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Chapter 5 of Reading Culture discusses America's style-conscious culture and the cultural codes related to personal choices we make as consumers. This chapter focuses on questions such as why Americans care about cars, cosmetics, and fashion, and how Americans communicate messages about economic and social class through style, both mainstream and countercultural. This Companion Website continues discussions about style, using the Internet as a vehicle. The first "Checking Out the Web" activity examines couture and traditional fashion houses and asks you to identify this season's newest trends and to think about the historical references they make. The second activity involves fashion magazines and asks you to think about how they transmit new fashion statements, as well as who various magazines target as their demographics. The third activity explores the subtle and not-so-subtle differences in marketing among brands that many college students wear. The fourth activity invites analysis of the cultural codes of the automobile, particularly the SUV. The "Visual Culture" section provides links to archives of costumes and fashion and the "Mining the Archives" section offers resources to explore the history and social signification of the automobile.
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