The influence of popular culture (e.g. fashion, music, entertainment, the arts, advertising, political events, athletics)

Cathy, like most girls, speaks frequently about clothing choices, her own and others. She decides that the only way to fit in with the cool crowd is to wear what they’re wearing.
“After my first day of school, I told my mother I had to find those matching outfits that the popular blonde girls wore. Some of the girls wore little ladybug pins on their collars that were the exact same size as a real ladybug. I had discovered that this pin represented the Ladybug brand. I found Villager floral dresses and Ladybug blouses in a lady’s golf store.” (pg.36)
When she moves to Ohio U in chapter eleven the talk of fashion continues; as does a reference to singer Billy Holiday. ‘…there were several varieties of southern magnolia that would bloom in the springtime with huge white flowers like the kind Billy Holiday wore in her hair on her album covers.”(pg.170) “I had four London Fog trench coats, all in slightly different shades of khaki with my initials monogrammed on the collars, and boxes and boxes of matching Pappagallo shoes.” (170)

When Cathy visits New York City she is paired for work with Laurie Coal whom she assumes upon arrival is a white girl but instead is a six foot black man. In their time in the city they attend an “off-off Broadway” show called Dutchman. The plot is written to draw sympathy from the primary black audience for the black main character who is killed at the end of the play. Cathy finds herself semi emerged in the black culture of New York through her meeting Laurie and her feelings for him. “Not exactly what I bargained for. However, it was totally believable and on the spot for that moment in history. James Merideth, the first black student at the University of Mississippi, had been shot earlier in the summer while on a peaceful freedom march. I had never before heard black anger. I had heard Martin Luther King say things like ‘I have a dream…’ but this was new.” (224)

Gildiner finds it necessary to blatantly state the brand or brands to which she’s referring. If I had one criticism it would be her tendency to do that. I find it doesn’t make a sentence or the image created any more meaningful if she points out that it was a Tareyton cigarette that she was smoking. “’Jesus Christ, let’s have a cigarette.’ She opened a Band-Aid can that held her cigarettes. ‘Amazing case,’ I said, taking a Tareyton she offered.” (pg. 175) It seems like she was paid by someone to include all of these name drops. “Whe we got back from Arby’s, I put on my thick ski jacket and went out to the garage with my Lark cigarettes.” (pg. 165) I don’t understand why it can’t just be a cigarette, not a Lark or a Tareyton. She sounds like a new smoker inserting which brand of cigarette she smokes even though it doesn’t add anything to the conversation.