Cultural Paradox: Consumerism vs. the "Perfect" Bod

Contemporary American society has become enthralled with the idea of the "perfect" body. Norms for women dictate a slender, yet toned, ideal body; however, this ideal (along with so many others) is unnatural, and typically unattainable. The "slender amazon" approach to body perfection has been effectively marketed so that a majority of American women find themselves trying to meet standards which are set up not by consumers themselves, but by large corporations trying to make money. This fitness mind-game leaves room for a cultural paradox, which grows more widespread everyday, and can be defined in its simplest terms as the clash between food consumption and thin ideals.


American markets for food have been geared toward easy accessibility, low prices, and quick meals. However, as a social endeavor, food consumption is advertised similar to many other markets, namely as a way to achieve happiness and satisfaction. As Professor Sut Jhally expresses in his article Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture, "Thus advertising promotes images of what the audience conceives as 'the good life'... The marketplace cannot directly offer the real thing, but it can offer vision of it connected with the purchase of products" (Dines and Humez 251). So in this respect, fast food corporations attempt to reach out to its consumers by displaying images of popular celebrities such as Paris Hilton or Britney Spears chowing down on the latest burger or gulping down their soda of choice (as seen above). Food advertisement has become a major issue of debate in recent days, mostly because of the nations growing health concerns and the fear that Americans have consistently failed to critically examine that which they consume. Yet, the discrepancies between what we are told to eat and what we are shown through images about the "perfect" body are far grander in comparison to recent concerns about healthy lifestyles.


The "perfect bod" is described to women in America not through some secret manual, but by the images and visual ideology that surround us in our day to day lives. We watch stick thin models and toned celebrities parade around in magazines and on television, only to be followed by reality shows, which, in some miraculous way, find all the "real" skinny women to keep up the illusion that this body ideal is attainable. In a shocking turn of events, these images are succeeded by commercials of skinny models eating their "product of choice." The commercials' promise of celebrity status and slender body because of a product is far fetched at best, and just plain deceitful at worst. When real people eat fast food consistently, they gain weight. However, thanks to capitalism, we have an increasingly wide range of products and procedures to aid us in getting thin again. Professor and sociologist Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber explains in her book, The Cult of Thinness, "Along with cheap and increasingly abundant food, we have a range of products (largely food- and drug- based) that promise we can lose weight quickly" (24). Products such as the ones described by Hesse-Biber can be seen in the collage under the section entitled "Buy&Fix." Often times, large corporations that own multiple companies are raking in wide profits because they can sell both the food and the weight solution. The vicious cycle of food consumption along with advertisements, thin ideology, and the selling of "solution" based weight products define and exacerbate the cultural paradox illustrated above.

Works Cited

Hesse-Biber, Sharlene Nagy. The Cult of Thinness. 2nd Ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Jhally, Sut. "Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture." 1999. Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003. 249-257.