You Are What You Buy

What I want to focus on is the section of “Competing Monopolies” (page 167), specifically when Mike talks about brands and how they are practically identical, yet they seem different. I find the panel in which Mike is eating a burger and the following two panels after that to be of particular interest to me. In the same way that Pollan argues how the tag of “organic” functions as a narrative of local, small, the “old days” kind of farming/eating practices for consumers, I understand what Mike means by branding and how these monopolies spend billions of dollars just to communicate an image/narrative to consumers. It made me think about how we, as consumers, tend to become fooled by these alleged differences between products because of their diverse narratives constructed by their respective companies that we buy into. For example, in this case, Mike refers to McDonald’s and how we all know what it sells and what its burgers taste like, but the reason people might keep going is because they love the image it represents of “Fun! Clowns! [and] Songs!” Also, even though the product may be very similar, the prices are not; in the same way, prices might also function to tell a narrative as well. I, admittedly, find myself trusting brands that cost just a tad more because it makes me believe that I am spending those extra cents or bucks for supposed better quality.

This got me thinking… what kind of narrative enchants us when we chose to buy, say, Dove soap over its competitors, especially considering the commercials devoted to “real beauty” and uplifting women’s self-esteem? And why is it that we continuously pick the same brand for certain items? I have noted myself possessing this allegiance to certain brands, and I can see how it might say more about me than I think. For instance, I always buy the same brand of skin care products, made of ingredients that are more naturally derived; I’m already communicating a statement with this kind of purchase that goes against the mainstream skincare brands and their use of harsh or toxic ingredients while I’m also communicating how I espouse a certain level of concern over my skin to have gone out of my way to make such purchases. This leads me to the notion that we’re not just what we eat: we are what we buy. So, in a way, these competing monopolies that Mike refers to and the purchases we make of their products might actually function as a means for us to either express our identities or mold them because it's really the image—not the products—we are buying.