The proceeding video clip is a commercial for Victoria’s Secrets. Throughout the video, word’s continue to pop up on the screen questioning “What is Sexy?” According to this video, sexy is the stereotypical caucasian women. All three models are white (but very tan) and the hegemonic of femininity. Their bodies are thin and their skin is smooth. They are tall and the only fat on their bodies are in desired locations. They have defined butt’s and large breasts. All three models have delicate facial features and long elegant hair. Their eye make up is done to emphasize the seductive look they give the camera.
Each model in the proceeding advertisement represent the hegemony of a “fat free body.” They are America’s representation of “What is Sexy,” and they are all thin. Other then the butt and breast area’s, none of the models have an ounce of body fat on them. Their wastes and thigh’s are small. Their stomach’s are flatter then some girls who have not even hit puberty! This advertisement is indirectly “pro ana” because, it is selling “What is Sexy” and showing images of women without an ounce of fat on them. According to this advertisement, you are not sexy if you do not look like these women.
I believe that pop culture and the media play a large part in dictating how we want to be viewed. According to the media you have to be a size 0 waste and a size 34 D breasts to be sexy. I believe many people manipulate their body to fit the hegemonic stereotype. Weather it is through over regulating food intake, or by cosmetic surgical procedures, women constantly feel the need to keep up with what they see in the media. Maintaing an “ideal” body has overtaken the time an energy of many women and adolescent girls in America.
“Third wave feminists’ like those of pro-anorexics, illustrate the dilemma’s that today young women face in negotiating culture’s stifling on hegemonic feminine beauty ideals while trying to enact agency through the negotiations of their identities” (Dias, 32). As I said before, I believe that media has a strong bearing on how women see themselves. I agree with Dias in that anorexia can be a dangerous disease to acquire, because so many people in today’s society strive to be as thin as they can. Young women try to find themselves, they want to be accepted. But accepted by who? Their friends? Family? Community? Maybe.
“(Western) culture… urges girls to adopt to a false self, to bury their real selves, to be come ‘feminine.’ which means to be nice, and kind, and sweet, to compete with other girls for the attention of boys, and to value romantic relationships with boys above all” (Jean Kilbourne). Girls want to be accepted by the opposite sex. Several base their self worth off of the quality and quantity of guys they can get attention from. Many girls will sacrifice their self worth to receive admiration from a male. The yearning to receive acceptance from the male species reinforces girls desire to adapt to the hegemonic ideal. Women, predominately adolescent girls watch boys fawn over hegemonic icons (like the models in the advertisement). Girls begin to strive to obtain the same look as those models, because that is the only way they will feel accepted or pretty.
What men and adolescent girls fail to realize is the hegemonic ideal in the media is not always a reality. “…the fact that the proceeding months issue of People had been completely devoted to airbrush coverage of the “fifty most beautiful people in the world” (Bordo, 457). It becomes a simulacra. Girls are starving themselves to reach an ideal image so they are accepted by the opposite sex. However, the ideal image was never a reality in the first place.
Bibliography
Bordo, Susan. Twilight Zones: the hidden life of cultural images from Plato to O.J. University of California Press, 1997.
Dias, Karen. “The Ana Sanctuary: Women’s Pro Anorexia Narratives in Cyberspace “. Journal of International Women’s Studies Vol. #2 April 2003: 31-45.
