Chomsky is brilliant. I’m going to add one thing to his statement. The genius of modern marketing is that not only has it succeeded it getting us to vote against our own best interests, but it has also succeeded in getting us - and women in particular - to strive after an unattainable physical ideal.
The sad fact of consumer society is that it’s driven in part by creating insecurities. It elevates a single physical ideal of beauty that, let’s face it, uses 16 year olds with extraordinary height and metabolism (and a bit of coke and bulimia) to sell a physical ideal. By contrast, the average woman in the United States is 5’4”, 145 pounds, a size 10 on top and a size 12 on the bottom.
The mainstream media has succeeded in getting most women to hate their own bodies - and has convinced them that the beauty industry has the answers for them. As Chomsky said, feel helpless and just consume more goods.
Wouldn’t it just be easier to show different women’s body types in the media? Why shouldn’t the women’s magazines features models who reflect average heights and weights - while still providing an aspirational image? Why couldn’t a size 8 or 10 or 12 woman be a romantic love interest in a story where her weight never becomes a focal point of the storyline. She’s simply a beautiful woman. (I mean, what if Rapunzel had been dreadlocks, or if Cinderella were only 5 foot 2, or …? Yeah, you get the picture.)
As simple an idea as that would be seen as radical by the media because it would upturn one of their main tenets. It seems that they believe that women and men shouldn’t see what actual bodies look like, but should instead strive for an unattainable, airbrushed ideal. Keep people feeling insecure. Keep them feeling that they don’t recognize themselves in the images in magazines and on television. Keep them wanting to buy more goods to feel better about themselves.
A better world is possible, where we don’t feel the need to create emotional insecurities in order to sell more goods and report better quarterly revenues. This is why we are protesting.
