BITSG539

Sushant Kishore

Dated: November 16, 2014

Agenda 13: Susan Bordos Hunger as Ideology

. . . a frail frame and lack of appetite signified not only spiritual
transcendence of the desire of flesh but social transcendence of the
laboring, striving economic body . (Foucault 170)

Susan Bordo analyses the ideology of hunger implicit in advertisements. From diet pills, to
cigarettes and from Jello to ice cream every product is advertised to perpetuate the ideals of
beauty for women slender, confident and in control. FibreThin advocates the ideal of eating
not much; Virginia Slims destroys the idea of compulsive eating. An ideal woman can eat
when she want but is beyond the craving for food. Hunger is not communicated as just the desire
for food but also a more primal sexual hunger and voracious appetite than becomes a sexual
metaphor.
Bordo suggests that these ads arent mere marketing strategies but also a disciplining tactics. The
consumer, women, are studied and a body of Foucauldian knowledge is constituted about their
flaws and abnormalities. The adverts perpetuate subliminal ideas of proper behavior and
feminity much like the Victorian conduct manuals. A frail body therefore represents a woman
beyond any physical craving almost saintly and disciplines women to fit in the non-indulgent and
sophisticated frame of an aristocratic lady carefree and unaffected by material and physical
concerns.

.
Works Cited
Bordo, Susan. Hunger as Ideology. The Consumer Society Reader. Ed. Juliet B.
Schor, Douglas B. Holt. New York: New Press, 2000. Print.