you!

Essay #6 Peer Review Draft

Hey, Group!
This is my draft for essay #6. I put in some notes in italics so you could see where I am going to add more. I had some trouble with this essay, so any suggestions you have would be awesome. I know I need to define "mall culture" a little better in the third paragraph, and I plan on doing it after the peer review. I have another article that I found last night that is about mall culture and fine art, and how the two relate. It's a really neat article, so I will be adding at least a paragraph or two to discuss that. Finally, I couldn't really find much for a counter-argument. Everyone seems to sort of agree that there is a mall culture, so if you have any counter-arguments, let me have it! I have a little bit of an idea for a counter, but I am sort of stuck with it, so I want to see what you guys say before I go with it. Thanks for your feedback!

Lisa Dunbar
Lauren Servais
Engl 1A
8 Dec 2008

Mall America

For intro: where malls originated from (Underhill, 4), consumerism (from fine art of shopping article), and/or the rocks & water quote from “mall together now.”

Most people go to the mall, get what they need and leave, not returning until the next time they need a new pair of shoes or they read in the Sunday paper that Macy’s is having a big sale. These people don’t see the mall as recreational or fun, they just go because they need a specific product or service. Factor out this group of people, and you are left with a different type of population. The people that are left, who are they? On the surface, they are shoppers, workers, and mallrats. Together, they belong to a culture that is widely unrecognized as a whole. Most people do not realize that there is such a thing as “mall culture,” or that it plays such a huge part in shaping us as a society.

There are many parts that make up this mall culture as a whole, ranging from young to old, rich to poor, and everywhere in between. Just like the United States, the mall is a melting pot: so many different types of people come to the mall, and while they are there, they are a part of the whole. There’s the trophy wife wandering around with a Frappuccino and an armful of shopping bags, the exasperated mother who drops her kids off at the toy store so she can do her shopping in peace, and the man picking out a gift for his wife at the jewelry store. Once school gets out, the mall is overrun with teenagers trying on clothes they have no money to buy, and filling their stomachs with sticky-sweet cinnamon rolls. And then there are the “mallrats,” who steal change out of the fountain in the middle of the mall and hang around the front entrance after the merchants have security chase them out. Last, but certainly not least, are the mall employees who are the oil of the shopping machine, so to speak.

Some might argue that there is no such thing as “mall culture,” but in the words of a teenage mall queen, “Whatever. There totally is.” I worked in the mall for ten years; three of which were spent managing a candy store and an “old-lady shoe store,” and seven of which were spent managing a “California Teen Lifestyle” retailer. One might think I am generalizing and limiting my focus to the younger crowd, but in my years of working at the mall, I have realized that the culture includes so much more than just the teenage “valley girls” with their miniskirts and cell phones, and the boys with their baggy pants and noses for trouble.

On the other hand, quite a few of my friends and family agree that mall culture is sweeping the nation. I spoke with some co-workers at “Company X,” my most recent employer, and we came to the conclusion that not only is the mall a culture of its own, there are even smaller groups that make up sub-cultures within the mall. The largest one that comes to mind is the employees. You might, for example, go to the mall and realize that the girl who helped you find an outfit to wear to your cousin’s Christmas party is the same girl who sold you your work shoes at Sears five months ago. Practically everyone who works at the mall knows each other. It’s almost like a community within the culture; some employees become friends, and I have even known married couples who met while working at the mall. Malls create thousands of jobs, and the list is almost endless: maintenance workers, security guards, salespeople, store managers, mall managers, and much more than I could even begin to list right here. It is shocking to think how many Americans would be unemployed without the mall. Now that we have created this culture, it seems to own us.

What makes us go to the mall? For a teenage girl, it’s almost like a rite of passage to go to the mall with her friends. Free from the watchful eye of their parents, the girls try on forbidden bikinis, drink frappuccinos, and flirt with boys. Is this healthy behavior? Shouldn’t they be doing something more wholesome than learning to consume, especially unsupervised? I think so, and I’m not alone. I came across an article written for the New York Times Magazine by Firoozeh Dumas, about her 13-year-old daughter’s birthday trip to the mall, and although she allowed the trip to take place, she “…was not about to drop the girls off by themselves” (Dumas). Not done here…still another quote to add and respond to.

Some people go to the mall for the social aspect, and aren’t even there to shop. The teenage girls get all dolled up like their favorite starlets on the pages of Teen Vouge, and the mall is their catwalk. They strut their stuff, hoping to attract the stares of the teenage boys, who cruise the mall in packs, too shy to break away and approach. Moms pushing newborns in strollers come to the mall because they have to get out of the house, to have social interaction with anyone who speaks more than just baby talk. Old people go to the mall just to talk to someone, because they have no one at home to talk to. I’ve even seen a homeless man in there, talking to the soda machines. An alarming number of people go to the mall just because they’re bored and have nothing better to do. I can’t imagine having that much spare time, but I can’t speak for everyone. It’s almost like the mall has a magnetic pull, people go there and don’t even know why.

In our culture, the mall is a symbol of prosperity, and so if you go to the mall and leave with armfuls of shopping bags filled with goodies, then you must be prosperous. I mean, you can afford all the stuff you bought, right? If your credit card is still working, then no worries – at least until the bill shows up in your mailbox and you realize you are deeper in debt than you thought. So many of us fold under the pressure of the marketing schemes these retailers dream up that we end up broke, or worse, with a distorted body image. Even I almost fell for this a couple of times when I worked at “Company X.” We were given huge discounts on certain outfits so that we could wear them to work and “look the part,” in the hope that our impressionable teen target audience would want to look just like us and buy these exact outfits. There’s even a name for this type of strategy: “Brand Right.” What this means is, if you wear all the “cool” brands, then you, too, are cool. It is amazing to watch people pay to turn themselves into a walking billboard for a brand.

“Branding” is an important part of mall culture. These days, any card-carrying mallrat can take one look at you and be able to tell exactly which stores you shop at, just by the clothes you are wearing. In his book Call of the Mall, Paco Underhill says that “The store names do a good job of differentiating the tribes—you’ve got Pac Sun versus Abercrombie & Fitch versus Against All Odds” (Underhill 161). In my years working at the mall, this was very apparent to me. I’ll come clean on the identity of “Company X” – it’s Pac Sun, and it was directly across from Hot Topic. Most kids who shop at Hot Topic wouldn’t be caught dead shopping at Pac Sun because it isn’t “punk” enough for them, and most kids who shop at Pac Sun would rather die than shop at Abercrombie & Fitch because it’s “too preppy” for them. Suggest Old Navy or American Eagle to any of the aforementioned teenagers, and you’ll get shot down in a second. Why? What on earth is the difference? As an adult, think about which stores you shop at, and which ones you would never set foot inside. It’s the same concept, which Underhill refers to as “retail tribalism” (Underhill 161), and we all participate in it. We choose the tribe we want to identify with, and by what we are wearing, we show the world our loyalty. I shop at Old Navy, but I’d never set foot inside an Express store. I’m just as guilty as any other shopper, whether I want to admit it or not.

Don’t get me wrong – in theory, the mall is a great idea. My mom pointed out that she is drawn to the safety and convenience of the mall. She likes knowing that she can go to one place and get everything she needs without having to worry about driving from one shop to the next. It is one entity, enclosed and safe, where you can get just about anything your heart desires. Under one roof, you can get Craftsman tools, a push-up bra, a motorized robotic vacuum cleaner, 600-thread-count sheets, a lime-green Kitchenaid stand mixer, and a book about Chuck Norris. I’m not fibbing or stretching the truth, I really did see every one of these things on my last trip to the mall. Granted, most people don’t go to the mall looking for any of that stuff, but they take comfort in knowing that they wouldn’t have to run all over town searching for it if they needed it. In some ways I do, too. If I ever need something really outrageous, the mall is always the first place I go, and it rarely fails me.

Maybe the next time you go to the mall, you will read between the lines and become aware of the small parts that make up the mall culture. Maybe you won’t, and you still think there is no such thing. Are you denying it because you just don’t see it, or is it because you are afraid to admit you are a part of it? I didn’t see it at all before I worked there, and now it is all I can see on the rare occasion that I do visit the mall. When I go into the stores and see the energetic young employees, I can’t help but wonder if they see it too; and I look at the shoppers and wonder if they realize they are a part of it.

Works Cited

Dumas, Firoozeh. "Mall Together Now.(Magazine Desk)(LIVES)(Column)." The New York Times Magazine. (July 13, 2008): 66(L). Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Santa Rosa Junior College Library. 8 Dec. 2008 .

Theil, Stefan. "The Fine Art of Shopping; A new museum exhibit celebrates the growing bond between high culture and mall culture :[Atlantic Edition]. " Newsweek 28 Oct. 2002: 86. Research Library Core. ProQuest. Santa Rosa Junior College Library. 8 Dec. 2008 http://www.proquest.com.proxy.www.santarosa.edu:2048/

Underhill, Paco. Call of the Mall. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2005.