Advertising in the mid 1990s seems to be drawing increasingly upon stylized imagery of the working class and production as a means of hailing "hip" youthful consumers. Initially, the appearance of self-consciously working class imagery may seem ironic, insofar as as advertisers have sought to deny or repress the existence of the working class for most of the 20th century. After all, as authors such as Ewen and Marchand have observed, advertising has long promoted the appearance of a classless consumer society, a society in which one could overcome the injustices and alienation of the workplace through intelligent consumption of the appropriate commodities. Commodities, we have learned, via the channel of advertising, can erase the estrangement of alienated labor, and in its stead offer the accoutrements of a petit-bourgeoise lifestyle.

Why then have advertisers recently begun to resurrect the working class in what seem self-contradictory images that we might call glam trash?

Thesis #1: advertisers are desperately trying to appeal to desires for a hip new subcultural edge. In effect, we might call this an effort to turn the tacky side of our mass cultural history into a subculture based on aesthetic taste and sensibilities: paradoxically, the effort is to turn the junk heap of mass culture into a subcultural preference.