Fetishism comes in all shapes and sizes

I love my Crocs. I wear them several times a week. They are bright orange and so flamboyantly colored that they rarely match other people’s aesthetic criteria for any item of clothing. I have conveniently adopted the philosophy that because they go with nothing, they go with everything.
I did not purchase them for the color, nor did I select them for their marvelous ability to be worn both in water and on dry land. It wasn’t because I was unsatisfied with conventional footwear or wanted variety in my life, and it certainly was not a result of the ‘love/hate Crocs’ commercials that aired ceaselessly during the Olympic games. I purchased them two weeks prior to the Olympics for a very specific reason.

Consumerism, or as Merriam-Webster puts it, “a preoccupation with and an inclination toward the buying of consumer goods,” permeates many aspects of the American ethos. But what is at the root of this fervor to accumulate consumer goods? Are we so tremendously irrational that we purchase for the sake of consumption?

Perhaps in some cases, but for now let’s assume that we purchase things because at a basic level, we believe that owning them will make us better off. Example: I purchased a food processor because it saved me the time of chopping/dicing/mutilating vegetables and fruits when I could be doing more productive things like studying for an exam.

Underlying this cultural motive is a sometimes more elusive belief that certain products will make us better off in ways that don’t necessarily correlate to the product’s direct capacity. Fetishism, in this context, is the belief that a particular item has the ability to imbue its owner with unique gifts and powers. Think of it: this idea has a tremendous presence in American marketing techniques. When Michael Jordan paired with Nike to produce Air Jordan in 1984, consumers didn’t purchase them merely because they were a fashion highlight. Many purchased them because, despite a lack of scientific evidence, a part of them believed that the shoe would make them a better basketball player.

This last summer, for the first time in my life, I obtained complete unadulterated access to cable television. I tried out the usual variety of programs: Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel, three hour marathons about Adolph Hitler on the History (or Hitler) Channel and an array of ultra-masculine, chest-pounding specials on Spike TV.

The one channel that ultimately held me captivated was the Food Network. Every spare moment of my summer I was planted in front of the plastic altar, worshipping the gladiators of Food Network Challenge, the benevolent deities of Iron Chef America and the uncharacteristic heroes of Next Food Network Star. I was inevitably drawn to the rather theatric culinary antics of Mario Batali, and his rather noticeable orange plastic clogs.

I love this guy. As an authority on Italian cooking, culture and cuisine, he often tells his audiences “trust me, not the recipe,” and we do, wholeheartedly. Aspiring to be a decent cook myself, but possessing no real culinary talent (I could burn cereal), I opted to purchase his trademark shoes rather than transfer to the Culinary Institute of America. So on July 29, I dipped into my online checking account and purchased a pair of Croc Caymans from Shoes.com. The premise behind my fallacy: fetishism.

The grips of a consumer culture: Do any of us avoid it?
We live in a consumer culture, and strategically placed marketing campaigns are omnipresent. It’s likely that most of us will experience a point in our lives when we purchase something to absorb the inherent abilities of its patron.

Did they work? Of course they did. Did the clogs turn me into a virtuoso of Italian cooking? Of course they didn’t. There was no miraculous transformation-I didn’t absorb Batali’s culinary knowledge or palate-but I did get off the couch to start cooking more than frozen pizza and Banquet potpies.

If any pundits find me to be an exception to the norm, and believe me to be a fool who is trying to validate his flawed reasoning, consider the following:
Fetishism in our consumer culture isn’t merely relegated to basketball and cooking. We purchase many things for supposed rather than demonstrated qualities. Some products promise us popularity, status, a good time with friends. Others try to convince us that we need material protection from the ravages of normalcy.

We justify our purchases in a variety of ways, and you’d be hard pressed to find an individual who, after shelling out hundreds of dollars for a pair of Ugg boots, doesn’t tell all of his or her friends how “comfortable” they are.