Sneakers!

What makes your pop-culture focus popular among large gropus of people?:
Sneakers have become important in our culture through the necesity for sports and excercise, along with the clever endorsements from the sneaker industry utilizing pop culture icons to promote the expensive or desireable ones. They are still popular from continued use and expanded advertising. They are ingrained societies list of necesities.

What does its popularity reveal about our society, culture or nation?:
Sneakers reveal the societies obsession with fitness, or the idea that through them they can become fit. They also show our dependance on figures in the spotlight. Children want the sneakers that their favorite basketball players wear, or that their idol from the oc is selling. They also reveal the consumer nature of the country. Our sneakers are not made to last, we are supposed to buy new pairs when the old ones go "out of season". They are seasonable and getting more and more specialized for what they can do. Our culture turns a blind eye on how they are made, and continues to buy them.

What does this sugguest about Cultural values?:
This suggests that we are a rather shallow culture that cares only about the asthetics of what is on our feet and not about the world that created them. We would rather pay wayyy too much on a pair of shoes that our idol wears, than help out the 5 year old kid that made them in some third world country.

What do these values say about our culture's priorities, beliefs, or fantasys?:
First, it says that we are shallow, and ignorant of what goes on to create the lifestyle that we enjoy. Next it sugests that we would rather be precieved as cool than wear something that may not be the best just because it is endorsed by someone we like.
Our fantasies are also shown by sneakers. We want to be trendy like Mischa, or athletic like Michael Jordan. We want to be able to do all these things that the people in the sneaker adds are doing. We all want to be that fit person, or that trendy person. When we buy the sneakers we buy the image that goes with them.

What alternatives to such values, if any?
The alternatives would be to be less a consumer cultures. To care more about the world than the type of sneakers we wear. We could do more physical work, instead of having to work out. We could rearrange our priorites completely by having no idols and heros, which would change our views on clothing.

Sneakers can teach us about who the public looks up to, and what the styles are. Where the sneakers are made can tell us about the economic state of other countries, as well as our own bye their prices. Sneakers reflect our excess, which we can learn alot from.