Page 119 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Meaning of Self in Society

tives, which typically impersonate the ordinary and, thus, return to
the familiar for purposes of identification, beyond class, gender, race,
or ethnicity, to the specifics of the body itself.
For instance, over time the idealized representation of the body
has shifted from ostentatious obesity as a signifier of wealth or mate-
rial well-being – until the violation of one’s own limits turns into
the dreaded stigma of the social outcast – to the notoriety of
anorexia or bulimia as faddish symbols of denial – and therefore
power.Weight as a sign of social substance, or status, turns into anti-
social (or medical/pathological) evidence with considerable ramifi-
cations for the quality of one’s social standing.This is a particularly
relevant development for women, as they meet the unforgiving rules
of a glamorous life among the material symbols of status and success.
Most important among them is an acquired thinness to suggest
social (or political) mobility and confirmation of personal progress
or liberation. The body becomes the medium for a message of
achievement or failure.
Mass communication in all of its forms promotes the modern
shape of male and female bodies, most blatantly, however, through
advertising, and particularly in the reproduction of fetishized parts
– legs, breasts, or lips – which suggest attainability of form through
the process of consumption. These parts have been rendered to
perfection by various imaging techniques; their social significance is
validated and strengthened by representations of television and
movie personalities, who not only fortify the notion of reality, but
reinforce conforming behavior, especially among women and young
girls, as they seek their identities in the public sphere. Thus, while
celebrities sell products – often in a testimonial style – they also sell
their bodies as explicit statements of beauty (in terms of shape and
size) and expressions of aesthetic norms that represent politically
desirable and socially acceptable standards (in terms of whiteness or
color).
The consequences of compliance may hold a promise of sexual
power, marked by the moment of surrender, but mass communica-
tion also illuminates the strategies of the beautiful en route to attain-
ing social status. Appearance – from posture, clothing, or the
accouterments of luxury to attitude or mindset – is a form of orna-
mentation in its physical and psychological states which makes the

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