Buying Outdoorsiness
I am a super hippy, or at least a variety of super hippy. I feel connected to the Earth, I’m vegan, I love hiking and camping, and naturally, as an outdoorsy hippy, I wear fleece and Tevas. Of course as a hippy I have to fit the image of a hippy. My identity is determined by not only my actions, but also, if not especially, my appearance.
Obviously, one of the first things that contribute to our ideas, societal placement, and even prejudices of people, are clothes. You see someone in a crisp white collared shirt, and, regardless of gender, race, or age, you gain a certain societal image of them.
I consider myself as separate from the stereotypical United States culture of suburbia and pant suits but there is still no way for me to get away from the intense, infecting, and overpowering consumer culture of our country.
I see someone in white Veja sneakers and a Polo shirt and I am immediately deterred, as they are not homogeneous with my “environmental hippy” identity. But the look of clothing is not what we should be focused on, it is the impact.
Someone who wears white Veja sneakers and a Polo shirt may contribute to the same amount of environmental impact as I do, clothed in a fleece and Teva sandals. Yet I immediately assign a greater carbon footprint to the preppy frat boy.
Both of these brands of shoes market themselves as being “sustainable” but the fact of the matter is that they still prompt consumerism, and are therefore absolutely not sustainable.
This is the downfall of environmentalism in the United States. Not greed, not ignorance, but identity.
I bought a pair of Tevas almost ten years ago. They are in great condition, and I still wear them to this day. But even though they are in great shape I have been painfully tempted to buy a new pair simply because of the new designs that have come out throughout the past decade.
When we assign ourselves to a consumerist group, we must continue to buy the newest materials in order to still feel like a part of the group.
Not only the products are being bought though. Also the ideas associated with them are being bought. In the above Teva ad, a beautiful sunny cloudless landscape can be seen in the background, with the product placing the consumer in this desirable situation.
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In the Veja ad, pristine human architecture complements the shoe. The consumer buys the glamour, and clean perfection associated with the product.
While we assign ourselves to a societal group, products as well as ways of life are marketed to us. In the Teva ad, nature is commodified. We buy the shoe so we can buy this experience of nature.
We buy the shoe to have the experience of nature, but we obviously need money to buy the shoe as well as this idea of nature. As consumerism tied to identity grows in our culture, we must work more in order to gain what we perceive is needed to fit into our identity. Yet this monetary need increases longing for escape. To people who buy Tevas, myself included, this escape is what is marketed to us, nature, while wearing Tevas.
As we are sucked deeper and deeper into earning money, the urge to return to nature becomes so strong that we begin to create artificial environments throughout our everyday lives. Parks and even laws are physical manifestations of this longing, but human interpretations of nature are also characterized in films, books, and ads.
When I Googled “Teva sandals ad” this is the first video that came up. This is the direct commodification of nature. We are buying the experiences shown in this ad as well as the product, but the use of experiences in nature in this ad emphasizes that we only see nature as serving human interest. In the images portrayed, people are shown driving through the wilderness, rafting on rivers, surfing on the ocean, camping in the forest, and of course, wearing Tevas.
But the direct exploitation of nature does not only occur during vacations and escapes from the workplace. Teva exploits nature for the purpose of profit.
Rather than just going to the places advertised in the Teva ad, I feel that, in some way, I need to earn the right to take a break in nature. I feel as if I cannot simply go into nature with the shoes I already have. I need the new Tevas. I need them to have a successful experience in nature.
This is the way that environmentalism and even nature has been infected by consumerism and commodified: Identity.
But once upon a time, being connected to the environment was not associated with products. It was, believe it or not, associated with simply, nature. But the United States, as a capitalist nation, relies on false associations of products with the quality of life. This materialistic conditioning has not only led to horrifying amounts of consumption, but also a deep separation between humans and the environment. We deeply believe that we need things to be able to interact with nature rather than already being part of nature.
Humans are nature. We have a role in the natural world. But what we categorize as “humanness” has made us human, not animal. Identity is an important aspect of human nature, and what we think we need for our identification has majorly contributed to our sense of identification. The need to consume has exceeded contributing to the human identity, and has become a major factor of human identity itself.
We exploit nature to make products to get us closer to nature, yet this exploitation leaves less and less of it to be enjoyed and commodified after consumption. Eventually, we will buy the product, and buy the idea of a natural escape, but we will have nowhere to escape to.
Communicating Nature, Julia B. Corbett, 2006
