Propaganda Baby

Prompt No. 32: Everybody wants to rule the world!

Hat tip to anthropologist and air sign*

Bailey Marie-Foret

, who tagged me in a TikTok post explaining how our (read: Americans) desire to express ourselves through personal style is a manufactured phenomenon. In it, creator Jennie Jacob explains our notions of self-expression are based on the work of Edward Bernays, a pioneer in the field of public relations and encourages viewers to watch The Century of the Self, one of several documentaries devoted to Bernays’ use of crowd psychology in the United States.

As someone who approaches fashion theory primarily through a sociopolitical lens, I was curious to learn how group psychology took advantage of the existing social and economic conditions that made self-expression feasible. As previously discussed, Alexis de Tocqueville connected democracy to a more political version of self-expression — individualism — roughly 100 years earlier; however, the concept required increased prosperity; clear, stratified examples of status; and simply things. Throughout the 19^th century, the U.S. managed to achieve all of this, with old money establishing itself as the nation’s aristocracy and shaping society to meet its needs. In other words, crediting psychoanalysis for consumer behavior and sense of self seems a bit of a stretch.