The first year of Freshmen year in high school was overwhelming for me. There was a variety of attitudes and personalities everywhere you went, from the bathrooms chatters to the lunch room giggles. The High School Musical (1, 2, or 3) aspects of social structure was all so present to me. However, it’s not like when the intimidated freshmen walks in the lunchroom and the camera man angles the camera at each social group as the personal narrator goes along with it and says stuff like, “There goes the jocks over there and that’s their head player, Zac Efron. He dates the top cheerleader, Vanessa Hudgens…” and blah blah blah. Nevertheless, it was pretty close. I felt like a slight outcast. So I approached this girl that was at a table that was very lonesome. Her big Afro puff attracted me to her and I wanted to tell her that it was nice and hopefully it would acquire a new friend.

So I went up to her and said, “I really like your puff, it’s huge.” Shawty (the young lady) dead looked me up and down, examining my attire with a little look of disapproval in her eyes.  So I examined her. She had on a Louis Vuitton bag, Burberry shirt, Nudie Jeans and the latest Jordans at the time. It was obvious that the value of my Ralph Lauren Polo shirt, Old Navy jeans and Polo sneakers didn’t compare to her attire. And there I began to understand where her look was coming from.

She later said Thank You, but ended the conversation there as if I was not worth her time.

A few weeks followed, and I noticed that she found the ‘click’ for her. It was a bunch of materialistic feens (as I would call them.) The definition of a materialistic feen is someone that buy things due to the product being highly mentioned in the mainstream.

So, I always thought of the idea that capital runs the world; even determining what friends you hang out with. There are a lot of terms that wise old men have tied into this scenario. One term that constructs this into one this is cultural hegemony.