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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Arthur Pewtey)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: conformity/nonconformity
Message-ID: <967@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 10-May-85 12:32:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.967
Posted: Fri May 10 12:32:28 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 11-May-85 03:34:18 EDT
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Organization: The Chartered Accountants Who Want to Be Lion Tamers Association
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> Reading all this discussion about conforming and nonconforming has brought
> back to mind my college days (I graduated in 82).
> Back in those days I was bound and determined to be myself, to be an 
> individual, to go out of my way to not conform to social norms.
> I'd rot in hell before I bought an Izod shirt, only conformists
> wore that kind of shirt.  I was stronger than that.
> 
> Then I took a class on Marketing (don't ask me why) and I learned in the 
> class that the latest TREND, the IN thing, was to be an INDIVIDUAL, to 
> NOT conform to any norms.  Thus, the newest norm was to not bow to any norms.
> Hmmmmm.
> 
> This came as quite a shock to me.  Think of it, you're going along fine,
> reveling in your own individuality, because it is the REAL you, and now
> you find out that society has told you to be that way!  So now I don't know
> if I am being an individual for myself of if I am doing it for society. -:)
>                                Tom Zehrbach

1. True individualism is an unexploitable phenonemon in marketing.  It means
	that no one can predict or control the tastes of large masses of the
	public, thus no one can seek to sell a specific product with a large
	audience in mind.  This is why marketing/advertising industries stress
	conformity in the public, make it seem attractive, trying to convince
	us through media manipulation that you just won't be popular unless
	you "fit in" with the crowd (a self-fulfilling prophecy:  people may
	fear that people will shun them for not conforming, likewise people
	may feel justified in shunning those who don't conform).

2. It seems that what you described from your marketing class was in fact a
	marketing ploy.  Tell individualists that it's now the in thing to
	be an individualist, and they'll think twice about being one (or get
	confused).  Actually what you describe is hardly the case.  True,
	many people want to be individualists, but the way marketing/
	advertising people capitalize on this is to tell you what
	individualists do (according to them) so that you'll do it. ("You don't
	run with the crowd.  You're an individualist.  So buy *THIS*!!  Like
	all the individualists do." -- Ever wonder why so many great
	individualists look alike?)  Realize that just doing the opposite of
	what the "crowd"/the "masses" are supposed to do doesn't make you an
	individualist---it just puts you into another crowd!  (One often formed
	from elitism and snobbishness.)  A true individualist wouldn't choose
	to do things based on what one crowd did/didn't do.  He/she would pick
	and choose what he/she liked.  If a modern woman wants to shave her
	legs and wear high heels, or if a modern man wants to shave his face,
	who is any of us to claim that it's "politically incorrect" to do so?
	This notion of "political incorrectness" sounds like another
	manipulative marketing scheme to me.   I digress...
-- 
"to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day
 to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human
 being can fight and never stop fighting."  - e. e. cummings
	Rich Rosen	ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr