Hunger as Ideology

In “Hunger as Ideology” Susan Bordo observes closely women and their constant

obsession with weight control and the gender ideologies present in the food advertisment.

Girls learn at a young age that being slim is beautiful and they start thinking about tricks on

how to achieve that beauty. Media knows that women like “control “and commercials use this

word a lot, appealing to an audience who feels this lack of control, teaching them that one

easy way to get what you want is using your sex appeal.

With a lot of relevant examples Bordo is focusing on locating gender disparities in

advertising and the effects that these commercials have on women body, behavior and

psychology. In the first paragraph Susan Bordo introduces us to a commercial where two little girls

have a quite disturbing conversation about what is beauty ”Your mom is so slim, so beautiful!

Does she eat?” Even from a young age girls learn that the way they look is directly connected

to the amount of food they eat.”Silly, just not so much”. The FiberThin commercial is trying to

create envy between women ”Aren’t you jealous?” and then also offers a solution to this

problem ”Not if I know her secrets.” Today even after we learned that these kind of

commercials influences girls to have eating disorders we can still find the following ads like:
The first picture is advertising a weight lose program, kids get a clear message

that in order to feel good you have to be skinny. The second picture is an ad for a famous

brand name and even if it does not say anything about being skinny it is hard to miss how tiny

the model is. As grown ups we know that this is not real and it still influences us, imagine

what an influence has on children who look up to movie stars and models. This is how eating

disorders start and it looks like not much has changed since Bordo first criticised

commercials.

Women have been fighting for their rights for a long time, they want to be