As my readers age, they seem to be more and more influenced by the culture of merchandising. Most of our culture is based on convincing people they have a heretofore unseen need - one that a new product fulfills beautifully. These needs are created, usually, by playing upon our innate fears. Girls under the stress of market-structured consciousness seem to turn inward on themselves. Eating disorders are problems for girls.
Boys seem, by and large, to become aggressive.
Not yet mature, their anger seems to grow and fester and explode as it did with the boys in all of the contemporary gun-shooting sprees in schools. The boys who wanted pizza in jail after mowing down their classmates demonstrate to us that their anger was much more real to them than the finality of the outcome. The irony's not lost on me. It will always be, from the moment it leaves the presses, one lame step behind. Building brand loyalty and credit debt cannot begin soon enough, I suppose.