Better lives blog post 1 – Power and Culture
During the two weeks of watching lectures I’ve learnt many things to do with;
Nature and how our own natural and organic resources such as trees, cotton, fur etc can destroy us, as we need them just as bad as they need us, Easter island being a good example of that.
Our own Perspective and how it’s solely dependent on us, being that our culture and other peoples culture shape trends as no one has a Global perspective.
And much more, However I believe I learnt much more from the lectures on Power and Culture.
What Did I learn from the Power lecture?
Well, I learnt that Power is everywhere. And in everything. Fashion, people, nature, culture, perspective, EVERYTHING. But at different levels. For example, Fashion and Big business brands like Nike, Gucci, Ted Baker and more have power over the workers that work day and night making their products, for us to then to buy, to which they get very little pay for compared to their CEO’s. In fact, I found it incredibly shocking when I was told in the lecture that CEO’s make an ordinary workers pay for one year in one day. Which shows just how much the power in fashion has given people. However even though fashion has given CEO’s this much power, I believe the consumers have more power over fashion and the CEO’s that create products. My reason being because at the end of the day it is up to the consumer whether they like the product and want to buy it, Brands and CEO’s can only listen to our fashionable desires and produce it. As there have been multiple occasions when a brand hasn’t lived up to expectations and has either been boycotted, protested against, vandalised and more, which solidifies my point
What Did I learn from the Culture lecture?
What I learnt from the Culture lecture was that our culture is taught, and that it can be both materialistic and not. Fashion and makeup being a good example is apart of our culture, it is something we learn about from a young age. We are taught about clothes and which ones look nicer and which ones are more money. Same being with makeup it is advertised everywhere on Tv, social media, and some of our role models wear it, which normalises it. From a young age I was taught that makeup wasn’t a good thing and that wearing it hides your real beauty and transforms you into something unnatural, which is something that I completely stick by to this day, even though I’m a make-up student now, However, what I took from this lecture was the sustainability of our culture and how if we stop using one thing like makeup for example something else would be used in it’s place therefore continuing a cycle we’re already in.