Caroline Nevin, an artist, (@RubiesAreBlue) tweeted up this Italian documentary: Il Corpo Delle Donne (The Bodies of Women).
This project took off as a matter of urgency. It all started with the observation that women–real women–are an endangered species on television, one that is being replaced by a grotesque, vulgar and humiliating representation.
We sensed the enormity of this loss: the erasure of women’s identity is happening right before our eyes, but without a proper reaction, not even from women themselves.
This led us to select television images that share a common manipulative exploitation of the woman’s body, to let people know what is happening–not only people who never watch television, but especially those who watch it but “don’t see.â€
Our aim is to ask ourselves questions, and to pose questions about the reason behind this erasure, a real “pogrom†of which all of us are silent spectators.Our project grants special attention to the erasure of adult faces on television, to the use of plastic surgery to erase any sign of the passage of time, and to the social consequences of this erasure.
It started some very interesting twitter discussions, but there is a real limit to what can be expressed in 140 chars. What I’d like to suggest is that you watch it. Unfortunately, it’s in Italian, and the subtitles are annoying; the editing sometimes interferes with them, but give it a try. Once you’ve watched it, come back, and let’s talk.
* * *
Firstly, I want to acknowledge that the documentary maker is focusing on Italian television which is, by all accounts, so full of this kind of crap that it is actually astonishing to anyone visiting the country who turns on the TV. However, after a month in the UK, I’d like to suggest that, although it does not have the same focus, British TV is similarly dumbing down its programming to serial versions of simplistic interactions and moronic, infantile narratives in very much the same way. The focus might not be on what appears to be the absolute sexualization of the woman’s body (more on this later) but it has the same shallow approach to almost every topic.
Secondly, although it is easy to take a purely feminist stance on this, and rail against masculinist hegemony and the eclipse of real female identity, I think that males are being equally damaged in this transaction. If all women are represented as brainless chalices of tits and ass, then its opposite must also be true. All men are being represented as subnormal horndogs who can’t WANT anything else. This is convenient for people who want to sell things to you.
But even this is a misrepresentation of reality. Because what is being offered here is NOT sex. It is the parody of it. People, in the throes of real desire, real sex, aren’t fixated on bee-stung lips or a perfect ass. This isn’t about pleasure. It’s about training people to consumption.
There is a belief so utterly prevalent that it is almost universal: that the consumer drives the market. I don’t accept this; it’s too simple. I think that by dint of semiotics and repetition consumers are just as much educated by the media into what to like and desire as the other way around.
This is where I would like to propose that the discussion needs to start. I look at the volume of crap being pushed at me by the media: the simplified sensationalism of the news, the artificial-to-the-point-of-absurdity transactions of ‘reality TV’, the 2-dimensional dramatic characterizations that masquerade as having depth by virtue of some piece of bullshit pop psychology, the endless and mindless repetition of the ‘hero’s journey’ where the names and the costumes are changed but the story remains the same.
I propose that we are being trained to be stupid. To eschew the complex for the simple. And although I believe that the documentary writer is correct, inasmuch as it results in an erasure of identity, I think the motivation behind it is darker.
No – I don’t think there’s a conspiracy to make us into pre-fabbed craving idiots. I wish it were that interesting.
I think it’s about numbers.
In the last 40 years, the rise of the statistical analysis of markets has eclipsed almost every other hard reality. We have tried, using statistics, to figure out what is going to be successful in the marketplace. This was, initially, a predictive tool, but it has a nasty sting in the tail that few people will acknowledge. If you take the results of those statistics and reflect it back at the market, with an eye to taking advantage of a ‘sure thing’, this is what you get. A slow but steady homogenization of desire.
Are there exceptions to the rules? Do certain complex and quirky things catch the imagination of the population and, therefore, the marketplace? Sure…but it is almost statistically impossible to explain WHY these exceptions to the rule are attractive to us. Therefore, it is economically safer to aim a little lower and offer up to the consumer instance after instance of what they have bought before.
This simplification of what is ‘desireable’ is not a purposeful repression of female identity. It is accounting practices made marketing reality.
Selling any given woman with all the intangibles that make up her attractiveness is not economically advisable because we can’t quantify WHAT IT IS that makes her attractive.Tits and ass has sold. Perfect, flawless tits and ass sells better.
Selling a complex news story that requires in-depth analysis and reflection is expensive. Disaster coverage sells. Sensational disaster coverage sells better.
This is not about women or sex. It’s about profit margins, shareholders and market-driven modification of consumer desires.
How do I know this? Because the explosion of amateur porn with its sweat, its grunts, its stretch marks and curiously bent penises, its skin imperfections and the contortion of real faces at the point of orgasm has begun to take a HUGE share of the porn market. The problem for commercial producers is that this realness, this rawness is so complex – so multifaceted – it’s almost impossible to pinpoint what makes it attractive to us. But believe me, they are doing their very best to try and reproduce it.
I’d be very interested in hearing your reactions to this documentary and any comments you might have on my own little theory.
I’m glad you looked past the feminist argument, because my experience is this objectification hurts men as well. The meme that men can’t control their sexual appetite drives me nuts.
I think your marketing argument is dead on. It’s why we have so many derivative movies in the cinema, after all. Or even in books. It’s frankly good business to aim for the sure thing rather than take a chance on something outside the mainstream.
What I hope is that, with the long tail, we’ll see more original fare making its way into the market. TV is the antithesis of the long tail and so has to aim for the biggest ‘market share’ it can.
Depressingly, I don’t offer a strategy or a proposal for circumventing this reductionism. I think I’m getting too old to muster the energy to do battle against it. I write, I think, I live in a place that allows me to avoid the worst of it. It’s easy for me.
What I admire are the people who are stuck in the middle of this barrage of crap and still, somehow, find a way to reject its evil lure.
I see & feel it in every aspect of life. Even food. Bibi gets it in the fucking playground. Why am I different, mummy? Why don’t they like me? I’m in therapy every week discussing my anger. She wants to find out where it comes from. It comes from everything I balk against, which is almost everything I see & hear. I hate so much of modern life. I shit myself when the phone rings. Just the sound of it is too intrusive. Why the hell should I stop what I’m doing & answer it.
I have to answer it incase its Bibi’s school & she’s been in an accident.
Its always the lowest common denominater. Its always about money. & its fear too. So many people too scared to live/feel anything much.
Safety. Herd instinct. Tribes of emptiness.
And you bring up the very interesting point of the consequences to be paid if a person decides to ‘opt out’. This is real and frightening. As Alice Gray said (paraphrasing here) …wanna know what kind of looks you get when you tell people that you don’t have TV in your house? People treat you like you’re an abusive parent.
Great blogpost and I liked the documentary, even though or maybe because it was in Italian. I loved the references to Pasolini. And the song ‘we are women, we are more than legs’ !
I agree with you that it is consumer capitalism that is selling us this dumbed-down gender culture on TV. I think some feminists focus too much on imagery of women and not enough on the economic mechanisms behind it.
I also agree that masculinity/men gets a bad deal out of the representations on TV/media.
But I think we have the media we have in terms of technology-it’s not going away. The question is how to use it in a radical way. Home-made porn can be radical and I think the corporations will struggle to completely appropriate it. some of us like it *because* it is home-made, free, personal, not just because it is more realistic in its representation of bodies. There is also a lot of use of the internet to make radio/tv/video that is radical. Its up to us to use the means we have .
If we choose to just sit in front of the box watching Sex in the city, (not that I don’t do that sometimes) it is our loss.
great post the only thing would add is.
I do not think there was ever a true representation of real women in mainstream media. I reject the premise that real women are becoming an endangered species on TV because that would mean that they were ever represented in the first place. The june cleaver version of a woman and paris hilton version of a woman are an equally ” grotesque, vulgar and humiliating representation’ of women
“I do not think there was ever a true representation of real women in mainstream media. I reject the premise that real women are becoming an endangered species on TV because that would mean that they were ever represented in the first place.”
Well said. Still, I don’t think this is just about women. I think if we focus on only that, we miss the greater violence to our culture.
Jerry, what you said is so succint and perfect.
I agree with Remittance Girl and think the media equally distorts, warps and manipulates the idea of the men and think your statement could be expanded to say, “real women or men”.
The “idea” of men that is purported in the media is just as ridiculous and unattainable as that of a woman. It is an idea that I have never been comfortable with, and have never been able to fit myself into.
The easiest (and most ridiculous) caricatures are those that are offered in the so called, “men’s” and “women’s” magazines they publish. It was in looking at these magazines, and most publications out there that I realized the media is spoon feeding us regurgitated shit to wear us down and fit us into their “idea” of what a consumer should be.
It’s the curse of the one-way media. It was built for propaganda from the beginning, now it’s for salesmen. So you’re right.
The good thing is, the internet is a great counter-movement to this, as you are proving yourself every day.
The bad thing is, there are lots of people who still watch TV. Which could mean, there are lots of stupid people, who rather let themselves be told what to think than figure it out for themselves.
The best thing is, though, even if you live in Italy, you don’t have to watch TV. It’s your own choice.
I haven’t had a chance to watch the video yet, so I will have to incorporate that into my reaction to this after I see it.
What immediately resonates with me is your perception of the numbers as the all important driver of things. The talk of all things is economy and markets and consumers. When did we stop being citizens? It is a line that was blurred and obliterated and now we are collectively led around by our dicks and our tits to dance the consumer dance.
The comment Penolepe made about the phone is so apt. We recently dumped our phone for a super cheap VOIP option and I admittedly didn’t want to at first but we are so much better off without a phone. This overall discussion also brings to mind a friend who is withdrawing from the Internet. The sad thing is that which allows us to communicate and have these discussions is also the tool being used to blunt us into malleable idiots.
We’re breeding ourselves stupid and as my wife said you can see it happening. The people who should be having kids are not because they put it off or opt out in pursuit of a career or other goals and those who are nearly devoid of potential and are feeding, gorging on the teat of the consumer driven system are breeding like fucking guppies.
The depth and breadth of emotional trauma caused by the functions of our societies is really unknown, and it crosses that gender barrier in ways that I don’t really appreciate yet. I understand it exists and that I as many others are victim to it, but that kind of emotional access and awareness isn’t encouraged or accepted when achieved and so is most often treated as an anomoly and oddity rather than an achievement and triumph.
I am trying to achieve that kind of awareness and emotional access, but as often as I think I am moving forward I learn about my utter failures and have to start again, trying to be a better person than I am.
There is such a wealth of good points in your comment, I don’t know where to begin. But this one struck me strongly: “When did we stop being citizens? It is a line that was blurred and obliterated and now we are collectively led around by our dicks and our tits to dance the consumer dance. ”
When indeed did we stop being citizens and start being consumers?
The consumer replacing the citizen is something that has bothered me for a long time now. It is a distinction that I think few people think about and one that has slowly and consistently eroded our power as human beings.
Being viewed (and molded) into a spending machine in the all-important economy has stripped us of our voices and meaning as citizens. In the American media you only hear talk of the consumer and how the consumer is acting and how that impacts the economy. You never hear about what citizens are doing, or how citizens feel about anything in society.
Nowhere was this more apparent when President Bush told the American public to spend and keep on consuming to support the war.
And where was the thought, the protest and the (American) citizenry in reaction to the most ill-conceived and poorly executed war since Vietnam?
It was there, (barely!) and it was drowned out in the din of cash registers ringing and the simple-minded shouting of the “pro-war patriots” against the “anti-war (and anti-American by implication) left wing radicals”
One of the few attempts I’ve seen trying to bring this debate to the public forum is Michael Moore in his documentary “Capitalism, A love story”, which is about this exactly. Unfortunately as such a polarizing lightning rod I think Michael Moore is no longer effective in the debate. People either drink his Kool-aid or disbelieve everything he says without actually pausing to listen or discuss it, but then again, that’s kind of the whole problem in general isn’t it.
It is nothing more or less than the formulaic reduction of reality. Like the serpent consuming its own tail, it reduces everything down in an ever tightening circle, feeding on itself until it eats itself into non-existence. And, the mechanism is greed and a profound lack of both foresight and hindsight.
Non-conformity to the ideals represented in the video breed fear. Fear of individuality. Fear of being labeled different. Fear of persecution and fear of failure. For what can one person do against the tidal wave of popular ideology? Ask yourself, what can one person do?
The answer just might set you free.
You ask the salient question and the one I don’t offer an answer for. But I think that throwing off the veil and seeing this ‘popular ideology’ for what it really is – a giant point of sale stand – is an important start. Because just in recognizing that you are being ‘sold’ something allows you to consider that, perhaps, you’d rather buy something else.
I get particularly angry at the lack of fore/hindsight. The answers are so readily apparent if everybody would just pause and think for themselves. I mean REALLY think for themselves too, not just regurgitate what they read/hear in the media as a conditioned response.
And yet as one who tries to think for myself and tried, really tried, to take part in the happenings of my village, where I live, to contribute thoughtfully and as part of the process, I feel powerless and beat down by the mechanisms put in place that are now designed to prevent us from easily making a real difference in what happens around us.
Beaten, I withdrew and I constantly ask myself what *I* can do, and the answer is I don’t know…
Any public company, large or small, must always try to maximise it’s return, like any other commercial enterprise responsible to it’s shareholders. A small to medium sized one might target specific niches, but by it’s very nature a large company selling to the general public will employ mass-marketing techniques. The study of Psychology and more importantly Sociology by the marketers has resulted in them defining certain techniques that WILL work – and it’s a brave advertiser or TV executive that will try anything out of the ordinary.
But part of the result of the increasing homogeneity of mass-consumption media, coupled with increasing competition (more channels/screens/etc) is that programme makers HAVE to try something different, to stand out, in order to attract custom. Some do it with more T & A, of course, but some try a different approach. After all, even the most innovative advertisement, for example one of the Guinness campaigns, is no good if people don’t watch the channel that it’s on, and the TV channels have to start taking chances as they watch their market share fall.
But I take your point overall, in much the same way as Marketeers will hit the general audience with generalisations. Producers will try to hit the ‘sure thing’ if they can, because it’s the safe thing to do and they have their own mortgages and kids to pay for. If one dares to do something different, and it works, it’ll be copied endlessly, usually without the spark that fired the initial success. This can happen within the lifetime of a single show, where it ends up as a parody of itself – “Happy Days”, anyone?
Is there hope? Yes, because as audiences splinter the ‘mass’ in the mass market reduces. What Ed calls “the long tail” *could* work in favour of intelligent, innovative work in whatever field you look at. But the same force will work to serve the audience of the Neanderthal – and there’s a bit of him in all of us. Watched sports fans much? You can rant about it, but it’s human nature, we’re tribalistic.
I think the hope is not that the general ‘tone’ of production/consumption will rise, but that it will become moer and more divers, allowing you – and I, at times, and others as they see fit – to avoid what you find objectionable.
Being Objectivated, that is.
Thanks for your very considered response, Steve. And I find your outlook quite positive and optimistic. I’m hoping you are right.
Oh, Great Ghu. “I must spelccheck before hitting Send”.
in your relationship with commercial media, consider that you and your attention are the real commodities. The job of the programming is to get and keep your attention. Your attention is sold to advertisers. Advertisers do anything they can to get you to feel good about spending your money.
As in any system, it will be gamed. Any technique that works will be used to get you emotionally involved and to keep you wanting more.
Reductionism in media is I think along the same lines as fast food in relationship to cuisine, or hardcore porn in relation to the spectrum of the erotic. It’s a result of the end game.
I also sincerely doubt that we’ve seen the end of reductionism, much as I expect my happy meal to evolve to the point where I ejaculate and see God before my coronary.
“Reductionism in media is I think along the same lines as fast food in relationship to cuisine, or hardcore porn in relation to the spectrum of the erotic. It’s a result of the end game.”
Wow. Powerful statement, Sinner. Thanks for your comment. Haunting.
I work in an advertising agency, and while the products and services we offer don’t really fall into this category, I still spend a lot of time looking around and seeing what others are doing.
I tend to agree that we are headed toward a monocultural homogeny of what beauty means. It is really quite scary, because I can’t really relate to the European fashion magazine look at all. Maybe I’m getting old or maybe it’s a fact, but the models are increasingly becoming this factory farmed Lolita look that is quite alienating. And just plain alien!
I wonder if this is something that a larger society will rebel against and vote with their feet, as it were. I know so may people who object, it must be a reality. Will this consumer culture become the only reality? I surely hope not!
Wow. I don’t watch American TV because I find it repulsive. That stunned me.
I think you’re right that it’s all about turning us into consumers. The only access to television broadcasts in my house is by antenna. And even then it’s only used for perhaps an hour or two a week. Ask me how much we ‘consume’. In the U.S. you’re expected, *EXPECTED*, to have a mortgage, two car payments(if there’s two adults), cell phones for everyone(with all the trimmings), cable, go out to eat regularly, have closets of clothes and so on. It’s ridiculous and unnecessary.
Personally I think it’s more than just turning us into consumers. If your populations are focused on what they’re supposed to have next, on how to afford it, on comparing themselves to their neighbors and everyone on TV then they’re too busy to pay attention to what’s being done by those in power.
It’s redistribution of wealth, it’s the recreation of serfs and slave labor. Sure, Joe down the street ‘chooses’ to work and get’s paid for his time. But he also HAS to work. How else is he going to be able to fit himself into the mold created by media and marketing. And if he’s too busy worrying about how he’s going to pay his credit card bills he’s not going to pay attention to what his children are being taught in school and through the media.
Our communities have been destroyed, family units broken down. We’ve been turned into a society(at least in the US) of isolationists, each person concerned only with themselves(and at best their households).
Personally I think it’s more than just about desire , it’s about programming the masses to react. It’s creating Pavlovian responses.
“If your populations are focused on what they’re supposed to have next, on how to afford it, on comparing themselves to their neighbors and everyone on TV then they’re too busy to pay attention to what’s being done by those in power.”
Well said. Creating pavlovian responses. Hmmm. So you this this is an intentional conspiracy? I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just, perhaps, not crediting the powers that be with that much ability to coordinate their approach. Hehe.
What Remittance Girl highlighted is exactly what I’m so frustrated with. People are so concerned with what they have or need and what having it means that they are blind to the abuses of power taking place.Â
That being said, I agree with Remittance Girl. I don’t believe they are that coordinated either.I do believe that the system as a whole evolved within this construct and the system has adapted in such ways as to protect itself.Â
Pull the lens back and look at it from afar. (pick your poison, government, media, big business…)
Pulling back you can see the system as an organism and its desire to protect itself. Pick it apart and there will be no conspiracy to destroy the idea of a citizen and to mold people into perfect economic consumers, but the system as a whole demands it and so incrementally, bit by bit it adapts and evolves to get what it needs.
That is what scares me the most. It would be easier if you could point to a single person or group of people deliberately responsible for this. Certainly over time there are people who deliberately power monger (Dick Cheney). It is scary because it is an evolution that we have allowed to happen and now it is so entrenched with such strong defenses that to unseat it, to change it will be no small task. Â Â
Not had a chance to watch the video, because I have a flurry of over-excited sproglets demanding picnics, but a response before lounging on sunny riversides…
To my mind the feminism aspect is important, but for what it illustrates rather than as the centrepiece of the argument about objectification and consumer culture. If you read Germaine Greer’s “The Whole Woman” she tackles the way in which capitalism subsumed the threat of feminism into a new marketing opportunity, and that the feminist dialogue of the 70s, before capitalism perverted the discourse with ‘new’ and ‘post’ feminism had already failed by not addressing the roles that men were required to accept.
Cultural conformity, whilst buying into a subset of “individuality” sustains the modern capitalist consumer, which is of course how the blending of politics into an amorphous centre-right mulch can occur; content whilst there’s a Gap and there’s cash on thre credit card. It’s passive individuality. This feeds through to the discourse of success and failure: banks can’t be regulated because the (banking) markets wouldn’t accept it; educational success can be measured on a spreadsheet; the reason for a degree or other educational act are purely utilitarian; to suggest that reality TV or to defend, say BBC Radio 4 against the vandalism of Murdoch’s minnions is to immediately be branded as elitist and a snob.
That same process can be seen in action now in taking the green movement’s demands for less consumption, and developing a model where being ‘green’ equates to consuming more. Not to mention the inexorable rise of male grooming products and lifestyle “advice” that mirrors the pressures placed on women for decades, with the consequent rise in male depression and suicide being seen across the west.
Capitalism is very good at consuming threats and regurgitating them as parodies of their original intent. And as a direct result, a wearyness consumes radicals and they retire, whilst millions agree with the diagnosis, but shrug their shoulders, say, “well, what can you do?” Buy the cosmetics, the fashion, settle down to watch TV again…
The little hope is in the well of those who stay true to feminism, ecology and socialism, whose values do slowly spread, and who mean the fight’s not dead.
Interesting comment you’ve left. “Capitalism is very good at consuming threats and regurgitating them as parodies of their original intent.” is an outstanding and haunting point.
However, I have to tell you that I have come to believe that most of the movements you mention – feminism, ecology, socialism … have been, in my opinion, subsumed by the same sickness – a desire for power first. I will never forgive with what relish the feminist movement embraced and fed a culture of male-hating. I’ll never forgive the ecologists for skewing and manufacturing data to serve their own agenda. And I’ll never forgive the socialists for putting their personal power before the people they were, by ideology, obliged to serve.
In my lifetime I have seen the whoring and perversion of every good cause under the sun. In my lifetime I’ve seen people turn feminism into something resembling the Spanish Inquisition. I’ve seen the ecologists eagerly embrace appalling scientific methodology to bolster their cause. I’ve seen socialists….well…ha… look where I live.
Our hope is in our ability, as individuals, to be critical thinkers about what is presented to us as fact, as necessary, as right.
Agree completely that those who’ve assumed (by who’s consent?), the ‘leadership’ of each of those have failed, both in absolute and moral terms. Again to return to Greer’s critique of feminism, the failure to move beyond man-hating, or emulating the masculine, is one of feminism’s greatest failures. Equally, the inability to find a new pathway of discourse, away from consumption, away from the traditional masculine constructs of work, play and home is another success for capitalism, because it means that the status quo is left unchallenged; the challenges remain marginalised.
One of the comments earlier suggested there was perhaps some intent, I think the control is more insidious. Precisely because there’s no direct leadership for capitalism’s consumerist hegemony, it’s impossible to pin down in the way the other isms have allowed themselves to be. There’s no great conspiracy, except by default; and any change, in men’s ability to engage emotionally, in women’s shunning of the industrialisation of ‘beauty’, or any of the other liberations necessary for contented enlightenment, won’t come from leadership, but from internal thought, dialogue and self-realisation. On which point we return to the industrialisation of Gradgrind’s education system…
After reading your work and watching the video the only things that came to mind were Soma, groupthink, Brave new World, fahrenheit 451, 1984. Gladiotr games WWE, Football, Fussball, Loyalty oaths to the state, Life not important your output is. Body beautiful is what we say it is. We old we no longer want you die or take a pill and chill.
Random thoughts. No even trying to make sense. Just what went through my head.
This is possibly too intelligent for me to wrap my head around. I have been slowly trained to seek out drivel that does not require me to read past the second paragraph :-))
This did make me think of a study I read recently about women’s post-war consumption and tupperware asserted this: Popular historical narratives on women depict them as manipulated by the new era of mass-product marketing, a male- driven and dominated field. It is a superficial stereotype. Activities of women during this period are often parodied and vilified which shows a lack of understanding of the complexities of post-war feminism.
Women’s “private sphere†was considered diminished as corporate America moved into the household and diminished feminist sentiment. Clarke argues against this, using Tupperware as the expression of feminist sentiment and power. The motivation for creating Tupperware were a result of its designer tuning into the desires of the broader culture.
The Party Plan system, while trivialized, actually spoke of a “non-radical†feminism. The success of the Party Plan relied on women’s consumption, modernity and their gender. Material goods reflected choices and consumption reflected positive- self-determination ~ a complete opposite view of the reductionism theory of women as manipulated.
Reductionist approaches to consumption don’t acknowledge the complexity of the world in which the consumption takes place and superficial views of post-war women as manipulated consumers fail to acknowledge the power women yielded in designing their future. Tupperware sales were intimately part of post-war suburbia and were considered a part of social mobility. The economic freedom also benefited women who were establishing gender and social roles.
The success of Tupperware products was not about their function. It was about the party-plan that was embraced by women because of its social and participatory liberating nature that connected women with women.
.
It was all very eye-opening and made me rethink previous notions I had about women as being manipulated by the white men sitting around board offices trying to think of ways to sell to them.
Sorry of off topic a bit. This is a great discussion.
This is a fascinating discussion. And one nugget I’m holding onto is Rgrl’s phrase “the homogenization of desire.” It speaks to a number of cultural problems I’ve been pondering lately–including the issues of genre in erotica that many of us have been discussing elsewhere. Thanks for all your rich insights.
I agree with most everything being discussed here. It’s not surprising, given the brainpower that frequents this space.
One thing worth noting, perhaps is that this fakeness, this plastic layer over both women and men in terms of attraction and behavior does have a biological origin. There have been numbers of studies, for example, across cultural and gender lines that point to an idealized set of facial and body features that the majority of humans consider attractive. We’re semi-hardwired to be attracted to health, youth, fecundity, virility, and pick up on the manifestations of those things (symmetry of features, smoothness and tone of skin, builds that convey strength and/or ability to bear children.
Television, consumerism, magazines, all those things hijack, co-opt and fetishize our evolutionary proclivities in the name of consumerism it’s an old story, but one we can at least begin to control if we understand it.
I have a slight question, though, about whether the homogenization we see on TV and other mass media is _quite_ as dangerous now as it was even ten years ago. The net continues to grow, and with it ways of getting specialized entertainment and information. The net is the lifeblood of amateur porn – and viral video, and a host of other types of information and entertainment that is far less controlled than mainstream media. It is at the point where some powerhouses put a lot of money and effort into mimicking that free style, in order to profit by it.
I know my view is skewed – I don’t watch TV, and I know it is still a dominant source of information and entertainment, but it is facing increasing competition from “new media” and “new new media”. Perhaps some of the “sex doll and glandular idiot” personifications of women and men we see is the result of TV (and old media like print mags) trying to carve out a niche/territory in a shrinking pool of eyes.