November 11, 2008

Are trends in NYT coverage real?

Instead of looking at news coverage to detect trends, shouldn't I look instead at sales data or something? Maybe -- that's one way to measure popularity. But maybe popularity should be measured based on how talked about it is, in which case news coverage works fine. Then again, people may talk more about stuff that sells like hotcakes, and it doesn't matter.

In this graph we detect three new trends in women's clothing:



Skinny jeans and ballet flats just recently exploded in popularity, and the news coverage reflects that. I looked for sales data but could only find an industry report that would cost too much to buy. It surely shows something like the above. As for boy shorts, I reviewed a few news articles on the decline of slutty styles, and the sales data show that boy shorts became popular in 2004 and remain so today. Sure enough, that's just what the news coverage tells us.

So, I'm not too worried about using news coverage as opposed to sales data.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous11/11/08, 9:51 AM

    An increasingly common expression these days is "mom jeans." From what I gather, women dread few things as much as having their jeans look like mom jeans. Except ... there's also a popular, expensive brand of jeans called Not Your Daughter's Jeans, so apparently some women take pride in wearing mom jeans.

    Isn't women's fashion amusing?

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  2. Anonymous11/11/08, 3:34 PM

    "mom jeans" basically means "mom's flabby fat ass".

    the difference between mothers and their teenage daughters walking around the mall is astounding. and depressing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous11/12/08, 2:10 PM

    dont forget the peterbelly that so many "spoon" women have....


    Lots of the J.Lo girls, flared hips and bubble butts........get that peterbelly going on and fufill the prophecy of mom jeans to the letter....

    Makes a grown man want to cry: "why cannot the weaker sex do those fifty cruches a morning and hit that treadmill for 20 minutes whilst she makes our breakfast, isn't that 'uncaring' of her"...Goddammed feminism. Victorian ladies would have done this for us, lest we have 'rightful' affairs.

    ReplyDelete

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