Deconstructing the workings of consumer capitalism in the construction of an ‘ideal body’

If we have a look at the advertising that is constantly displayed around us, we notice that there is one aspect immanent to nearly all of it. It is the usage of the body. The employment of the body and especially the sexualised body in the media is not a new phenomenon but has been a part and parcel of the industry since its inception. What differentiates advertising in the 21st century from before is not so much the use of images of the always perfectly shaped bodies but the presentation of this body as something that inevitably must be obtained through our consumption. Thus, in today’s consumer society that body becomes another site of consumption for the capitalists to garner profit from. And thus, the media fabricates the notion that our body needs constant improvement.

Something that is very visible in today’s society is the shift that has taken place from advertising that concentrated on the product and its functions towards advertising that often seems to neglect the product and instead promotes ideas and fantasies. Everyone is exposed to the ‘ideal’ body images and the constant employment of the body as the site for constant improvement highlights the notion that the treatment of the body in today’s consumer society erases difference through presenting everyone with the same image of the ‘perfect’ body (Baudrillard, 1970, 129). When we speak of the employment of the body in advertising- regardless of being in the past or present- the aspect of sexuality is very often present in it. Women’s sexualised bodies have always been at the centre of advertisement- their body employed to add more erotic content to appeal to the masses. And today, men are equally presented in advertising images as much sexualised as women.

Since the 1990s with the deregulation of the Indian economy and the invasion of private satellite channels the media landscape has experienced changes. A shift in the function of the mass media as a tool of education to a medium for generating revenue and to reach a vast pool of masses and thus, became the prime choice for the advertisers to use this medium to promote their products. The body in the media, in particular advertisements continuously employs the body as a means to attract attention and ultimately increase profits. “Television and motion pictures, the dominant visual media, churn out persistent reminders that the lithe and graceful body, the dimpled smile set in an attractive face, are the keys to happiness, perhaps even its essence” (Featherstone, 1975, xi). The presentation of the body as imperfect and as a site for constant improvement provides the means for the expansion of the consumer market.

The internalization of the images of the media can perhaps be accounted in the increasing consumption of beauty products, magazine that provides us with advices to achieve the toned and disciplined body. In this way, the body becomes a vehicle for the display of success represented through its very surface. The body has become a sign in our society, standing for a society in which the wish to be seen as spectacular and beautiful has become paramount. And there is a constant effort on part of the consumers to achieve this ‘ideal body’.

Here, resorting to Zygmunt Bauman’s ideas on consumer society becomes essential. He postulated that today’s society that hinges on consumerism functions as an external influence on the individual to display efforts to stay fit and desire for the ideal body to demonstrate that the individual is making efforts not to get stuck in any one location for too long. Thus, according to Bauman the consumer capitalism operates by intensifying one’s insecurities and anxieties about their bodies and providing responses for them. The success of consumer capitalism depends upon the advocacy and the internalisation of the ‘regime of surveillance’.

The inclusion of body within consumer culture must not be understood as the possibility of being able to purchase a new body. Instead, it means the inclusion of even a higher array of products centring on the body from which the customer can choose in order to reach the promised satisfaction and success.

Research Objectives:

The obsession with beauty and the fight against decay have become highly visible issues in today’s consumer society. The focus has shifted towards the body as one of the chief means that allows happiness and success, achieved through the act of optimisation. People are made to believe that their bodies are changeable and thus, the body is presented to the consumer as another object that can be consumed.

➢ To establish the link between consumer capitalism and the idealised notions of the body with special reference to the role of advertisements.

➢ To discern the ways in which advertisements in contemporary society propagate the ‘ideal’ body image thereby turning the body as another site of consumption

➢ To focus on the contemporary fitness and gym culture and its obsession with the ‘immaculate’ and ‘disciplined’ body

Research Questions

What changes have taken place regarding the body ideal in capitalist society and in what ways could the body in today’s consumer society be regarded as the most valuable commodity? These are the questions that we seek to answer basing our analysis on Baudrillard’s postmodern theory of sign- value and Zygmunt Bauman’s ideas on fitness and health.

From Use-value to Sign-Value and the role of advertising

The defining characteristic of a postmodern society is the constant flow of images that lead to a change in the minds of people making them perceive the world differently. Thus, the images have a direct link with identity building in postmodern times. In today’s consumer society, commodities are no longer purchased for the functions they provide but as markers for success, for the status they confer to the individual in society. Purchasing an object nowadays means to purchase its surface, the life-style that encompasses the product (Katzwinkel, 2014). Advertising today has become one of the central purveyors of consumer capitalism. Advertising has had an immense effect on consumerism in the sense that it has produced valued attached to commodities which are not inherently linked to those products and their functions (Katzwinkel, 2014). This assigning of values and meaning with the decrease of consumer’s interest in the actual function of the product signifies what Baudrillard means by sign-value. In today’s society, commodities have taken up a symbolic value that confers a sense of prestige and signify social status and power of the consumer. With rapid industrialisation and the increasing choice of commodities before us, people invest in commodities only because of their appeal and desirability.

Baudrillard’s concept of sign-value has its roots in the works of Karl Marx who proposed the theory of use-value in regards to the capitalist system. Marx uses the term use-value in Das Kapital in which he begins by describing the use-value of a product as follows: “The usefulness of a thing makes it a use value” (1982,126). It is thus a product’s usefulness in serving humanity that distinguishes its value.

What advertising has always tried to achieve is to convince customers that there was room for improvement in their lives (Featherstone, 1982,19). This ideological project underlines all advertisements and keeps capitalist society alive, for without the notion of the possibility of improvement the consumption of commodities would be redundant. The promise of a better life through a certain product can only be acted out through the accretion of value to products.

The Image of the Body in Contemporary Society

The immense focus on the body and its position in society in which it could provide people with a new source for consumption dates back to the commercialisation of the mass media in 1980s and its employment with the surface. According to Featherstone- within consumer culture, the body is proclaimed as a vehicle of pleasure, it is desirable and desiring and the closer the actual body approximates to the idealised notions of youth, health, fitness and beauty the higher is its exchange value. And the success of the consumer society depends upon the cultivation of an individual’s desire for this idealised body. People are increasingly made to believe that their bodies can be changed and moulded to fit the idealised notions of beauty through consumption which will lead to a successful and happy life. Both the male and female body as presented as imperfect as a means to stimulate insecurity and thus increase the consumption of commodities. Thus, consumer capitalism bombards its audiences with images adhering to the idealised notions of beauty, heighten their insecurity in the process and provide responses to them. The employment with the surface of things has led to the body becoming the epicentre of attention within capitalist society, calling on consumers taking care of their bodies. Thus, we see the operation of the ‘regime of self ‘surveillance’ and it is therefore upto the owner to cultivate it and to accept the blame for when things go wrong (Bauman, 1995).

Since in contemporary society the ideal body today has come to be the slim and ‘disciplined’ body promoted by the media and various institutions such as gyms, fitness magazines, etc. the combination of the perfect body and the nakedness of this body in advertising has proven to be for many companies and the marketing of their products to be the most lucrative imagery (Katzwinkel, 2014). The proverb ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ could not be truer than in the 21st century.

The employment of the body in today’s advertisement is directed at consumer’s eyes in order to cultivate the thought that there is something wrong with their bodies, and second of all, to make them want and desire those bodies. Today’s advertising is no longer presenting products but dreams and hopes to which consumers can and must aspire (Featherstone, 1990).

The crave for a ‘prefect body’ has become stronger over the years reflected in the amount of money invested by the companies in sexual advertising. The brands provide them with the ‘cues; for their imperfect bodies. This insecurity that people possess drives them into consuming images and ultimately products that ‘claims’ to provide a remedy for their imperfect bodies and lifestyle.

Need to go beyond the propagation of the ‘ideal body’ by advertisements and to look into the discourse of fitness and gym culture and their contribution in the propagation of a fit and sculpted body

Fitness and Gym culture

Since the 1990s, the concept of fitness has increasingly narrowed to a ‘commercialized lifestyle’- an individualized project of self-management through the consumption of exercise programs and fitness goods. In today’s society, the body is increasingly perceived as a site of investment and work- we are more concerned with the surface manifestations- physiques and decorations. In a consumer society, where consumption of commodities confers a sense of pride to the individuals and where physical exercises are important, investing in the body’s form- through toning exercises, dieting and cosmetic surgery- is considered a way of maximising one’s competitive edge.

The fitness culture, as the most important of locations at which the slim and sculped disciplined body is sought, acts as the main propagator of the image of the ‘perfect’ body. The fitness magazines expose the consumers to this ‘ideal’ slim and sculpted body thereby heightening one’s sense of insecurity and provides exactly the ideas and advices that the consumer needs in order to respond to the interpellations of the consumer society. And buying a fitness magazine thus constitutes the first step towards this slim body.

In this regard, the fitness magazines with its repetitive advices continually locates the desire for a ‘slim body’ in the consumers mind and providing the means through which this desired slim body can be attained. The modification of the body through the consumption of commodities is where the success of consumer capitalism depends upon. And the readers fall captive to this and find themselves stuck in the loop of continuous improvement of their body without realizing the role of consumer capitalism in developing this sense of insecurity in the first place.

The vast range of dietary, slimming, exercises and cosmetic body maintenance products which are currently produced, marketed and sold point to the significance of appearance and bodily presentation within the late capitalist society. Fitness magazines produces the dichotomy of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ body and calls upon its consumers to regulate their own body- turning the gaze to themselves- thus, the body is seen as another object that can be modified and regulated with the consumption of vast array of products in the capitalist market. Fitness magazines have been criticised by feminist researchers on the grounds for building up paradoxical expectations for women’s body, ideas that no woman can measure upto.

Fitness in today’s time, has become a double-edged sword. It contributes to empowering women and at the same time, committing women to subscribe to the external standards of sexual attractiveness and beauty. It shifted the responsibility of maintaining a particular body type to the individual and those who fail to adhere to these external standards are constantly reminded of their imperfections. If only you ate better and worked better, the argument went, you would be prettier and more successful in life and especially for men, who are constantly under the external pressure to maintain a toned body. And the association of a toned body with one’s capability to protect their female counterpart is another story cooked up by the capitalist society.

The ambition to cultivate the perfect body can lead young females and males to foster negative self- images and to participate in a number of body image investment activities such as taking muscle gaining pills or steroids, engaging in excessive, or having cosmetic surgery to sculpture their bodies (Leone et al., 2005). Here, the role of capital plays a crucial role. The more capital at your disposal results in coming one step closer to one’s desire of a perfect body and while others find themselves in the loop of continual dissatisfaction.

With the shift to consumer society, Bauman cites the rise of our concern with ‘fat’- body fat therefore represents a ‘nightmare come true’ and draws parallels according to Bauman, with terrorism that once ingested takes control of one’s body and therefore needs to be resisted. The role of hydrogenated, saturated and unsaturated fats is all presented in a public debate as choices that have to be made alongside the informed choices that will lead one to lose weight and maintain the ‘right’ kind of metabolism. The consequence of not making the right kind of choices not only mean that one will put on weight but also that he/she once again is a flawed customer. Slimness has become associated with health and health educational message that being overweight is a health risk has become absorbed into the conventional wisdom.

Fitness and body are increasingly associated with a ‘commercialized lifestyle’ that is available for purchase. This purchase is a costly affair. That is, fitness imposes a strict regime of normative regulations on the body. Nowadays, this regime foremost manifests itself on social media platforms such as Instagram and twitter. Fitness influencers set trends and promote a specific lifestyle, which is aspirational for numerous who start following them and attempt to imitate their lifestyle, their food choices because they believe they can help them to improve their body shape. Thus, the followers fall prey to their recommendations once they have successfully cultivated in their minds that they are imperfect and hence, must desire to achieve the idealised body image.