Summary and Analysis of `Never Just Pictures`

The Ravages of Commercialism

I remembered catching a glimpse of the artist Pink 's music video Stupid Girl , where she criticized the icons of contemporary culture from Linday Lohan to Jessica Simpson , and how it drew a false image of what a woman should be . In one scene from the video , we see Pink 's character (probably mimicking Paris ) encountering her friend Nicole forcibly vomiting using a toothbrush . Paris-Pink saw what she was doing , commented that it was a great idea ' and followed suit

While Pink 's video made waves and earned

her an appearance in Oprah the problems of our present culture that she tried to parody continue to persist . And the video not merely lampoons the distorted imagery that mass media has to women , but also attacks the contradictions on the emphasis of body-beautiful . Bulimia has become a fashionable trend in Hollywood as a measure for weight control , and has gripped the teenage population . What was the origin of this trend of obsession for body-beautiful , to the point of anorexia

Susan Bordo , in her article , Never Just Pictures , drew disturbing images of two magazines touting heroin chic ' - models that are no more than skeletal frames - and gymnasts having delayed hormonal maturity due to the stress on their over-thin bodies . She showed how deeply this repugnance for fat ' had penetrated into the contemporary American culture : from children who saw fat as a disability , to the tabloid attacks of Alicia Silverstone for her being fat , to even the criticism of normal un-waif figures as unattractive

She gave two explanations for this phenomenon : in the consumer 's side the picture of models of beauty as death-like figures feeds on the consumer 's anxiety that they can never attain the same type of glamour or beauty . More deeply , the thinness and its association with death is a subconscious expression of freedom - freedom from need disappointment , and expectation . It is an internal desire to go back to a state beyond hunger and desire . From the side of industry , Bordo explained that the clothing industries see that emphasizing face over form would only benefit the cosmetics businesses , and would leave little profit to the clothing companies . So they feed on the obsession of thin by modeling imperfect faces , but thin body-beautiful ' physiques . The essay hits its mark in contemporary culture though Bordo wrote the article in the 90s , the body-beautiful continues to plague the average American even today . The trend , however , has since changed , and while Bordo is right that at one center of the obsession for thin is the desire to be free of desire , hunger and want , she fails to delve deeper into the industry-side of the problem . She stresses the obsession for thin as the obsession to regain control , but control from what ? What she gives glimpses of , but fails to explore deeply , is the consumer culture and what feeds it . Within the consumer culture are different Capitalistic forces working at cross-purposes

It begins with the desire to consume...