Ariel Horn: The commodotized kids

When I was a child, my oldest sister often manipulated my thoughts and opinions.

Braces-ridden, bedecked in pink glasses and extremely unflattering feathered cut bangs, I was lucky to have anyone to talk to. Fully aware of my willingness to be molded in her image, my sister took advantage and filled my mind with both bizarre and fascinating ideas.

When my family was in France when I was eight, I asked my sister how to say "I'm hungry" in French. She taught me "Je suis stupide," which I happily sang at the top of my lungs while French people pointed and laughed at me.

When I was 12, she told me the brilliant way she would someday change the way her children view the world. When teaching them to speak, she would point to a chair and say "apple." Or gesture to a person and say "house."

She would undo every normal language rule in society, and then send the child off to school, where he would then have to grapple with the mechanics of everyday English which normal children had long ago mastered.

Naturally, I idolized her.

Indeed, who was more brilliant; who had a more intellectual sophistication than my sister? No, there was no one in the sixth grade who could compare.

Naturally, she eventually became a Penn student.

This summer, as I sat at work, waiting for my "mentor" to give me something meaningful to do (copy a Rolodex, research which celebrities of the 1940s liked horses, etc.), I was reminded of how my sister was single-handedly going to change society by messing with language and changing people's understanding of what's normal and what isn't.

On July 19, The New York Times ran a story about two 18-year-olds who had advertised on the Internet to be any willing corporation's "spokesguys" -- for a price. Their Web site advertised: "We will drink your soda and eat your chips! Where we go, you go! Your logo here!"

Not surprisingly, dozens of companies jumped at the bait. After careful selection, the two friends selected the First USA credit card company as their sponsor, which agreed to pay $40,000 in tuition, room, board and books for their freshman years at their respective schools in southern California. All the guys have to do is wear First USA clothing when they make appearances on any college campus and maintain a C average.

A monkey could do that.

Essentially, these two guys whored themselves out to a corporate sponsor for major financial gain.

My first thought: It's weird; these kids are going to be ads for the rest of their lives. How can they live as sell-outs to "The Man?"

My second thought: Why the hell didn't I think of that?

A few weeks later, I had almost forgotten about the First USA kids until I saw another story in the Times about two expectant parents who were trying to find a corporate sponsor to buy the naming rights to their child.

"Hold the phone, Bessie," I thought out loud, soliciting some strange looks from my co-workers. First random Wharton-wannabes are selling their college identities to a credit card company, and now naming a baby "Doritos?"

Teaching your kids that a chair should be called "apple" is one thing, but having your kid's name be "Fat-Free Nabisco Cookies" is certainly another.

Or is it really?

At first glance, each of these ideas on changing societal norms for either profit or entertainment doesn't seem that bad. Change the norms of society. Rework our world. Stick it to the Man. After all, who doesn't want an all-expenses-paid trip through college, courtesy of a credit card company and their t-shirt?

While each of these ideas initially seems appealing, this communal resignation to corporate influence does more than pleasantly fill your wallet. Essentially, having a corporate sponsor for your college career -- or your baby for that matter -- is no different than my sister's idea to teach her kids the wrong words.

In each case, you're hardwiring your kid -- or yourself -- to be totally dysfunctional in any normal setting, as making your child or yourself into a commodity devalues what human life is, or rather, should be: the one safe haven from commodification.

Messing up societal norms for financial benefit (or entertainment) makes it so that a human life is no more or less important than a commercial on TV. If messing up a kid's linguistic mechanisms is sick, then messing up a child's fundamental understanding that people aren't commodities is, just plain, well, ummm, staples.

Ariel Horn is a senior English major from Short Hills, N.J.

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