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 | | Branded: The Buying And Selling Of Teenagers by Alissa Quart ISBN-10: 9780738208626 ISBN-10: 0-7382-0862-0 ISBN-13: 9780738208626 ISBN-13: 978-0-7382-0862-6 Paperback 2004-02-18 Basic Books Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description An incisive exposŽ of the underhanded advertising initiatives that target teens-and an exploration of their disturbing consequences. Generation Y has grown up in an age of the brand, bombarded by name products. In Branded, Alissa Quart illuminates the unsettling new reality of marketing to teenagers, as well as the quieter but no less worrisome forms of teen branding: the teen consultants who work for corporations in exchange for product; the girls obsessed with cosmetic surgery who will do anything to look like women on TV; and those teens simply obsessed with admission into a name-brand college. We also meet the pockets of kids attempting to turn the tables on the cocksure corporations that so cynically strive to manipulate them. Chilling, thought-provoking, even darkly amusing, Branded brings one of the most disturbing and least talked about results of contemporary business and culture to the fore-and ensures that we will never look at today's youth the same way again. | ||
Reviews | ||
nice subject, but could use better writing+editing The book had interesting subject matter, but to be honest, I think the writing had some problems. It had quite a few oddly constructed, awkward sentences, nd typos. It sort of seemed like a "first book," like Quart could polish her writing a bit more. oSome parts also seemed a little bit meandering, lacking a cohesive plan. I would read a chapter, and think, "What did this have to do with the previous chapter?" I'd recommend reading "No Logo" by Naomi Klein instead of this. No Logo is longer and covers a lot more subject matter, but I think it's also better written. | ||
Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers The premise of this book seemed very appealing to me. I have always been very opinionated about "Branding" teenagers, and while in high school I refused to wear well known brand-name clothes. However, once I got into actually reading the book, I was very dissapointed. Quart seemed, at least to me, to merely skim the surface of the problem, filling the pages with statistics and endless lists of numbers but not really pulling much meaning out of any of it. It also seemed to me that she focused most of her attention on the "rich" kids. I feel that a comparison between priviledged and average teenagers, even severely underpriviledged teens, would have made the book much more interesting. It got especially frustration for me when I reached the chapter titled "Logo U" because (my being fresh out of highschool) I felt that she was exaggerating, or else obviously not expanding her interviews for children NOT from wealthy families. I never took an SAT course, never bought an expensive SAT book but still did perfectly well on my SATs, and got into several excellent colleges. I understand that the point she was trying to make was about teens getting the "Logo U"s in their minds and refusing to be denied access to them, but I feel the endless droning about SATs offered nothing to feed that point and just made me try to compare the information to my own experience, with little, if any, success. I apologize for my review being so unorganized. I am no professional writer myself. | ||
Okay, but lacking... "Branded" definitely supplies a great deal of information, but Quart seems to fail in synthesizing this information for the reader. Granted, it is fairly easy to understand the points she is trying to make, but she fails to coherently state these points in a memorable fashion. The book is filled with endless examples and statistics, but it is lacking in overal argumentation. She seems to allow the facts and the stats to speak for themselves, without using them to prove specific points. The book is an endless supply of premises, with very few conclusions. However, I did learn much from this book, and the chapter on teenage plastic surgery was quite shocking and disturbing to me. Overall, I do recommend this book, if you are able to draw your own conclusions from the facts provided. | ||
Brand This! Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers by Alissa Quart is a quick and fascinating read on the current and constructed intersections between young people, the media and popular culture, corporate agencies, and consumer culture. What struck me most about Quart's analysis is how RELEVANT it is. Unlike many books published today, the research, reference, and anecdotal material in Branded (published in 2003) is very recent and does not rely too much, or at all really, on the 1990s. Two shortcomings of the book were the chapter on Self-Branding (I felt Quart could have done more with body piercing, for example) and the last few pages (her final analysis could have been stronger). Despite these weak spots, Quart clearly did her research. Branded is an interesting and even fun read suitable for parents, teenagers, and educators alike. As a teacher myself, I will definitely refer to it in the future. | ||
Good concept, but not totally engaging Alissa Quart tackles an admirable and potentially fascinating subject in Branded, yet I was left feeling a bit disappointed after finishing the book. I personally found her writing style a bit stilted, and it seems like there is a lot of information and many observations, yet not so much in-depth analysis. The book itself is not extremely long, so there is definitely room for more expansion. There are countless examples of teen branding in movies, fashion, magazines, advertisements, etc., and the author touches on all of these and more, but somehow the book felt more like a bombardment of information than a nuanced analysis. I had pretty high expectations when I read this book (especially from the many positive editorial reviews available), but it was ultimately not as satisfying an experience as I would have hoped. | ||