Reaction to "The Merchants of Cool"

The Frontline video “The Merchants of Cool” really captured my attention. I don’t think I was really surprised by anything covered in the video but it did make me really sad to see how consumed with media teens really are today. I have heard of kids being paid by advertisers to explain what they like. This is such a strange concept because really it does result in companies selling teens back their own ideas and likes. One thing that really scared me was that companies actually pay kids to throw parties for their friends and give out free merchandise to promote the company’s product. I can see how this is appealing to teens because not only are they getting paid to throw a party they would probably have anyways but they also get free stuff from the advertisers. At the same time I feel like they should be smart enough to realize that these giant corporations, in order to gain maximum profit, are just using them. Maybe they are aware of this and they, like the advertisers, just care about making money and not about their values as individuals. This I also find extremely sad.
The scene about the young girl that wants to be a model was very disturbing to me. I have always found it quite strange how young models are recruited. For the most part models are used as sex objects to display cloths in a beautiful or sexy way and for such young girls to have that role is absolutely wrong. They are too young to be around the kind of people involved in the modeling industry. They are also way too young to be presented as sex objects.