Identifying Cultural Myths in Advertising. Or, How to Be the Ideal American Singleton

As a capitalist nation, the success of the American economy depends on consumers buying from a supply of available products and services.  The demand for these is often fostered in consumer marketing and advertising.  Advertisers market their products to consumers by through appeals to the consumers’ desires for happiness, wealth, health, youth, and popularity.  David Masci comments on American consumerism in “The Consumer Culture,” in which he writes: “The American marketing juggernaut is very intentionally telling people the world over that happiness is tied to acquiring things” (1003).  In other words, advertisements appeal to consumers’ desires by persuading them that they will find all that they desire in a new sports car, new leather purse, or an expensive anti-aging cream.

For many Americans, these advertisements reflect a cultural myth that appeals to women’s desires for happiness, satisfaction, and sex appeal.  Advertisements in magazines and newspapers often target specific groups of women by encouraging them to identify with the models and actresses on the page.  These ads feature an “ideal American woman” who has purchased an “ideal American product” that brings them happiness, youth, and companionship.  In this case, the good life “consists of buying possessions that cost lots of money” (Davis np).  Women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan, Marie Clare, and Elle project images of young, happy, single women who own designer clothes and perfume and date handsome, adventuresome men. In fact, Jon Jameson notes that successful advertising campaigns in women’s magazines are so vital to the success of a company that sixty percent of Ralph Lauren’s entire Spring 2008 advertising budget was spent on print ads in four national magazines (459).   Considering the significance of advertising on American culture and spending, this paper will identify two cultural myths and discuss how the ideal American single woman is projected in advertisements for Candies shoes and Citibank Visa.

What's In It For Me? Two Purposes of Education: To Live for Oneself and Financial Security

In the HBO television series The Newsroom, the main character Will McAvoy is asked in a college-hosted debate why America is the greatest country in the world, and he rattles off a list of statistics as to why America is not the greatest country in the world. He goes on to say that we were. He says, “We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and we cultivated the world’s greatest artists and the world’s greatest economy." We were able to do and be things because we were informed.  It was intelligence, wisdom, and enlightenment elevated America to a premier position in the world, and we must have education in order to reach new levels of greatness if we wish continue toward success. 

However, currently our schools are overcrowded and underfunded, teachers are overworked and constantly criticized, and students languish in classes where testing is more important than critical thinking or creativity.  Considering these issues, we must ask the bigger question, then: What is the purpose of education? Because education is important for both the nation and the individual, this essay will discuss two purposes for education:  first, education is important for individuals to be able their lives for themselves, and, second, education is important for the success and security of our society.

A Personal Purpose of Education: To Live for Oneself

One personal purpose of education is to enable individuals to live for themselves. In other words, many individuals are faced with the choice of creating for themselves their own destiny or following the wishes of their parents.  Many of these individuals find that an education allows them to follow the path that they want in life. The College Board, an organization devoted to promoting "excellence and equity in education" through research, curriculum development, and scholarship, offers research that shows how, by acquiring postsecondary education, individuals can fulfill their financial needs and thus live prosperous lives that enable people to live for themselves and pursue their dreams in their article, “The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society.”  Even though university education is costly, it “does pay” (5). With such education, individuals increase their chances of getting high paid jobs and establishing for themselves promising futures. Also, financial security relieves the pressure of being dependent on government benefits and allows us to take a step forward and establish ourselves as independent citizens. It is true that once college students accomplish their goal of getting postsecondary education majority of them are stormed with loans. However, the College Board states that, “Those with master’s degrees earned almost twice as much, and those with professional degrees earned over three times as much per year as high school graduates” (10).  Postsecondary education is a great means through which one can achieve a promising future and fulfill their wants and needs without financial insecurity.

Another example of how education affords us the opportunities to live a life for ourselves can be seen in the experiences of Mexican-American writer and professor of English, Olivia Castellano. In her essay, "Canto, Locura, y Poesia," Castellano describes how she sought an education for herself in order to make her life what she wanted it to be instead of the life her parents wished for her. Many of Castellano's female relatives married young and began raising children at a very young age and her parents expected her to do the same.  However, she was determined to go her own way and seek an education, and she announced in rage to her mother one day before storming off to her bedroom, "I was put on this earth to make books, not babies."  Castellano felt quite differently about the plans her parents had for her: she did not want to get married, raise children, and clean houses like her parents expected her to do. So, she quickly became absorbed in her books, and by the age of fourteen she was reading Marx, Rimbaurd, the Marquis de Sade. Castellano, like so many, used her education to overcome her everyone's limited expectations for her life and became a college professor so that she could a live the life that she envisioned for herself. 
 

Greetings!

Welcome to my blog for my English 1301: Composition I course.  My name is Dr. Rochelle Gregory, and I am an English Instructor and Honors Coordinator at North Central Texas College in Corinth, Texas. I teach Composition I, Composition II, and Technical Writing.

As a scholar of rhetoric and composition, I believe, like Fred Newton Scott, that "[w]e are not here to drill pupils in spelling, punctuation, and grammar, but to bestow upon them the potentiality of service to thousands and perhaps millions of their [people]—to develop in them the power to move humanity to noble deeds by the communication of the truth.”  I encourage students to “move humanity” and find their “truths” by exploring the representations of themselves and others in the texts that surrounds them—advertisements, novels, blogs, newspapers, films, television, and music.

My first love has always been writing.  I earned my Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English from Tarleton State University, and in December 2009, I completed my Ph.D. in Rhetoric at Texas Woman's University.  My doctoral dissertation argues that the identification of autistic individuals as "living computers" in public discourses illustrates contemporary scientific and technological anxieties.  My diverse teaching experiences and academic research interests have enabled me to study, read, and teach on subjects in Composition Theory/History, Writing Program Administration, Visual Rhetoric, Disability Rhetoric, Technical Writing, Film Studies, Study Abroad, Honors Education, and British Literature.

I am originally from Dublin, Texas, although I've lived in Hawaii, Arizona, and Germany. I moved to Denton, Texas in 2004 to pursue my Ph.D. in Rhetoric at Texas Woman's University.  I spend most of my time writing, reading, grading, course prepping, exercising, and keeping my two sons, Alex and Tobey, from pulling the house up from its foundation.  I've also enjoyed traveling in recent years to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Thailand.  

And, occasionally, I find time to wash dishes and fold laundry.   Occasionally.