Todays class discussion was very interesting and we discussed an industry that is rather lucrative in the United States. As most of our manufacturing jobs have been outsourced it has become necessary for us to breed some sort of economy within our borders. We have become a nation of consumers and the things we offer the world are our service economy, knowledge economy and beauty industry. Susan Bordo explores a subject that makes for interesting discussion. Essentially she analyzes how in our western society "the pursuit of beauty" has become a "normalizing discipline". The concept of beauty is an elusive one, like big foot many people pursue it thinking they have an idea of what it looks like but in reality not knowing exactly what it is. Bordo explores how in the west the "beauty industry" is anything but beautiful.
It appears that the main objective of this industry is to breed discontent and insecurity amongst women. I mean how else are you going to create a market for the infinite amounts of products in existence today? Our society has become enamored with the idea that we can recreate ourselves into a sleeker better version. We are bombarded with simulacra that screams at us "You should not be content with how you look, what's wrong with you? This right here is what you should be striving for!" We are pushed on the quest to obtain the "perfect body" at whatever costs and yet it is done so effectively that we do not even know we are being pigeon holed into this vicious cycle. In all reality we believe that we are freely making the choices before us. If someone wants to go under the knife to rearrange thier face it's thier perogative to do so and if you have a problem with that then well, it's none of your business anyway. Bordo points out the irony of a culture that is fed this overwhelming desire to "fix" themselves and achieve perfection and yet we do it so blindly and willingly. We think we have more freedom then ever and can assert that freedom over our own bodies by nipping and tucking and pursuing our perfect body. When in reality that pursuit and that perfect body are being dictated to us constantly. As Bordo phrases it "We are surrounded by homogenizing and normalizing images- images whose content is far from arbitrary, but instead suffused with the dominace of gendered, racial, class, and other cultural iconography". Bordo drives home the point that we have become so inured to the messages that we are constatnly bombarded witht that we actually believe with great conviction that the choices we make to look a certain way and follow a certain trend are not pushed upon us but self inflicted. Those in the beauty industry do not have to convince us that we are not good enough the way we were born the have already succeded in internalizing that within us. All they have to do is show us the solution, that one product that will take us to the cusp of perfection (or close enough anyway) and we're sold. The ugly truth is that the beauty industry is one that perpetuates and inculcates a dissatisfaction with ones bodily image and as a consumerist nation we buy into it hook, line and sinker. The fact that there is a "booming" industry that encourages and profits off of people's insecurities is utterly repulsive and infuriating!
Body Dismorhpia is an illness perpetuated by our "plastic" society
What is Body Dysmorphic Disorder? "BDD is “vastly underrecognized and vastly underdiagnosed,” stresses Dr. Phillips. The DSM-IV defines BDD as a preoccupation (not better accounted for by another mental disorder) with an imagined or slight defect in appearance causing clinically significant distress or impairment in functioning (often social and occupational)." quoted from
www.psychweekly.com/
Bordo, Susan.
Material Girl: The Effacements of Postmodern Culture.
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