Logos

I was thinking about the practice of wearing logos today when I noticed someone wearing socks with the Nike swoosh on them, with a pair of Nike sneakers and Nike shorts. And once I noticed that, I started seeing logos everywhere. Even my innocuous college sweatshirt seemed suspect - as proud as I am of being a Williams College student, in those brief moments of paranoia I suddenly resented everything that bore resemblance to a logo. As I walked from class to class, I found myself taking much more notice of the brands emblazoned on people's clothes. They ranged from the relatively small, like American Eagle's Polo-esque embroidered eagle, to obviously branded sneakers, like the omnipresent Nikes, Adidases, and New Balances.

Which brought me to my next train of thought: while the sheer amount of logos present in our wardrobes is shocking at times, is it possible to incorporate those logos into what can ultimately become a unique sense of style and fashion?

This question was brought up during the last class when we were discussing the issue of logo tattoos, and most people seemed to think that wearing a branded T-shirt was significantly different (and much more excusable) than getting a Nike swoosh tattooed onto a part of your body. There I'd have to agree as well. Getting a tattoo implies that you are willing to be branded for life, and even though as a consumer there are certain brands that I prefer over others, I don't think I'd ever allow myself to become a permanent walking billboard for them. Another issue that was brought up was that company images are subject to change, and what's considered cool one day might be uncool the next. On a more serious note, getting a logo tattoo for a company that is found to have been associated with sweatshops and human rights abuses would probably be a decision most people would regret.

So what's the difference between branded clothing and branded skin? As mentioned above, there's the issue of permanence - clothes can be removed and substituted for others, whereas tattoo removal is much more painful and expensive. Another point, which I mentioned above, is that whether we like it or not, logos have become a part of fashion. Wearing the brand of a cool company can be a way of transmitting a message to other people that you yourself are also hip and desirable - by wearing a company's logo, you can take on that company's image as your own, and my guess is that at least 75% of the $200 you pay for a pair of fancy sneakers might as well be for that image alone.

However! True fashion comes, I believe, from the ability to exude ease and style no matter what you're wearing. And in that sense, shouldn't it be possible for an individual to be stylish without having to resort to giant, obvious logos? Or even small, "classier" ones like the Ralph Lauren polo player and his horse? I think so. And while avoiding brands may be impossible in this day and age (after all, a brand name can also have a legitimate claim to better quality than a virtually unknown name), it's up to the consumer to be a filter and decide how comfortable he or she is with being branded in this manner. So while I don't necessarily buy into Nike's self-promoted image as sportswear for athletic gods and goddesses, I do appreciate the fact that they sell good running shoes. I won't be purchasing any pairs upwards of $100 anytime soon, but having owned Nike shoes in the past, I know that there is a certain promise of quality that comes with the Nike name - and to me, that is worth something.

Commodification of education

This past weekend, I had my first taste of "real civilization" since August when I visited the other side of Massachusetts to visit some friends at Harvard and Boston University. The first thing that immediately struck me as we walked down the bustling streets of Cambridge was the sheer amount of people and cars present, as compared to the levels of traffic (both human and vehicular) usually seen in Williamstown. Even though this was hardly my first time being in a city, after nearly two months in the Purple Bubble that surrounds Williams College, I felt like a wide-eyed country bumpkin. The fact that there were restaurants and stores on every corner astonished me; college students here could actually choose whether or not to eat on campus at meal times.

Visiting my friend at Harvard only served to heighten this sense of surreality. I asked my friend if all the groups of people taking pictures of one another at one end of the campus were all parents and prospective students. "Nope," he said, "half the people here are just tourists from foreign countries."

Although Williams certainly gets its fair share of tourist groups, it's certainly not as well-known as Harvard, with its reputation for being the best university in the world and home to many of the world's future leaders and thinkers. In fact, when I first told relatives that I had been accepted to and would be going to Williams College, I was asked many times "where that was," and I got lots of "oh, that's nice [i.e. huh?]" comments. Which made me think: if Williams really is among the top-ranked schools in the nation, why don't more people know about it? Could it be that the admissions department is not doing as good of a job marketing the school to prospective students and their parents as it is selecting actual students?

To put it bluntly, Williams is only really known as a top-notch institution among rich white people, usually in the northeast United States. This is because up until the 1970s, most of the students who did attend Williams College fit that demographic. And although the college has certainly come a long way since then in changing the profile of a typical Williams student (the pamphlet-ready response to this now, of course, is that “there is no typical Williams student - unless by typical you mean united by their enthusiasm, curiosity, and willingness to learn!”), I was still stumped as to why it hasn’t done more to market itself to prospective students. I only heard about Williams through my father, a college professor who had heard about it from various colleagues.

As a high school senior, I felt disillusioned and burnt out by the entire college admissions process of selling yourself to the highest bidder (in the case of high-commodity students and scholarships) or trying to persuade bidders that you were worth the gamble of an acceptance letter. The atmosphere at my high school was also very competitive, and out of sheer contrariness I decided to forget about applying to any Ivy League schools. And although you could argue that Williams itself is just as name-brand as Harvard or Princeton, it was definitely not as well-known in my high school, even by most of my teachers. So for a while, I enjoyed the questions and confused looks that came my way, and took a smug, elite pleasure in the fact that most of the people of my acquaintance hadn’t heard of it.

Once I heard back from Williams and the time came for me to send in my own acceptance letter, however, the questions began to annoy me. And although I knew that my future was in no way jeopardized by the fact that my next-door neighbors and my parents’ friends hadn’t heard of the school, it still bothered me that I had to explain myself every time someone asked me where I went to school.

“So, is that like William & Mary? Or Roger Williams?”

“Uh, no… It’s just Williams. It’s in Massachusetts.”

Of course, I could get self-righteous and wave Williams’s U.S. Report ranking around like a banner, but since then I’ve learned to take pleasure in the simple fact that I go to one of the best schools in the nation. As my JA put it, “The only people who will have heard about Williams are the ones that matter.” And although this might seem counterintuitive, as any college would naturally want as many qualified people to apply as possible, maybe that’s the objective of the admissions department after all - not to overexpose Williams College to people everywhere, but to perpetuate its current image of being a very sheltered, nurturing, close-knit, and bucolic college community by focusing more on actual student selection rather than direct marketing. After all, in the world of higher-level institutions, the best colleges and universities aren’t necessarily the ones that spend the most on in-your-face advertising (a degree from a school that advertises on the radio and on TV would probably not be as impressive in the workplace as, say, a degree from a Columbia or a Yale or a Swarthmore). As far as recruiting and college fairs go, although they are necessary to a certain extent, the objective of an elite institution should be to get the student to court the institution, not for the institution to court the student.