There’s a department store hawking back-to-school fashions with a commercial script that goes something like: “I don’t wear something because I heard it was cool. I want people to see me. I don’t wear cool because it’s cool. I am what I am. If I get noticed for being me, well, that’s me.”

Sprite, the uncola, has been marketing anti-image for years: “Image is nothing. Thirst is everything.” Or something like that. Of course the commercials were busy with happy young conformists dressed up like happy young non-conformists, all between 18 and 30.

Anti-image, clearly, is just another image. Especially corporate sponsored anti-image. If you’ve got a website, a commercial, a marketing budget, there’s really no such thing as anti-image. It’s still an image.

But I can’t imagine that anti-image fools anybody. Kids are savvy, especially media savvy. So who buys into these things? Who believes these things? And more importantly, who’s making these things? Middle-aged balding men with mortgages who think they know how to talk to teenagers, or at least convince them to buy a pair of jeans, I can only assume.

Conformity is consent, consent to be alike and consent to follow. And if advertising is manufacturing consent, it’s inherently impossible to market to non-conformists, to non-consenters, to leaders. And if anti-image is still image and if the youth culture knows, then it’s clear that the youth market is not nearly as non-conformist as it thinks that it is or pretends to be. But this surprises no one.

Meanwhile, I can’t stand these anti-image commercials.

SS