During a few of our class periods this year, my critical thinking class and I were allowed to watch the documentary, "Merchants of Cool". This documentary highlighted the different techniques used in marketing campaigns in the early twenty-first century as well as different attitudes towards them. One topic that I found interesting in this documentary was the ideas of the "Mook" and "Midriff ".In order to get the idea of the perfect target audience, many companies still today create one single individual. This person represents that company's entire target audience. In the case of the companies displayed in "Merchants of Cool" Their entire target audience (the teen population) could be virtually crammed into two people. These people were named The "Mook" and "Midriff". The "Mook" was the male teen. he was a large, hairy, immature boy with a massive need for sexual interactions and a large amount of disrespect for women, hiding a jumble of insecurities and discomfort within himself. This character did not care about anything his parents or teachers said to him, and existed only to have sex with women whom he sees merely as sexual, disposable, objects. The "Midriff" on the other hand, gives the "Mook" exactly what he wants. She is a shallow girl caring only about her appearance, and undermining those of others. She is overly sexual and has no desire for self respect, or respect from others. Though fully inaccurate, these were the companies' views on teens of the decade. However they were not completely off base. their idea was that teens were aspiring to be similar to these characters. That would explain the amount of insecurities they feel while trying to become these crude figures. This is all fed by the advertising storm that tells these kids that this is what they must become in order to gain self acceptance, and the acceptance of others. This was a very interesting documentary that I would definitely recommend to anyone interesting in marketing techniques, and I believe would be beneficial for other teens to see they way the media tricks and deceives them as a whole.