Popular American Culture Paper
By. Jackie Thompson
Soc. 105 June 7, 2012
Professor Susan Kessler

American Pop Culture
Culture is something that is learned from birth, it affects the way a person looks at themselves, and their surroundings. Someone’s culture influences their preference in music, food, clothing, hair styles, parenting skills, social skills, and the way someone reacts to their environment.
Pop culture is everywhere we look from television, radio, magazines, billboards, newspapers, family, friends, co-workers, professors, and classmates all of these things influences our lives in one way or another. It influences the way we behave in public, what we say, and the way we react to our giving surroundings in a specific time period, which is forever changing depending on what society finds acceptable at that point in time.
Three trends in today’s American culture, starting with the biggest is reality TV, such as “Keeping up with the Kardashians”, “Jersey Shore”, “The Bachelor”, and “Teen Mom”. These reality shows have became a huge hit here in America, being able to watch these peoples personal issues play out right before your eyes is fascinating to some and boring to other. The second major trend would be the body modification, such as tattoos and or piercings. I believe that people are enjoying decorating their bodies not only to make themselves even more unique, but to express their own personality. Thirdly there is the large variety of music in today’s society, such as country, soft and hard- rock, pop, rap, hip-hop, classical, and reggae. As with any culture it depends on your environment as to what kinds of music you listen to.
Popular American Culture affects everyone’s personal decision making in one way or another. From the time we get out of bed our culture tells us what type of toothpaste we should use, to the clothes we put on, and the food we eat to get the energy for our day ahead of us. Pop culture also affects the way we view the world around us, everything from the car we drive, the home we live in, the job we have, and the friends we associate with. Pop culture also affects way we view ourselves, as in if we’re pretty or ugly, skinny or fat, tall or short, rich or poor is all determined by our pop culture. A great example that comes to mind is Elvis Presley and his world know mansion “Graceland”, located in his home town of Memphis, Tennessee. Back in the late 60’s and early 70’s his house was considered to be huge at a total of just over 10,000 square feet (graceland.elvis.com), but now walking through his home it doesn’t even begin to compare to the mansions of today’s market with an average of at least 17,000 square feet.
In Conclusion, although our culture changes with each new generation, it is important to recognize that some of our culture will always continue to pass down and improve throughout history. While thankfully some things will fade like them ridiculous 80’s hairdos’. Our culture makes us who we are no matter where we live, and that is something to be proud of.

Works cited page * EBOOK COLLECTION: Petracca, M., & Sorapure, M. (2007). Common culture: Reading and writing about American popular culture (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. * "Elvis Presley's Graceland : 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard." Elvis Presley's Graceland : 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 June 2012. <http://graceland.elvis.com.au/>.

Interactions with Pop Culture

I found that pop culture is everywhere I look and it influences many different things in my life. My first thing would have to be TV, there are so many things that are advertised that catch my attention, from the food commercials, to the movie ads, all the way to the clothing I buy is all over TV. I also noticed that there were a lot of commercials for children’s toys; I found it fascinating how many commercials there really are, and how little I paid attention to the in the past.
I also noticed more billboards, and advertisements for the many different food places we have, they seem to advertise more of the expensive food and leave it up to u to find the cheaper stuff. But for clothing stores they had their cheaper stuff out front to get you in the door where you will find plenty more to look at and buy.
Then you have the internet, my home page is Yahoo.com and there are plenty of ads to seen on their home page. I noticed car insurance to be the main one on the internet.