Merchants of Cool

Andrew Vo

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The merchant of cool article talks about how the teenage population is being driven to think what is

currently cool and trendy in a certain time through the use of advertising and commercialism. It

describes the consumer culture of the teenage population and how marketers realize that the teenage

consumers can be exploited for the most profits. Consumer culture is a culture that fits into our

definition of what we have defined popular culture is: popular culture is always changing. Consumer

culture is always changing depending on what is being commercialized at the time and will continue

to change throughout time. Consumer culture can also be sexualized and be gender specific.

Advertisers and marketers will portray what a cool girl or cool boy is and this idea will play in the

teenage perspective of being cool for a girl or boy should be like. By doing so, companies are able to

capitalize off of teenage obsession of being cool.