Advertising and fashion may seem a specialized matter, but they illustrate a general and central feature of the modern world that is different from what came before: that people rely less on their immediate kin and neighbors for guidance on how to behave, and more on a series of “experts” – or, more recently, “influencers” --and “imagined communities.” Some of these are people with whom we have direct personal contact – teachers and classmates, for instance – but many are people whom we never actually meet (thus making the communities “imagined”) but nonetheless try to fit in with. Nobody, for instance, will ever meet most of their fellow citizens, fellow teenagers, fellow jet-setters, or fellow members of the solid middle class, but we nonetheless have ideas about how such people behave, usually derived from some sort of media messages; and most of us identify strongly enough with one or more such groups that those media-informed ideas of what members of those groups eat, wear, say, and so on guide much of our lives.
Since we cannot actually meet most members of these groups, we get our cues about what is required to belong to them from those who are appointed, or appoint themselves, to tell us. Advertisers played a big role in this transition, providing both implicit and explicit advice about everything from what clothes to wear to what soap to use to where to vacation – advice that often went along with a complementary message that people should not rely on their immediate communities. (Parents just didn’t understand what the new generation needed; friends might be too polite to tell you that you needed mouthwash; clergy and teachers had a plan for you, but it wasn’t what you wanted.) It was better to rely on what more worldly “experts” could tell you about what “4 out of 5 doctors recommend[ed],” or what the people hiring for the jobs you wanted were looking for, or what clothes would make you look cool to the peers you wanted.
Over time, advertisers have been joined by an ever-expanding group of “experts”: advice columnists and advice books, lifestyle coaches, social media sites and influencers. Some rely on credentials, some on celebrity status, and sometimes, self-confidence seems to be convincing enough. But all of these figures, in their own ways, expand on the message that department stores began offering over a century ago: “There are more options than you realize. Look at our selection -- we’ll help you figure out what you really want.”
