Having the peer review has helped me tremendously. I now know that I need to focus my paper more and I decided that I am going to focus my essay on the concept of the piggy bank. I think this is a very interesting focus to be on because not to many people have piggy banks anymore. I want to entwine the idea of the piggy bank more throughout my next draft. I think I can do this by not trying to focus on the broad view of me as a consumer but at how I have changed as a consumer.  I was also informed that I talk in circles in my essay so I am going to work on trying to not circle in my next draft. I can work on this by being more focused on my main topic. I want to make my essay more exciting to read I am going to work on incorporating more humor into my paper so it is not so dull. The peer review group has opened my eyes to many different ways that I could change my paper to make it even better. I have also had my English 102 class take a look at my essay and they as well gave me many ideas of ways that I could make my paper better. I know have a very good idea at how I would like my paper to look and sound like. I am planning on adding pictures too. I have a piggy bank that I am planning on putting a picture of. I am going to make the whole piggy bank theme as a type of story about the way I consume. I am hoping that with all the help I have received that I can piece together a very interesting essay that everyone can enjoy.

You can see how much money I spend by looking at my piggy bank. It use to be full of dimes. nickels. and quarters but over the last couple of years I have cheated and have spent money from it. I have came to realize that I am a very active consumer even here in college. I have many things sitting around me that I don’t need but I can’t get rid of them either. When I go shopping I buy everything for a reason, like the lamp that sits on my desk but has only been turned on about 5 times since I got it before coming up to WSU. I have to many clothes and half of them have been sitting in my drawers for the whole school year. I have a printer that sits there with no ink because I can not afford to buy ink for it. So many things that I bought but aren’t being used it’s rather sad. I could be spending my money on better things that I need such as food or even school but instead I decide to buy things that I don’t necessarily need. What you find in my room tells a lot about what kind of consumer I am. I love to spend money but I also know when to not spend it.

Many people when asked what kind of consumers they are they have no clue how to even start to answer that question. When I start to answer it I first think about everything I have bought over the last year. Which moving to college for the first year I bought a lot. Now though when I look I see a lot of things that I really didn’t need to buy in the first place. If I could go back and stop myself from buying things that I honestly could live without I would have nothing to my name and I would be rich.  But I wouldn’t be happy. I think that the main point in consuming is for pleasure. For example, I over spend and over buy shoes but without all of my shoes I would not be happy because I would not have a variety of different footwear. For some people its shoes and for others its other things but how can you just not buy anything you don’t need?

Since coming to college I have been paying much more attention to what I spend my money on but I still do spend some money on things that I truly don’t need. When it comes to buying anything ,though, I can’t just stop spending money. Like most people spending money is in my blood. If I am not spending money then what am I doing? You need to spend money to survive.  So in a way everyone around the world is always consuming even if you are trading things or buying them that is a type of consuming.

It is so bad that people are even consuming with money they don’t have. For example, many people around the world own credit cards and many of those people over spend and end up spending more money then they have. After going shopping with my mom one day I started to wonder if my consumer habits came from how I was raised as a kid or is it just how my environment has raised me to spend.  My family has never been rich and I think that is a lot of my consuming problem. I think that people from less privileged families tend to buy more of  what they don’t need because they have never been able to do that before.

I have never really thought about how many things I consume until I started to think about it. After thinking about it I realized that I consume a lot more than I am aware of. There are so many things that I have that I don’t even remember buying.  This is a bad sign because that means that I am consuming to much to remember. I do know though where my limit is to consuming. Which is why I consider myself as a very consuming person, when I am shopping I see things that I think I need and will I use these things but after I get home and time goes buy I realize that there was no need for me to buy these items. Being a consumer is a natural thing though it is what we all do. Whether we realize it or not, almost everything that we do we are consuming. For an example we are consuming knowledge every day we are at school and around in public. Even though it is not consuming material items we are consuming our environment, people interaction which we all need.

It is in everyone’s nature to consume things. Weather you are poor or rich that just puts into account how much you can consume. Many people in today’s society can not afford to spend hundreds of dollars on things that they don’t need but then on the other hand you have people that are spending thousands of dollars on things that they don’t need. This is a question of is consuming fair to some people? Being poor doesn’t mean that a person can’t consume things. They can consume things for shelters, food banks, standing on the corner or just being around other people. Rich people on the other hand consume multiple things; boats, houses, and even vacations. It all depends what you can afford to consume.

So in the end Is being a consumer good or bad? Well from my own experience I see it as a good thing. It is good because without consuming this world would be nothing. But there is a thing as to aggressive of a consumer these to me are those that buy things even though they do not have the money to spend. There are many types of consumers out there and in the end I see myself as a moderate consumer. Even though I do consume a lot I know what my limit is.

This is the original ad for the dove visual care body wash. This ad shows that women that use dove feel more comfortable in their own skin. they do not use models for their ads they use real everyday women to show that any women can feel beautiful.

I then take my own ad and make it to where I was happy before I used dove but after using it It just made me that more confident in my body. Black is a women’s best friend and hides a lot. This is why I am wearing a black tank top in the before picture because I am not to comfortable with my body. With the after picture I choose to be daring and wear a bright color that attracts attention to me to show that I am a new me. How women view themselves is the key concept to many feminine products. I would much rather have an ad that is about real women and not women that you only find in magazines. So here is my final ad it is simple but I think that it gets the point across.

This is the advertisement for a dove product called visible care. If you look at Doves advertisements you can see that in all of their advertisements they seem to focus on real women. They want women to feel comfortable in their own skin. I like the fact that they use real women of different body shapes and types in their advertisements. They focus on every age and race they are not bias when it comes to what makes a women beautiful. This dove product works to make your skim moisturized and look flawless.

Dove advertisements are appealing to many women because they do not focus on one type of women they focus on all types. They want to show that model size is not the only beautiful body type. Another thing that they do to attract women is not focus on a certain age. I love dove products for how they advertise their product. Since dove is a body product most of their advertisements have women that are not fully dressed. I think having these everyday women of many different body types not dressed completely gives you a sense of confidence. So this make women looking at the advertisement think that using this product will in time give them confidence and make them feel comfortable in their own skin more.

Dove takes women’s flaws that most women feel insecure about and find a way to even make the flaws seem beautiful. They do a beautiful job at all of their advertisements, they make every women every age every body type find beauty in themselves without even doing anything at all.

I see myself as a professional consumer. I think that most people in college are since we are buying our education. We spend so much money on school and most of the money we spend is not even really ours. Whenever I get money as much as I want to spend it I know that I should save it. But I must say when I see a cute pair of shoes I can not resist myself from getting them. Being a consumer in today’s world is a huge part of everyday life. Without consumers our world would be a whole different place. I think that changing what you consume would be a difficult task. We are so use to spending money that if you take  it away then we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves. The only good way to change how we consume would be to buy things from local places instead of places like Wal-mart that is a huge nation wide store. Maybe if we learned how to limit our spending to foreign countries then we could become a much better nation. Ever since I have moved to Pullman from my hometown I have spent all the money that I saved on food. Food is one of the things that you can’t stop buying even if you are broke. You need food to survive and there is no way that I could cut back on how much I consume.