AP Language and Composition
Major Paper #7
A trend is any form of behavior that develops among a large population and is collectively followed with enthusiasm for some period. Trends come from everywhere and are spread through social media, colleagues and peers, and through television and movies. The relationship between trend-setters and their followers directly correlates with the relationship of a community to an individual.
A main reason that trends are followed is because people want to stay fashionable, attractive, or impressive. Another reason people follow trends is to fit into a social comfort zone to avoid feeling excluded. Each individual makes up the community, where the trend-setters set a precedent for new trends and styles. Trend-setters typically play key roles in influencing others, but the trend-setters are not always the high status figures. (Suzuki 2) Starting and following trends is a system, which attempts to balance and profitably integrate a complicated blend of original ideas, individual creativity and copying.
The trend setters draw on a wide array of influences from society, history and one another, making it virtually impossible to determine the originality of a certain style. (Hauge 13) Clearly, the relationship between trend-setters and their followers correspond with the relationship of the community to the individuals.
The relationship of trend-setters to their followers corresponds with the relationship of the community to the individual, because the trendsetters initiate regulations for the followers, like a community sets regulations for its individuals. (Cooley) It has been studied that it is the upper classes that launch fashion, are copied by the lower classes; wanting to continually differentiate themselves from the lower classes, the upper classes initiate changes in fashions and the cycle continues. Trends start at the top of social hierarchies, and diffuse to places lower in...