In this video, I describe what I believe to be the four standards of ideal female beauty according to our current US Ideology. I have studied the role of women and girls in media for several decades, and have come to some interesting conclusions. It is my hypothesis that Capitalism is currently dependent upon the self-hate of its consumers in order to thrive. In the diagram I showed at the beginning of the video, I chart how the stages of indoctrination to the beauty standard is implemented; like a self-perpetuating wheel, which is why I affectionately refer to this phenomena as The Capitalist Cycle.
Here it is again:
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| Diagram taken from my graduate thesis, "Constructed Identities: Hegemonic Ideology, Race, Class, and Gender in US Media" (2002) |
While Capitalism might currently depend on the inadequacy of its consumers to sell them "meaningful" products and services, it does not need to depend on this criteria to fill its bottom line. It is my argument, and the belief of my company, that Capitalism could thrive more abundantly basing its bottom line on genuinely uplifting its consumers with products, services, and industries designed to create sustainability and real value to humanity. We are already beginning to see this change taking place as consumers get more vocal about defining their true desires. Jessica Alba, for example, "frustrated in her attempts to create a clean, safe environment for her baby, realized she probably wasn’t alone. Seeing an opportunity, she poured herself into the process of developing a line of products parents could trust." (Jeff Macke) She is now going public with her company Honest for as much as a billion dollars.
In a thoughtful article entitled "Creating Sustainable Corporations" Paul Shrivastava writes "sustainable economic development can be ushered in only if corporations, the main economic engines of the future, are made environmentally sound. This can be facilitated through total environmental management and sustainable organizational design". I agree. In a capitalist society, the consumers are said to drive the market. This is also how corporations make the most money. A shift in more consumer-reflective market values, and thus an increase in industry profitability, will only begin to happen when we understand Capitalism as the engine it is and begin steering it toward a sustainable direction. And since advertising, marketing, and entertainment is the force and identity of Capitalism's value system, this is the job of the media.
