The Savage Girl

Citation

Parsons, A.L. (2003), "The Savage Girl", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 20 No. 6, pp. 593-595. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363760310499174

This fictional book has a futuristic feel that is peppered with current brand names and technologies to make readers think they could be reading about today. There is much that is familiar but also a great deal that seems extreme and over the top. The book is filled with paradoxes and dilemmas about the role of popular culture in society. However, unlike a more theoretical piece, the book has the benefit of being an interesting fictional story and, as a result, the reader is both enticed by the story and forced to think and examine personal beliefs about the role of marketing, advertising, consumerism and popular culture in society today.

The book describes the adventures of Ursula, a former artist, who unexpectedly finds herself working for her fashion model sister’s former flame, an ex‐philosophy professor who runs a progressive marketing research firm. There she takes on the role of a trend spotter whose job it is to identify trends before they become common. This information is then sold to advertising agencies and companies who want to be on the cutting edge of today’s society.

Ursula’s job parallels the real life activities of the firm Look‐Look and the cable television station MTV that were highlighted in the PBS program Frontline – The Merchants of Cool that aired in the spring of 2001. Both the book and the program emphasize the importance to marketers of reaching the untapped youth market. Today’s marketers are trying to identify trends and bring them to market before they become a part of the mainstream culture. But by bringing such trends to market the following paradox arises – once something cool goes mainstream it is no longer cool anymore.

The book is a dark exploration of consumer culture that questions the value placed on beauty in society and explores the role fashion models play in promoting the beauty ideal by appearing in advertising. It raises the question" What is beauty and is someone or something beautiful simply because the media tells us so?

The idea of a glamour continuum is discussed. Here Hollywood celebrities are developed at the expense of average, ordinary people and the problems of homeless people “boil(s) down to not poverty per se but more essentially to a desperate, terminal lack of glamour” (p. 53). The characters try to promote products that seem to be the opposite of consumer culture.

One of the key trends identified by the trendspotters is the idea of a “savage” girl that is based on the antics of a homeless girl who does her best just to survive. The “savage” character is the direct opposite of the materialism today’s consumer culture subscribes to. Ursula’s fashion model sister, who suffers from schizophrenia, is chosen as the poster girl for the whole savage idea. She promotes “Diet Water” while sporting savage girl attire. The whole idea of a fashion model promoting homelessness seems to contradict the very nature of the glamour continuum, and a homeless girl promoting a diet product is troublesome.

Throughout the story, the characters are confronted with a number of issues and choose to deal with them in different ways. Some issues the characters are confronted with include invasion of privacy, the ethics associated with promoting mental illness, unrequited love, violating one’s personal code of ethics, jealousy and envy, selling out, greed, and the quest for fame. How each character handles the various issues makes for often entertaining reading. The characters do not always make the right decisions and the whole grand scheme does not emerge as planned, thus forcing the characters to reevaluate their decisions and life plans.

The book definitely encourages one to think about the role of advertising and consumerism in today’s world. During a presentation to advertising/marketing personnel who want to reach the youth market, one of the main characters distributes material that suggests that today’s citizens are trapped, “but only insofar as you choose to be purely a consumer, limiting your expressions of freedom to acts of consumption, do you remain free” (p. 133). The character then goes on to declare that the era of “post‐ironic consumerism” is upon us where “through consumption consumers will be gods; outside of consumption they will be nothing: a perpetual oscillation between absolute control and absolute vulnerability, between grandeur and persecution” (p. 140). While some of these ideas seem a bit extreme, there is some parallel with reality in that today’s teenagers are more skeptical and less receptive to traditional advertising messages. Advertisers face a challenge in trying to reach this potentially lucrative market.

The book could be a basis for interesting discussion in any upper level undergraduate or graduate marketing or communications course concerned with pop culture and consumer behavior. It could also be used as a tool to teach how to conduct observational research. The observations the characters make about the world and consumers around them are vivid and full of detail. For example, the chapter entitled “Surfaces” is particularly insightful as to why people behave the way they do in a grocery store. Devoting some quiet time to read and ponder the many interesting questions this book raises is highly recommended.