Like the comic-book heroes we admired as children, we have specific costumes for each self.

With the explosion of manufactured identities via brand names and fashion trends, a personality can be bought. And worn.

These identities are obvious and don’t warrant much explanation. Someone who shops at Hollister, Abercrombie & Fitch and GAP is considered status quo fashion-savvy by their kind.

A person who intentionally builds a wardrobe from the good will of Goodwill, and avoids supposed trends, calls the aforementioned shopper a “conformist.” The list of consumer identities stretches as far as the collective fashion designers’ imaginations.

In an era built on advertising, is it possible to be an individual? Attempting to be a non-conformist through the means of fashion may be contradictory. Instead of being unique, that person is lumped in a category — a non-conformist — the same as the trend worshipers. Stereotypes are slapped onto them all the same.

Categorizations exist as an attempt to simplify the complexities of human existence. But perhaps, this is the reason behind the growth of Branded America. It reflects our laziness, our unwillingness to recognize ourselves and others as multi-dimensional. Opposed to speaking with someone and letting them learn about ourselves by communication, we simply scan them up and down and arrive to simplistic conclusions.

Our closets are filled with alter egos, pseudo identities we can put on for different occasions. Like the comic-book heroes we admired as children, we have specific costumes for each self: the professional self, the nightlife self, the casual self and the intellectual self (this one more uncommon) among others. Perhaps our true self is not one, but the culmination of these multiples. And maybe all of these are desperate attempts to cover the real one — if there is such a thing.

Clothes, like intentions, can be taken on and off as we see fit. They’re only stripped away completely when we trust another person enough to let them see the permanent self — the naked body.

This one, ultimately unavoidable, vulnerable and impossible to hide — no wonder we are so bashful. Must be hard dealing with that which we cannot cover up completely. But even our bodies aren’t immune to self-image masking.

The art of tattooing — held as sacred in cultures such as Hindu — displays our willingness of to have a permanent outward expression of the self. A perennial mask? When considering a tattoo, the most interesting question is where to put it. Exhibitionist thoughts run rampant. The location of a tattoo is very PR-sensitive.

Place it in the open and a person may be labeled carefree or reckless. Choosing to hide it may make them more conservative. Although, the mere existence of a tattoo on someone’s body brands them as risqué.

His tag is slowly being removed with the growing trend of women putting tattoos on the small of their back. With so many people donning tattoos, it seems that the body has increasingly become banal to permanent masking.

The magnitude of the word “permanent” ceases to halt the pursuit of trends. In the future, will our last words to our loved ones be our branded corpses as they stride past an open casket?

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