How true it is that so many signs or symbols now do not represent their original signified. As with brand names, I know so many people who get sucked into the fashion trend of consuming whatever someone else, or a magazine tells you is "In." I have witnessed the tragedies of people strutting their stuff in outfits that were completely unflattering for their body type, but it was easy to see that everyone else seemed to be wearing the same, so obviously they wanted to wear it as well whether it looked good or not. Another instance would be myself looking at a friends clothing and finding a certain piece and telling them, "Oh, you like that?," thinking to myself that it is the ugliest thing I have ever set eyes on, with their response to be "Yea!? It's Gucci!" Their excitement over the piece only resulted from the name on the tag. Or what about when you have two articles of clothing beside one another, practically identical, one is a no name brand and dirt cheap, while the other has a popular label on it and atleast three times as expensive but consumers choose the more expensive one simply for the label. These brand names are all social constructions, and sometimes the more expensive items do hold better quality, but it still does not change the fact that logos no longer represent what they were meant to. Take the label Billabong for instance, originally created as a label for surfer products, but most of the people who I know that wear Billabong apparel have never even seen a surfboard in real life. I have to admit that I have been subject to the brand name shopping frenzy a few times but there are becoming more often cases that sit at the extreme. For example, I remember a girl I went to school with in grade 7 that liked to shop in the extreme, and as this was years ago you can imagine how greatly corporate logo fetishes have increased since then. All of the girls in my grade 7 class, including myself, were in the locker room after gym and I remember saying to one girl, "hey, that's a nice shirt. Where did you get it?". She followed with a thank you, and proceeded to say she received it as a gift and didn't know, so she asked someone to check her tag for her. After she realized the shirt was purchased at Walmart she began to shriek. She ripped the shirt off and threw it on the floor and stared at it with disgust... I hope noone minds me bluntly saying that after that display I stared at her with disgust for her pettiness. I don't criticize anyone for wanting to look nice, or be fashionable, but what is the necessity in spending more than would be required to do it.
The following is an insert from an article by Angela Orend called "Corporate Logo Tattoos: Literal Corporate Branding?." It refers to brand name logos and people who literally tattoo them on their bodies, she also tackles the issue from a Baudrillardian perspective. Enjoy! (p.s. Sorry, I know this is a long one)"Corporations present products as being representative of certain personalities and lifestyles, consumers fetishize the brand, not the product itself. With brand fetishism, brands represent and become equated with lifestyles as brand awareness and advertising become more important than the product itself (Vanderbilt 1997). In applying the notion of brand fetishism to corporate logo tattoos [literally people who tattoo (that permanent ink stuff) company logos on their body, often in return for payment, or free lunches from that restaurant for the rest of your life for example], the tattoo is an expression of what the brand represents, not necessarily a loyalty to the superiority of the product... Baudrillard insists that we are consuming not the object of the sign, but rather the system of implicit meanings that the object of the sign represents, but the meanings are simulated and meaningless. Within the logic of consumer capitalism, the collective "carnival of signs" prevails as everything becomes a commodified product embedded with meaningless social symbols. If Baudrillard is correct and postmodern consumption is the "active manipulation of signs" where the commodity-sign proliferates, corporate logo tattoos are nothing more than a fashion accessory in the hyperreality of postmodern consumer culture. The human body becomes a multi-dimensional billboard representing another simulated hyperreality. Corporate logo tattoo consumers are not interested in the product or duped by capitalism, they are simply expressing various simulations of reality and have fetishized the social meanings of the brand and commodity-sign logo."("Corporate Logo Tattoos: Literal Corporate Branding?" by Angela Orend).
