ALISSA QUART

La generación de la que se ocupa este libro es la de los adolescnets y preadolescentes, que son víctimas inconscientes de un asalto mediático sin precedentes por parte de los especialistas del branding, las marcas. Como informan las estadisticas, los adolescentes emplean la mayor parte del tiempo libre en ver la television, que, junto con internet y los videojuegos, se ha convetido en una segunda familia. Ademas, el marketing de las multinacionales lanza su propia ofensiva a traves de los medios de comunicacion de masas, bombardeando con objeto de provocar el deseo y de crer modelos de comportamiento presentandolos de manera muy seductora. Por otra parte, el creciente poder adquisitivo de los adolescentes y jovenes de hoy los hace aun mas apetecibles, sin contar con que son mucho mas facilmente influenciables.

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 todays youth the same way again.

An unsparing, incisive, yet ultimately hopeful look at how we can shed the American obsession with self-reliance that has made us less healthy, less secure, and less fulfilled The promise that you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps is central to the story of the American Dream. Its the belief that if you work hard and rely on your own resources, you will eventually succeed. However, time and again we have seen how this foundational myth, with its emphasis on individual determination, brittle self-sufficiency, and personal accomplishment, does not help us. Instead, as income inequality rises around us, we are left with shame and self-blame for our condition. Acclaimed journalist Alissa Quart argues that at the heart of our suffering is a do-it-yourself ethos, the misplaced belief in our own independence and the conviction that we must rely on ourselves alone. Looking at a range of delusions and half solutionsfrom grit to the false Horatio Alger story to the rise of GoFundMeQuart reveals how we have been steered away from robust social programs that would address the root causes of our problems. Meanwhile, the responsibility for survival has been shifted onto the backs of ordinary people, burdening generations with debt instead of providing the social safety net we so desperately need.Insightful, sharply argued, and characterized by Quarts lively writing and deep reporting, and for fans of Evicted and Nickel and Dimed,Bootstrapped is a powerful examination of what ails us at a societal level and a plan for how we can free ourselves from these self-defeating narratives.