In media-hungry America, your life is a broadcast.

Most of the clothes worn here are secondhand. Scrubbed spotless and clean, but still secondhand. Yesterday I did a double-take at a young girl wearing an American Eagle shirt, and t-shirts with corny wisecracks like "Now you've wasted two minutes of your life reading this stupid t-shirt," seem strangely out of place.

Follow these clothes back to their source. Not in the industrial country they were probably manufactured in, but America, where they hung row upon row in a building where shop after shop sells different products to entice the pocketbook. Here is where they really matter, where a little eagle embroidered on a pocket or screen-printed words are looked at critically, a symbol of status and the individual's personality.

Now you have a chance to give your society something different to examine for a change.