Looking Cool

In a previous article dated from the 18^th of May 2011 I was raising the question of people identifying with brands and bands. It reminded me of a t-shirt I bought last summer: a black t-shirt with the logo of the Rolling Stones (you know, the mouth with the tongue sticking out!), and I started to wonder why I had bought that t-shirt. I mean: I love it, this is not the question; but I don’t even listen to the Rolling Stones’ music!

That’s when a thought – that I found very disturbing at the time – struck me: you can end up wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt knowing nothing or (very) little about them and their music just because you think that many people think they are a “cool band”, and that therefore, wearing this t-shirt makes you “look cool”.

‘Impossible,’ I thought. ‘Not me!’

Horrified at the idea that it could be the case, I tried to remember what had led me to buy that t-shirt. My first reason for buying it was that I didn’t have a t-shirt with this type of cut and wanted one. Okay, that’s a good reason so far. My second reason was because I truly like the Rolling Stones’ logo. I think it is really cool (regardless of what it could make me look like); so my choice naturally went for that t-shirt rather than for the other one next to it, with the same cut but with a different drawing on it. Alright. But then I remembered that (terrible) thought I had, my third reason for buying that t-shirt: ‘and I will look cool in that t-shirt.’ “Look cool”? Ouch. Those two words showed me that my worries were confirmed and that every time I say I don’t care about what people think of what I am wearing it is not 100% true.

There is something comforting about all this though: I am not the only one in that case. If you were to ask every person you see with a Che Guevara t-shirt or bag who Che Guevara was you would be amazed at how many people wouldn’t actually know the answer. On the other hand, most of the time you would find out that the reason why those people have that t-shirt/bag is because “it looks cool”. Same: how many people have this famous picture of Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out either as a poster, a t-shirt, etc. just because they think this picture is “cool” and gives a “cool image” of them? And there are plenty of other examples of this.

So do we only buy certain items with certain things on them just because they make us look cool? Is that it?

These “things” are what is called modern “icons”, that is to say a “name, face, picture, edifice or even a person [that can be] recognized as having some well-known significance or embodying certain qualities […] usually associated with religious, cultural, political, or economic standing”.

Some examples of modern icons

It means that indeed, we might buy items with those icons on to look cool; but this is only part of the answer and this might not even be the main reason why we buy those items. Another part of the answer is that those icons come in very handy when it comes to saying something about ourselves – and the great thing is that they allow us to do so without even needing to open our mouths! Just by what we own and what we wear we give people around us multiple clues as for who we are, what we think, what we like, etc. It is amazing how a simple picture can tell so much about us just by all the meaning that is agglomerated in it. So buying such items allows us to express ourselves… in silence. And finally, there is the case where one can like the icon purely as a picture, without regard to the meaning behind it.

In short, we buy items with those icons on because:

a) they help us to convey a certain image of us based on how we think other people perceive those icons (“I would like to look cool and arty > I think that most people think that Andy Warhol’s work is cool and arty > therefore I have a poster of Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe in my living room”), and in this case never mind if our knowledge about those icons is poor or nonexistent!;

b) they say something about us to the world (“I have a bag with The Beatles on because I am a fan of their music”);

c) because we simply like them as pictures (like me and my t-shirt with the Rolling Stones logo);

d) or because – I haven’t mentioned that yet – these icons mean something to us emotionally-speaking (“I have a t-shirt of AC/DC because it reminds me of the great time I had at their concert”); in this case the item is more of a souvenir than anything else.

To come back on the story of my t-shirt, I might have had this thought about me looking cool indeed, and I might not know much about the Rolling Stones; but still: I like the logo as a picture so it is still a good reason for my purchase… isn’t it?