17. Conspicuous consumption

Jules... here we go. I never actually had this assignment in high school, but I have thought a lot about it in the last couple of days. The term may have been hard to understand from the perspective of a 17 year old spoiled girl, but we didn't have Wikipedia, "Conspicuous consumption is a term used to describe the lavish spending on goods and services acquired mainly for the purpose of displaying income or wealth. In the mind of a conspicuous consumer, such display serves as a means of attaining or maintaining social status. A very similar but more colloquial term is 'keeping up with the Joneses'."

The simple answer is designer handbags, yachts, and sports cars. But as I began to work on this assignment the term "conspicuous consumption" had a much deeper meaning to me. As Americans I think most of us are all guilty of it. It is not about the top 5% of wealth with their fancy homes, around-the-world vacations, and private schools. Consumerism is an epidemic in America.

My husband and I are both teachers. We live in a modest middle class neighborhood in Van Nuys.  We both drive Saturns and pack our lunch most days. Our vacations are mostly road trips to visit friends and family. My purse is from Target. Yet as I looked around our simple home I see evidence of unnecessary consumerism at every turn.  Even in the midst of a recession (or as some feel depression) America might be having a "hard time" but we still maintain our cable TVs, cell phones, take out food, gas guzzlers, more clothes than we could wear in a week, skinny vanilla lattes, shoes for every occasion, and a garage full of shit. If this isn't conspicuous what is?