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Jul 28, 2004

"If we don't change the direction we're going, we're likely to end up where we're headed.
" --Chinese Proverb

Branded

A high schooler wears a Pepsi shirt to school on Coca-Cola day and gets suspended for insurrection. A sixth-grader covets a $500 Kate Spade bag, only to toss it a year later. A family drops $1,400 a day to take an SAT tutor along on vacation. These dispatches from a label-obsessed adolescence come courtesy of Alissa Quart, whose new book, Branded, informs readers that youthful consumerism doesn't end at the mall but extends to "self-branding," as teens burnish their exterior selves and extracurricular credentials in pursuit of social success and admission to a name-brand college.