Newsletter to Generation Bling

Newsletter (and Manifesto) of 'Generation Bling-Bling'

Bling-Bling' is the sound of a cash register running up a total of flashing name brand clothes and shoes. So we, the members of 'Generation Bling-Bling' have often been called a generation that defines itself solely though its conspicuous consumption of the 'right' clothes, music, shoes, and brightly colored cell phones and laptops. What one wears, buys, uses, and all the other products and labels one identifies one's self are what make up the general identity of 'Generation Bling-Bling.' All of these things are more important than what one does, who one's family is, or what one knows to our generation, it is alleged. We watch and consume advertising rather than make art. We go to the mall, not museums. We are of the moment, rather than of all time. (CNN, 2003)

But if this is true, why has the phrase Bling-Bling may recently have been added to the Oxford Dictionary? (Wayne, 2003) Will generation Bling-Bling read the dictionary? On our laptops, via the Internet we certainly will. We have come up with new ways of learning, new forms of street theater. And in this we are not so different from previous generations. Do not the names of the past generations of dandies, mods, and other fashionable young people still roll off the tongues of historians?

Moreover, there is an urban, Black, hip-hop ethos to our 'Generation Bling-Bling' that is racially democratic in a way that no other generation has manifested itself. We are a generation stripped of the cultural markers of traditional access to status and class, such as race, or using the correct manners. We are a generation that doesn't care who your parents were, what your daddy did and your mama wore to church. The status some one from our generation gleans through quick money and knowing the beat to the right music has a kind of rough democracy to it. Flash, dash, and showing what tribe you identify with when are on the stage of the street -- that is the true music of 'Generation Bling-Bling.'

Works Cited

Bling-Bling Added to the Oxford Dictionary." (2003). Retrieved on May 4, 2004 at http://www.southend.wayne.edu/days/2003/may/5152003/misc/bling/bling.html

CNN. "Freshman Know Bling-Bling, not Paul Newman." (September 3, 2003). Retrieved on May 4, 2004 at http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/09/03/sprj.sch.mindset.list.ap