Popular Culture

Popular culture is a term that is hard to define. To give adjectives and examples for people to understand the true meaning. Popular culture is not just the way we live or why we do the things we do, but what we like and what we don't like. Popular culture could be entertainment in the form of music, dancing, movies, rock concerts. It could be described as art that could range from an expensive painting to a classical piece by Mozart to the way workers on "Pimp My Ride" on MTV spray paint a design on a car. Popular culture to me is what is "in" what is "needed" by the society or what the society thinks it needs. I have a tendency to like things that celebrities use. I will look back at my sister growing up and she wore stir-ups. They were a type of pants of stretchy cotton that were tight fitting and had a strap on the bottom of the foot to keep them pulled down. When I was growing up, I thought those pants were ridiculous. Now I see Lauren Conrad sporting "leggins" on the TV show "The Hills" in Las Angeles and now I own 4 pair. I must admit that I am a person who does go with the trends. If I see someone that I respect and look up to using a product, I feel like I need to use it too. What is sad is that some celebrities use products, such as a certain model of blackberry phone, simply because they are being paid to use it. Not because they really like it or want it, but because silly people, like me, buy the blackberry just because that one person is using it and the blackberry company knows this.

I currently work at a local eye care facility and one thing that we do there is LASIK eye surgery, or shall I say ILASIK, the new and improved Intralase LASIK. This new ILASIK uses a laser instead of a blade when performing the surgery. It is "approved by NASA" as one local advertiser in our area says. This new procedure is safer, but also costs more. Glasses and contacts have been around for years. Now people have the option of not having glasses or contacts, but how do we promote that? How do we make all the eligible glasses and contact lens wearers believe that they NEED to have LASIK done? This is part of popular culture to me in my job. I do believe within time we will see LASIK being something many people have done. It will redefine things you do such as swimming and golfing. Anyone who wears contacts knows it is very hard to swim with contacts in and people with glasses know the annoyance of having to wipe sweat from under their glasses when doing outdoor activities. It is important for our facility to know how to portray this option to our patients and possible new patients in a way that they will accept it and purchase it.

For my artifact, I chose the logo for Myspace. Myspace is a free website that allows anyone to join and communicate with other members. You can upload pictures, information about yourself, create a blog, and comment on other people's pages. You can search for people within your area or who went to your old High School. Not only is it a place to communicate, it is also a place to share music. Taylor Swift has commented before that Myspace took her career to another level. Her friends started posting her new singles to their Myspace pages and her fan base increased incredibly. Everyone has a Myspace and kids at school check their Myspace page everyday to see if the "viewer count" has went up and to see who has commented on their pictures or left them a comment. It is really a symbol of the way we communicate with other people in today's era. Written letters and stamps are long gone.