from the pen of icarus blake

Daily writing prompt

What brands do you associate with?

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Societal decay begins with the erasure of complexity and nuance, and ends with brand loyalty.

Your Gucci t-shirt was made in the same sweatshop as the Shein knock off, then marked up $100.  The woman working 16 hours a day to afford food for her children isn’t going to see a cent of that good good Gucci money.  The majority of luxury bags have parts constructed in south asian countries, then shipped to France or Italy for completion so they can slap a “Made in France” on the label.  Your vans will have holes in the sole within a year because they’re made of the same made-to-degrade garbage as the cheap copies at Walmart, you just paid $70 instead of $15.

A brand seeks to advertise.  It claims celebrities to this end, pays ambassadors, gives them free stuff so they associate themselves with its products in the public eye.  A skinny white woman in Boulder wears exclusively Lululemon because it spent millions of dollars attracting the exact right kind of person for its brand, and she fell for it.  A young punk buys their jeans “pre-distressed” from Hot Topic because looking the part of the aesthetic is what matters — not the ideology of the movement you’re parroting.  The promotional content in your dopamine fix is never-ending and poorly noted, you’re advertised another african net sponge.  A series of cheap plastic earrings.  An ambient light to make your room extra kawaii.  

You lose yourself in the advertising of what you should need, spend hours putting together your outfits and makeup looks from brands that fit your aesthetic.  Maybe you’re a “mother” stocking your fridge on Tiktok with colorful soft drinks, labels turned out for the camera so everyone knows what you’re drinking.  Your clear plastic organizers are linked in your Amazon storefront.  This is your brand.  Your Pinterest board is full of carefully curated ideas of dark academia, you spend $500 from their shopping tab and force yourself to wear the clothes that arrive even though you’re uncomfortable.  You do not engage with the histories these things imply or consequences of this mental colonization by advertisers.

What you see through the shiny lens of the camera is far less telling than what you don’t.  Namely, flaws.  Unmade faces, fat bodies (not airbrushed to hell), double chins, unflattering camera angles, black and brown folks, odd queer folks, disabled and severely neurodivergent folks.  These edges are sanded off, driven down by the algorithm so you have to carve yourself new and shiny for the advertisers.  Unattractive faces, unattractive bodies, do not sell products.  Unabashed sexuality and personality do not sell products — not unless you fall under the skinny-woman-in-bikini genre of sexuality.  

I decline to align myself with the narrow vision of advertisers.  I endorse no brand, I claim no preferences.  I will be spending my time with my strange inner circle and basking in the unabashed creativity of the un-advertisable.