Shopping for “we-ness”

Can you think of a time that you purchased something because you wanted to fit in with a group? How did this item convey your membership in a group? Did this purchase end up satisfying your desire for belonging?

In high school, i was considered apart of the drama crowd. I did theater for all four years at my high school and i never really did anything else. Part of the reason why i stayed in my theater class was because all of my friends were in there with me. In our theater class we weren’t really just a class, we were also like a family as well. we have seen each other at our best moments and also at our worst. We would spend many hours together after school working on school plays that we would perform and this got all of us really close to one another. Even if we weren’t working on shows we would still stay after school just to hang out. Every Wednesday we would wear an orange shirt with the departments logo on it too represent the club that we were apart of. At the beginning of each year, our drama teacher would ask the students if they wanted to buy a shirt to represent the department. our teacher would buy the shirts online and the website would usually charge $12. The first year i was in the class i didn’t really know anyone well. I wanted to be more involved in the department so i saw this as an opportunity to fit in more with the group. So i gave my teacher the money even though we all weren’t required to buy the shirt. When the shirts came in, we all wore the shirts every Wednesday and it made me feel like i was apart of a second family. Because i bought the shirt it showed that i was more serious about being apart of this department and putting in the work. I eventually got closer to everyone and i got more involved in the work that we did and being apart of that group was one of the best times in my life.