612 Part
-Mllinttlinino Race,
and Gender Hierarchies: Reproducing
neutralizes these competitive feelings by inviting 11S to see mirrored in the face of his
'lhr""lnv "Polo man': the features of an animal prized for its physical endowments.
white people acknowledge a particular strength in a black colleague,
sports figure, politician, or entertainer but dilute their recognition with the same
kind of ambivalence implicit in the Lauren ad. In a study of the racial attitudes
sports reporters, for example, Boston Globe writer Derek Jackson analyzed the cov­
erage of five National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball games
Football League play-off games during a single season. More
of the adjectives used to describe white football players referred to their
two-thirds of the adjectives used for black players
in basketball, the ratio was 63 percent brains for white
for black
people have been slow to
ishment not because African Americans don't excel but be­
cause such rewards declare that a black person may, in fact, be more talented,
more intelligent, or n{ore beautiful than his white peers. One
look no
than the film industry to see white people's indifference to black people's
African Americans buy movie tickets in the
up 12 percent of the population but 25' percent
people in Hollywood rarely achieve crossover superstar status, or are thought
capable of carrying a movie, or receive such markers of success as Academy Award
nominations. The 1997, Oscars were a case in point: all twenty acting nominees
were white and a numb~ of their performances were less than outstanding; over­
looked were the extraordinary and critically acclaimed work of black actors
HounstlU in Amistad; Samuel L. Jackson, Debbi Morgan, and Lynn
and Pam Grier in Jackie Brown. The argument, ad­
critics, that these films were weak and thus placed
actors at a disadvantage for Oscar nominations is specious: Eve's Bayou was
critics (though the film apparently did not reach white audiences)
Hounsou's white co-stars, Robert Forster and Anthony Hopkins, were
In the end, most black men in Hollywood -from' Denzel Washington
Earl Jones-remain character actors: "In other words, they arc safe," ob­
in The New York Times on the
industry. "They may
doing some
most riveting work in film ... but none is breaking the sexual taboos
black man from becoming a high-wattage staL"
Mainstream American cultnre's avoidance of black talent and excellence sug­
one of the greatest deficiencies of whiteness: its inability to celebrate and learn
the strengths and accomplishments of black people, Too often, white people
by the rules ofself-protection, competitiveness, and self-aggrandizement- rules
tell us that black men may be no more handsome or intelligent than
brothers
'~
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f/il RA.~
en
-AM I
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THIN ENOUGH
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YET?
Sharlene Hesse-Biber
"Ever sinee I was ten years old, I was Just a very vain person. I always wanted to
be the thillllest, the prettiest. 'Cause I thought, if llook like this, then I'm
to have so many boyfriends, and guys arc going to be so in love with me, and I'll
be taken care of for the rest of my life. I'll never have to work, you know?"
COLLEGE SENIOR
What's Wrong with This Picture?
Pretty, vivacious, and walked into off her thin, 5-ft frame; her black cowboy boots and earrings com­
pleted a presentation that said, "Look at me!"
The perfect picture had a serious price, Delia "problem." She is bulimic, In secret, she regularly then forces herself to vomit It has become a n"\l!Mh, to break because it so efficiently maintains being thin is everything. "I mean, how many bumper say 'No Fat
you know? Cuys don't like
I guess because it
them
bigger and, you
who looks pretty. Pretty to
me is you have to be
good facial features. It's both,
affirmation of
guys look at me when I go into a bar.
many guys
my boyfriend thinks about me."
Delia's Story
Delia is the eldest child, a successful dentist and her mother
fought a lot when she was young-her ramer was an
divorced. According to Delia, both parents doted on
Her father is
horne. They
they eventu­
From Am 1 Thin Enough Yet? The Cult ofThinl1ess and the Commercialization of Identity Copyright
© 19% by Oxford University Press, Inc. Used by permission of Oxford University Press. Inc.
613
614 Part
Race, Class, and Gender Hierarchies: Reproducing "Reality"
"I've never been deprived of anything in my entire
because I've never felt any pressure from my
say, 'Whatever you want to do, if you want to go to l.JUIUIJ<::,
go to law school, if you don't want to do anything ...
just be happy.' No pressure."
He was unconcerned about her weight, she
but emphasized how impor­
tant it was to be pretty. Delia quickly noticed this message everywhere, especially
the media.
by Glamour magazine and Vogue and all that, because
a line of work r want to get into. I'm looking at all these beautifuJ'women. They're
thin. I want to b~' just as bcautiful. r want to be iust as thin. Because that is what
guys like."
When I asked what her mother wanted for her, she recited, "To be nice
pretty and sweet and thin and popular and smart and successful and have every­
thing thai I could ever want and just to be happy." "Sweet and pretty and thin"
meant that from the age of ten she was enrolled in a health club. and learned to
count calories. Her mom, who at 45 is
tions on how to eat.
eat small amounts. Eat a thousand calories a day; don't overeat.' My
'You're fat.' But one time, 1 went on a camping trip
and 1 gained fom pounds and she said, 'You've got to lose
'. I mean, she
watched what I ate. Like if I was going to get a piece of cake she would be, 'Don't
eat Ihat.""
'
At age 13 she started her secret bingeing and vomiting. "When 1 first threw up
well, iJ's so easy," she told me. "I can eat and not get the calories and
not gain weight. And I was modeling atthe time, and I wanted to look like the
in the magazines."
Delia's preoccupation with thinness intensified when she entered
She wanted to be a cheerleader, and she was tiny enough to make it. "When I was
sixteen I just got into this image thing, like tiny, thin ... 1 started working out
more. 1 was Joe Healthy Thin Exercise Queen and I'd just fight eating because I
was working out all the time, you know? And so I'm going to aer6bics two or three
times a
sometimes, eating only salad and a bagel, and like, no fat. I jllst got
up in this circle."
College in New England brought a new set of social pressures. She couldn't
because of the cold. She hated the school gym,
her freshman year. Her greatest strcss at college
'The most stressful thing for me is whether I'm
to
" she told me, "more than
year Delia became a cheerleader again. "Going. in, I know I
weighed like 93 or 94 pounds, which to me was this enormous hang-up, because
1'd never weighed more than 90 pounds in my entire life. And I was really freaked
out. I knew people were going to be looking at me in the ('rowel ::mrll'm like. I've
4 Hesse·Biber I/lm I Thin
Yet? 615
got to lose this weight. So 1 would just nol eat, work out all the time. 1loved
on the squad, but my partner was a real jerk. He would never work oul, and
we would do lifts he'd always
'Delia, go run. Go run, you're too
' I hadn't
eating that day. I had already run seven or eight miles and he
me to run
again. And 1 was surrounded by girls who were all so concerned about their
and it was iust rcally this horrible situation."
life also confirmed another issuc
Delia, a cultural message frolI!
her earliest childhood. She did not want to be a breadwinner. She put it this
way, "When 1 was eight I wanted to be President of the United States. As I
older and got to
vice presidents, but
much easier would it be ror me to
make a lot of money and just be
thc millionaire." ...
Economic and career achievement is a
course, men can also exhibit some self-destructive bchaviors in pursuit of this
success, such as workaholism or substance abuse.) Delia's upbringing and environ­
ment defined success for her in a different way. She was not interested in having
a job that earned $150,000 a year, but in marrying the guy who did. She Icarned
to use any tool she could to stay thin, to look good, and to have a shot at her
No wonder she was reluctant to give up her behavior. She was terrified
ing Ihe important benefits of her membership in the Cult of Thinness.
knew
she was hurting psychologically and physically, but, in the final an<llysis, being
counted among "the chosen" justified the
"God forbid anybody else gets stuck in this trap, But I'm already there, and I
don't really see myself getting oul, because I'm jllst so obsessed with how 1 look. 1
gel personal satisfaction
looking thin, and receiving attention
guys."
I told Delia about women who have suggested other ways of COpillg with weight
issues. There are even those who advocate fat liberation, or who suggest that fat is
beautiful. She was emphatic about these solutions.
eThey live in la-la land ... 1 can hold onto my boyfriend because hc
need to look anywhere else. The bottom
is that appearance counts.
And you can sit here and go, 'I feel good about myself twenty pounds heavier,' but
is the guy IToim! to date?"
A Woman's Sense of Worth
Delia's devotion to the rituals of beauty work involved a great deal of
ergy. She weighed herself
times a day. She paid attention to
sne put III
when she had too lTluch, she knew she ITlllst
rid of it. She had to
act and look a certain way, buy the right clothes, the
makeup. She
616 Part
4 Hesse-Biber / Am I Thin Enough Yet? 617
Race, Class, and Gender Hierarchies: Reproducing "Reality"
watched out for other women who might jeopardize her chances as they vied for
the rewards of the system.
A woman's sense of worth in our culturc is still greatly determined by her abil­
ity to attract a man. Social status is largely a function of income and occupation.
l
Women's access to these resources is gencrally indirect, through marriage. Even
a woman with a successful and lucrative career may
that her success comes at
the expense of her femininity....
Cultural messages on the rewards of thinness
are everyvv·hcre. Most women accept are," even though these standards may undermine self-image, selt-esteem, or ical well-being. Weight concerns or even obsessions are so common among women and girls that they escape notice. Dieting is not even among women who are not overweight. But from an Profiting from Women's Bodies
Because women feel their bodies fail the beauty tcst, American industry benefits
nurturing feminine insecurities. Ruling patriarchal inter­
ests, hke corporate culture, the traditional family, the government, and the media
also bCllefit. If women are so busy trying to control their bodies through dieting, ex­
cessive exercise, and self-improvement activities, they lose control over other impor­
3
tant aspects of selfhood tbat might challenge the status quo. In the words of one
critic, "A sccretary who bench-presses 150 pounds is still stuck in a dead-end job; a
housewife who rims the marathon is still financially dependent on her 1 . L _ . . l "4
In creating women's concept of the ideal body image, the more influcntial than the mirror reflecting peer shown that women overestimate how thin a body sire. In a recent study using body silhouettes, college asked to indicate an ideal female to the same-sex The advertisement showed me exactly what I should be, not what I was. I wasn't
tall, I wasn't blonde, I wasn't skinny. I didn't have thin thighs, I didn't have a flat
stomach. I am short, have brown curly
short
did offer me solutions
like dying my hair or a workout or the use of this cream to take away cellulite....
the
Not everyone is taken
she saw in the "r!vprt;<;nn
women's magazines.
are all
you how to dress, how
to look, what to wear, the type of clothes.
I think
are just ridiculous....
You can take the most gorgeous model and make her look terrible. Just like you can
take a person who is not that way and make them look beautiful. You can lise airand many other techniques. These are not really people. They arc con­
people.
Computer-enhanced photography has advanced far beyond the techniques that
merely airbrushed blemishes, added highlights to hair, and lengthened the legs
with a camera angle. The September 1994 issue of Mirabella featured as a cover
model "an extraordinary image of great American beauty." According to the mag­
azine, the photographer "hints that she's something of a split
wasn't easy getting her together. Maybc her identitv has
microchip floating through space, next to
beauty is a combination of f>\f>n1pnrc
and
among women. If we examine the American food and weight
we'll understand how their
and advertising camthe American woman's dissatisfaction with her looks.
"
'J
V
The American Food Industry:
Fatten Up and Slim Down
Advertisements and Beauty Advice: Buy, Try, Comply and patriarchy most often use the media to project the culturally desir­
body to women. These images arc everywhere-on TV, in the movies, on bill­
boards, in print. Women's magazines, with their glossy pages of advertising,
advertorials, and beauty advice, hold up an especially devious mirror. They offer
to women, while presenting a standard nearly impossible to attain. As one
college student named Nancy noted in our interviews,
sup­
_
an ever leaner
with tension and ambivalence.
618 Part
4 Hesse-Biber I Am I Thin Enough Yet? 619
and Gender Hierarchies; Reproducing
Race,
Brett Silverstein explains that the food industry, like all in­
dustries under capitalism, is always striving to maximize profit, growth, can centra­
and control. It does so at the expense of the food consumer. "[It] promotes so that consumers will have more than three opportunities a day to con­
sume food, replaces free water with purchased soft drinks, presents desserts as the llltimate reward, and bombards women and childrcn with artificially glamorized processed foods."6
are an especially profitable segment of the business ....
the food industry came up with a brilliant marketing concept, and in­
91 new, "lite" fat-reduced or caloric-reduced foods.? The success of lite
has been phenomenal. The consumer equated "lightness" with health.
to equate it with their own expenses-lite foods have
The food industry
lower production costs than "regular" lines, but they are often priced higher. ...
The Diet and Weight-Loss Industry:
We'll Show You the Way
. . Increasingly, American women are told that they can have the right body if
consume morc and more products. cl11ey can change the color of their
tillted contacts, they can have a tanned skin by using self-tanning lotion.
buy cellulite control cream, spot firming cream, evcn contouring shower
firming
to
rid of ~e "dimpled" look. One diet
on the market is sup­
posed to
thc
cure.» It is called Anorex-eck, evoking the sometimes fatal eating
disorder known as anorexia. It promises to "eliminate the cause of fat formation ...
so quickly and so effectively you will know from the very start why it has taken more
than 15 years of rescarch ... to finally bring you. . an ultimate cure for fat!"8 ...
There are currently morc than 17,000 different diet plans, oroducts. and Drm'rarrJ:>
from which to choose. 9 Typically, these plans are geared to
are loaded with promises of quick
loss and delicious low-calorie
thesc programs producc
products that thcy encourage the dieter
to buy. The Jenny Craig member receivcs a set of pre-packagcd
that cost
about $10 per day. (It allows for some outside
as well.) Some diet companies
are concern cd with the problem of gaining weight back and hav~ developed "main­
and their long-term
tenance" products. Maintenance programs are often
outcomes arc unproven. Vv11at can be proven are bigger profits and longer depen­
dence on their programs.
The Dis-eased Body: Medicalizing Women s Body Issues 1
The therapeutic and medical communities tend to weight urohlems as a disease. lO In this view, behavior sive eating is often called an addiction. An addiction model of behavior assumes that
the cause and the cure of the problem lies within
individual. Such an
fails to examine the larger mirrors that society holds up to the
a disease model lessens the burden of guilt and shame and may frcc
to work on change, it also has political significancc. According to feminist
Bette S. Tallen, 'The reality of opprcssion is replaccd with tl~e metaphor
the problem's cause within a biological realm, away from
J2 Issues such as poverty, lack of education and opportull
inequality remain unexamined. More important, a diseasc­
of addiction, involving treatment by the health care system, results
the medical-industrial complex. Addiction, Tallcn notes, suggests a
that is personal- "Get treatment!" - rather than political- "Smash patri­
archy!" It replaccs the feminist view, that the personal is political, with the attitude
of "therapism," that
"political is personal."B One of Betle Tallen's students told
her that she had learncd a lot from reading Women Who Love Too Much after hcr
divorce from a man who had beaten her. Tallcn
that "perhaps the best
book to read would not be about women who love too much but about men who
hit too much."l4
idea that overweight is a disease, and overeating represents an addiction,
reinforces the dis-ease that American women
about their
'lhe capital­
ist and patriarchal mirror held before them SUDOorts and maintains their obsession
insecurity....
Women continue to follow the <bnrhrrl<
body because of
they are rewardc rl
ber of ;m"m"~'"
NOTES
1. Pauline B. Bart, "Emotional and Social Status of the Older v\Toman," in No
Young; The Older Woman in America. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference on
ed. Pauline Bart et a1. (Ann Arbor; University of Michii!3n Institute of
pp. 3-21; Daniel Bar-Tal and Leonard Saxe,
Sex-Role Stereotyping," Sex Roles Z (1976): 123-1
American Gouples; Money, Work and Sex
Mobility," American
Glen H. Elder, "ApDearanee and Education
Review 34 (1969): 5
Stalldmd of Af:inf:." Saturday Re­
view (September,
pp. 29-38.
and Binging; A Causal
2. J. Polivy and C. P. Herman,
" American
Psychologist 40 (I
193-201.
3. IIana Attic and J. Brooks-Gunn, "Weight Concerns as Chronic Stressors
in Gender and Stress, cds. Rosalind K. Barnett, Lois Bicner, and Grace Baruch
Free
1987), pp. 218-252.
4. Katha Pollitt, "The
67.
want to
the
620
Part VIII
Race, Class, and Gender Hierarchies: Reproducing
come frorn feeling good about one's body. This positive image can spill over into other areas
of one's life, enhancing, for example, one's self-esteem, or job prospects.
5. See Lawrence D. Cohn ond Nancy E. Adler, "Female and Male Perceptions of
Ideal Body Shapes: Distorted Views Among Caucasian College Shldents," Psychology of
Women Quarterly 16 (1992): 69-79; A. Fallon and P. R01.in, "Sex Differences in Percep­
tions of Desirable Body Shape," Journal of Abnormal Psychology 94 (1985): 102-105.
6. Bret! Silverstein, Fed Up! (Boston: South End Press, 1984), pp. 4,47,l!O. Individ­
uals may be affected in many different ways, from paying too much (in 1978, concentration
within the industry led to the overcharging of consumers by $12 to $14 billion rn. 4711 to
the ingestioll of unhealthy subst811CCS.
7. Warrell r: Belasco, "'Lite' Economics: Less Food, More Profit," Radical
view 28-30 (J 984): 254-278; Hillel Schwartz, Never Satisfied (New York: Free Press,
p.241
8. Advertised in Parade
9. Deralee Scanlon, Diets
10. See Stanton Peele, MA: D.C. Heath and Co., II. There are a few recovery books that point to the larger issues of the addiction
model. Anne Wilson Schad's book, When Society Becomes an Addict, looks at the wider in­
stitutions of society that perpetuate addiction. She notes that society operates on a
model. This is the "Addictive System." This model assnmes that there is never
to go around and we need to get what we can. Schaef sees society as made up of
three systems: A White Male System (the Addictive System), A Reactive Female System
(one where women respond passively to men by being subject to their will), and the EmergFemale System (a system where women lead with caring and sensitivity). Society needs
to move in the direction of the Emerging Female System in order to end addiction. Another
important book is Stanton Peele's Love and Addiction. Another book by Stanton Peele, The
Diseasing of America: How the Addiction Industry Captured Our Soul (Lexington, MA: Lex­
ington Books, 1989), stresses the importance of social change in societal institutions and ad­
vocates changing the given distribution of resources and power within the society as a way
problem of addiction. See Anne Wilson Schaer, When Society Becomes an
Addict (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), and Stanton Peele. !"ove and Addiction (New
York: New American Library, 1975).
12. Bette S. Tallen, "Twelve Slen Prof'rams: A Lesbian Feminist Critique," NWSA
2 (1990): 396.
13. Tallen, "Twelve Step Programs: A Lesbian Feminist Critiqne," 404-405.
14. ·[·allen. "Twelve Step Programs: A Lesbian Feminist Critique," 405.
[2J
-
ADVERTISING AT THE EDGE OF
THE ApOCALYPSE
.11111
SLIt
Jhally
In this artiele I wish to make a simple claim: 20th century advertising is the most
powerful and sustained system of propaganda in human history and its cumulative
cultural effects, unless quickly checked, will be responsible for destroying the
world as we know it. As it achieves this it will be responsible for the deaths of hun­
dreds of thousands of non-western peoples and will prevent the peoples of
world from aehieving true happiness. Simply stated, our survival as a species is
dependent upon minimizing the threat from advertising and the commercial
culture that has spawned it. J am stating my claims holdly at the outsct so there
can be no doubt as to what is at stake in our debates ahout the media and culture
as we enter the new millennium.
Colonizing Culture
Karl Marx, the pre-eminent analysis of 19th century industrial capitalism, wrote in
1867, in the very opening lines of Capital that: "The wealth of societies in which
capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an 'immense collection of
commodities.'" (Marx 1976, p. 125) In seeking to initially distinguish his object of
analysis from preceding societies, Marx referred to the way the society showed iton a. surface level and highlighted a quantitative dimension-the number of
objects that humans interacted with in everyday life.
no other society in history has been able to match the immense pro­
output of industrial capitalism. This feature colors the way in which the
society presents itself-the way it appears. Objects are everywhere in capitalism. In
this sense, capitalism is truly a revolutionary society, dramatically altering the very
landscape of social life, in a way no other form of social organization had been able
to achieve in such a short period of time....
It is not enough of course to only produce the "immense collection of
commodities" -they must also be sold, so that further investment in production is
by permission of the aUlhor.
621