Be Different—Everyone Else is Doing it!

We’ve all heard the message since we were little kids: “It’s OK to be different!” But anyone who’s walked the halls of junior high for three years would probably disagree. However, the media might finally be delivering on this after school special cliché.

Looking at Billboard’s current top ten pop songs, it’s seems the message of embracing your differences and loving yourself is becoming quite a pattern: Katy Perry’s “Firework” is #2, Ke$ha’s “We R Who We R” is #4, and P!ink’s “Raise Your Glass” and “F***ing Perfect” are #7 and #10, respectively. Lady Gaga’s new single “Born this Way,” released this past Friday, was the fastest selling song in iTunes history. 

The omnipresent Gaga is known for her outrageous fashion, open sexuality and general eccentricities. She was Billboard’s 2010 artist of the year and her extreme popularity is evidence itself that odd is in. Her fans, referred to as “Little Monsters,” have awaited her latest single with great anticipation. The chorus of the song reads like a mission statement for her brand: “I’m beautiful in my own way/’Cause God makes no mistakes/I’m on the right track, baby/I was born this way.” Billboard describes the lyrics as “in-your-face…about race and sexuality.”

Katy Perry, who also has a distinct look (a mix of 1950s pinup girl and a cartoon), is less outrageous but has had her share of controversy with her break-out song, “I Kissed a Girl,” her Mormon upbringing and her marriage to colorful British comedian Russell Brand. Her new song, “Firework,” preaches, “You don’t have to feel like a waste of space/You’re original, cannot be replaced/If you only knew what the future holds/After a hurricane comes a rainbow.”

Newcomer Ke$ha is known for her gutsy wild child image and for literally looking dirty. She describes her look as a “cross between Keith Richards and a hobo.” Most of her songs are about partying but her new single sounds like a rally call for the hipster youth: “Tonight we’re going hard/Just like the world is ours/We’re tearin’ it apart/You know we’re superstars/We are who we are!”

P!nk has capitalized on being different since she first entered the music scene in the early 2000s with a pink pixie cut. She has stayed true to her message over the years, and two songs off her most recent album invite misfits to “Raise your glass if you are wrong/In all the right ways/All the underdogs,” and asks them to “Pretty pretty Please don’t you ever ever feel/Like your less than, f***ing perfect.”

Pop stars wearing outrageous outfits for attention is nothing new, but it seems like the look and message of today’s artists are most successful when they are relevant, powerfully emotional and differentiated, just like any other brand. The recent media attention brought to anti-gay bullying and teen suicide may have catalyzed the outpouring of the message of self-acceptance.

Of course, it is a wonderful thing that the music industry has embraced this cause, but it is ironic that embracing difference has been turned into a commodity.  

Frozen Fads

As a female college student, it might not surprise you that I’m a froyo enthusiast. Over the years, I’ve observed how frozen yogurt has grown enormously popular and evolved to reflect the trends of our time. 

Frozen yogurt first became mainstream in the 1980s as a healthier alternative to its calorie-rich cousin—ice cream. Frozen yogurt versions of popular ice cream flavors were created and were sold side by side with ice cream. The first frozen yogurt franchise to make it big was TCBY, which is still around today. Froyo sales reached $25 million in 1986 and by the 1990s, it was 10% of the dessert market. The product was actually invented a decade earlier, but it was unsuccessful at entering the market because consumers disliked the tart flavor. It wasn’t until manufacturers developed a sweeter version and people started to become more health-conscious that the froyo concept took off.

Fast-forward to the early 2000s. Atkins is the fad diet du jour and carb evading and calorie counting are at an all time high. The reality of America’s obesity problem is starting to set in.  Frozen yogurt was considered healthier than ice cream, but it was still a dessert with plenty of calories. It was the perfect environment for New York City based chain Tasti-D-Lite to take a foothold. I was in high school when I discovered the franchise and I was obsessed. It wasn’t exactly frozen yogurt, but it tasted like it and it was shockingly low in calories. Tasti was featured on Sex and the City and on The Apprentice and I witnessed an explosion of new Tasti shops throughout the city.

By the mid-2000s, the Tasti concept was losing steam. The company was sued for lying about the calorie content of its non-vanilla flavors and the fact that it was not legally allowed to call itself yogurt or ice cream, but was instead referred to as “frozen treat,” made it seem fake and unhealthy. Organic and natural foods were all the rage and people became more concerned with the quality of the food they were putting into their bodies than the calorie content. It was time for frozen yogurt to reinvent itself once again. Enter Pinkberry. The Pinkberry concept brought frozen yogurt back to its roots, serving the dessert in its original tart and tangy form. Perhaps more importantly, Pinkberry offered a variety of healthy toppings, like fruits, berries and granola. Based in Hollywood, Pinkberry became wildly popular and began expanding internationally in 2009.

Pinkberry’s success has spawned competitors. Red Mango, which claims it started in Korea before Pinkberry was even conceived in the US, prides itself of having the most active cultures in its yogurt.  I’m a huge fan of Durham’s Local Yogurt, which is similar to Pinkberry in décor but feels more authentic and natural since it’s locally owned. But even Pinkberry’s model is starting to fade. The newest frozen yogurt fad is the self-serve concept, where customers have total control over the yogurt and topping selection and are charged by weight. Self-serve is significantly cheaper than “full-service” shops and you can control how much you want to eat, satisfying portion control-freaks and those that want a little bit of everything. It’s interesting to see how the ‘healthy’ dessert category has changed over the years, representing what our current ideas of what it means to be healthy. I can’t wait to taste what comes next!

Why Are We Obsessed with Keeping Calm?

I came across a “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster for the first time this past summer. One of the higher-ups at the office I interned at had taped it to the outside of the glass walls of his office. I walked past the small poster several times a day and I found myself drawn to its simple mantra. After this initial introduction, I began to notice the poster everywhere—framed as an art piece in magazines, on notebooks and stationary sold at Barnes & Noble and tote bags and coffee cups— and I was intrigued. When and why did this slogan become an obsession?

It turns out that the poster was commissioned as part of the series by Britain’s temporary Ministry of Information during the beginning of WWII as part of an effort to boost morale. The first two posters in the series were widely distributed during the war and read, “Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution, Will Bring Us Victory,” and “Freedom is in Peril Defend it with All Your Might.” The third “Keep Calm” poster that’s so popular today was to be released only if Germany invaded Britain and so the posters were never circulated. Despite the favorability today, the campaign was criticized by the British media and seen as a failure. Of the more than 3 million “Keep Calm” posters printed, only seven survived to this day.

In 2000, Stuart Manley, the owner of Barter Books in Alnwick, England and his wife, discovered one of the remaining posters at the bottom of a box of books they bought in an auction. They framed the poster in their shop and when it became a customer favorite, they began selling reproductions. The poster has become a kind of logo for Britain, representing the ‘stiff upper lip’ the country is known for, and became especially popular in 2009 at the start of the financial crisis. By March 2009, the couple had sold 40,000 copies of the poster as its popularity spread.

The poster’s appeal spreads beyond its British roots. I was drawn to the message of the poster before I knew its history because the simple prose reminds us not to sweat the small stuff (something I try to remind myself on a daily basis). The minimalist design and bright red color has made the poster a trendy (and inexpensive) art piece and because its part of public domain, anyone can reprint the poster and create variations on its theme. The slogan has been adopted throughout the world (even in Germany!) as the unofficial recession motto. Creative parodies of the posters, for example, “Now Panic and Freak Out” with an upside down crown, have also become popular. It’s strange that this wartime inspirational message has become a commodity, but clearly the message resonates with many on an emotional level that’s hard to criticize. A quick google search and you can find the slogan in pretty much any variation, color and on every piece of merchandise you can possibly imagine.