What consumerism does to us.

Nowhere else are the effects of consumerism on the human psyche more apparent than in High school. Some girls would come to school with dozens of different purses or shoes a month, and all of them absolutely HAD to be made of leather or have some prestigious brand-name attached. I constantly overhear people talking about going shopping on the weekends for even more clothes, purses, accessories, and other luxury items that nobody but themselves seemed to care that they had. One day, after witnessing how some girls shoe literally fell apart somehow when it was some "prestigious" brand, I jokingly asked my mom  why women’s clothes were so flimsy compared to men’s, she told me, “because women dress around trends; guys buy clothes and they keep them forever”. Indeed, the fickleness of the trends of the fashion industry is one example of consumerism so embedded in our culture that we take it for granted. The same goes for the latest habit to buy new cell phones every couple of months or less! I’m not saying it is evil to buy these things, but an average individual person consuming 200 lbs of meat and poultry, 4 cell phones, and dozens of purses per year may not be a sustainable lifestyle.

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