Showing and Telling
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Transcript of Showing and Telling
Showing and Telling: The Unstable Identities Inherent in Performance and Supplement
When cultures read bodies, the results are often accepted as an expression of some
internal essence, and such misguided representations have the potential to continually
shape the subject’s self-perceptions. As the only means of feedback, the bodily meanings
formed because of the convergence of sedimented cultural ideas with physical signifiers
will not only become cultural references, but personal definitions as well. However,
instability inevitably emerges within these interactions, and the subject’s longing to
embrace enduring meanings transforms these instabilities into psychological, albeit
tenuous, certainties. Dieting, then, is the means by which a constantly changing body can
be propelled into a state of control as the mind imposes a narrative over the wavering
physical body, or, as Hilell Schwartz writes in the “Prologue” of Never Satisfied, “As
slow miracle or instant metamorphosis, diets deal in possibility” (4). When it comes to
dieting, the possibility remains that the mind and, of course, the body can be brought
under control. Within the diet industry, nothing offers the hope of greater restraint more
than the dietary supplement, and, as either an appetite suppressant or metabolic
accelerant, the promise of bodily domination lies underneath the claims.
Since bodies are constantly being read, and, as Susan Bordo most emphatically
demonstrates, bodies are constantly being interpreted as metaphorical representations of
personal habits and character traits, the cultivation of the body as the manifestation of
mental traits is paramount. When considering the transference of mental traits to bodily
form, the ways in which bodies are manifested within a culture needs to be considered as
a means to discerning the ontological underpinnings behind the particular moment at
which the body is read. The most important tool for uncovering this ontological
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perspective can be found in the before and after pictures for diet pills. Diet pill images
offer readings corresponding to the modes by which cultural perceptions are made
manifest in personal narratives centered on the body. By looking at diet pill
advertisements, a cultural illusion is exposed, and through an examination of the images
and accompanying narratives, readers can piece together the process by which the final,
and more controlled, manifestations were attained. In this way, the advertisements
themselves serve to highlight the unending process of bodily development. By
displaying the processes by which subjects come to be read as the body toward which
their mental traits had been striving, these advertisements only more firmly establish the
contentiousness of the link between the corporeal and the pre-existing self within the
subject.
When it comes to diet pills, diet programs, and weight loss supplements, success
stories provide invaluable tools for marketing the products. Particularly, before and after
photos become visual implements evoking predetermined responses from potential
consumers. The photos show everyone the story: I went through this wonderful visual
transformation, and, if you follow my example, these results are attainable. The
narratives that accompany each set of photos also tell the story to anyone willing to read
it: my life was not what I wanted it to be, I lost weight, and now I have everything I have
ever wanted. The combination of these techniques proves too powerful for many to
resist.
However, when a closer look is taken, some problems develop concerning the
ways in which the two stories’ validity is established. Each set of pictures offers the
viewer a clear depiction of the transformation of each body, and when showing the
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subjects’ accomplishments, these pictures rely on the viewer’s ability to form meanings
in a similar way to that of the subject. The desired results depend on the meanings
assumed by the subject about their own bodies and the narratives formed by the viewers
merging into a cohesive story. In other words, the ability to have the pictures correctly
understood relies on the subject’s preconceived narrative fostering the desired outcome
within the minds of viewers. Consequently, the success of showing readers what can be
attained depends on the extent to which viewers also agree that the narrative being shown
is the narrative actually being embodied by the images.
In addition, the written narratives provide another reading of the body’s
development, which explains the achievements of the dieters even more. For each given
set of pictures, these written narratives hold the verbal cues needed to successfully
construct the desired meaning proposed between readers and the narrative’s author.
What remains the most important aspect of these types of narratives centers on the ways
in which previous (overweight) lives are implicitly juxtaposed to new and improved
(normal weight) lives. Every key aspect of the new lives projected is defined, directly
and indirectly, by how different it has become from the previous behaviors,
characteristics, and habits experienced before the body’s transformation.
After demonstrating how these narratives are confirmed by readers, each one of
these stories will, at last, need to be reconsidered with a post-structural perspective, a
perspective grounded in identifying deconstructing moments and possible interventions.
Within this post-structural perspective, these products will need to be deconstructed to
point out the inability of each relied upon ideal to remain firm, complete, and closed.
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The very nature of the products themselves will point out the inconsistencies that exist
between the whole being proposed and the supplements needed to attain the whole.
Showing
Because diet pills have offered a multitude of images, the most important means
for understanding the embodied meanings of subjects is through the use of Judith Butler’s
conceptions of gender. Fundamentally, Butler plainly writes, in “Performative Acts and
Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” that “social
agents constitute social reality through language, gesture, and all manner of symbolic
social sign” (270). The social sign becomes the basis on which meaning is made about
the subject in question (whether male or female or, in this case, fat or thin) by each
viewer. Gestures and symbolic signs engender a meaning on which both the subject and
the viewer cannot help but agree since each meaning is merely the convergence of
personal traits with cultural references. Meaning is constituted, never part of an inner self
waiting for expression.
Butler also points out the ways in which gender comes into being as a readable,
recognizable object. She writes, “Significantly, if gender is instituted through acts which
are internally discontinuous, then the appearance of substance is precisely that, a
constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience,
including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief”
(271). If we can substitute fat bodies for gender, a grasp of how performatives are
accomplished for the fat body that becomes thin is attainable. The appearance of specific
bodily results will always remain just that, and the discontinuous, contingent nature of the
performed acts remains socially obscured as belief in the product supercedes its
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ontological truth. When gender, or body size, is performed, the mere recognition of the
social act always proves more important than its underlying production. Further, as
performatives accomplish their goals in the creation of a bodily meaning, each
accomplishment fosters meaning by “rendering specific of a set of historical possibilities”
(272). The sets of images produced for diet pill advertisements inevitably come to be
seen as the real embodiment of the proposed appearance, which must be based on
whatever social possibilities are currently available. As the images of fat bodies who
become thin are proposed, so too are the unstable beliefs supporting the ways in which
these bodies are supposed to be read.
When physically looking at the images provided, certain storylines are offered to
viewers as a means of producing desired, deliberate performances. Each person depicted
is already a paid model, and each set of images willingly performs all the internal traits
supposedly manifest on every fat and thin body. Two different diet supplements will
offer two sets of pictures: Hydroxycut and RapidslimSX. These two represent well-
known and well-advertised products.
The first product, Hydroxycut, offers Jon as its resident spokesman, placing him
in national commercials lauding the product (See Figure 1). In his set of images, Jon is
offering his body to us in hopes that we will acknowledge the obvious struggle his life is
undergoing. He tries to stay fit, evinced by his already-developed arms, chest, and neck.
However, all of his efforts fall just short of the hard body expected of men. Jon’s picture
shows his ability to perform the typical experience: an experience purported to be layered
with over-consumption (the protruding belly), and general lethargy (the sagging, slumped
posture). These performances are supposed to impress on viewers the notions that Jon is
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losing the battle he is supposed to be waging against the expansion of the flesh attached
to his body, as it continually drags his body down in ways beyond his control. He wants
us to see his body as losing its ability to remain tight, which is to say controlled, directed,
and distinctly formed. Jon’s picture allows viewers to visually accept the body
performed as the only way the body can be seen.
After Jon’s grueling eight-week ordeal, his performance has changed
dramatically, as viewers are asked to find his performance as the real definition of his
self. Now that his body is tightly controlled, Jon is able to hold his shoulders back, lifting
his body. His arms no longer dangle uselessly at his sides, and, instead, are held slightly
away from the body, allowing each body part to be seen separately, not as a single mass
(seen in the previous image). The belly has gone away, offering a new performance for
the supposed consumptive power inherent within Jon. He no longer is forced to live with
his body protruding onto the world, and his new performance allows viewers to find him
living up to the ideal that was within his own body, maximizing himself, not merely
performing the dominant male role.
Jon’s performance directs viewers to follow his journey from his previously
stigmatized body to the new body proposed. Previously, Jon was shown to be taking up
space, allowing his body parts to expand without direction onto the world. Following his
transformation, Jon’s body is now partaking of and living within the definable world.
From the ways in which his body had merely taken up space, a clear manifestation of
taking in resources, the more correct (innate?) performance centers on Jon’s ability to
define for himself the space his body will take up, leaving this final step of control in his
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power. While taking up space with his body, Jon’s body was the current extension of his
will and control over the world, which was continually conspiring against his inner self.
Another well-known product, RapidslimSX, uses a similar technique to explain
the transformation of a young women who has used the product. Sydney’s picture offers
viewers the performance expected of a typical young woman (see Figure 2). When
reaching the age of being a professional, certain aspects of Sydney’s life are supposed to
become harder to maintain, and her body’s new shape defined by its impressionability.
Her body is offered as the soft manifestation of the ways in which others are taking parts
of her, stopping her from achieving or maintaining the real inner self she had embodied in
the past. Further, her performance is also dominated by the act of doing for others
instead of herself. Certain maternal characteristics are also performed more obviously
with the overstated bikini bra amplifying her breasts. Also, instead of staying active and
fit, Sydney’s body is asking viewers to find her body moderately overweight, performing
her flesh as being unable to be contained by an undersized bikini bottom. Ironically the
out of control flesh is assumed to be produced by a never-ending personal indulgence,
but, for Sydney, her performance hinges on the ways in which viewers read her body as
providing for others first.
After a five-month weight loss period, Sydney’s body is performing very
differently. Her bikini outfit remains the same size, but now every individual body part is
easily contained within the limits of the fabric. Her breasts easily rest within her top, and
her hips are no longer bulging around her bottom piece. More importantly, her body is
performing its ability to define itself. Viewers can now see Sydney’s body as the
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manifestation of her ability to draw her body as she desires, not allowing the impositions
of others to continue to define the body to which she is relegated.
Sydney has moved away from a body that had grown beyond her inner self
because of her adopted performances, performances dominated by the ways in which she
could provide for others. Sydney’s transition from an impressionable body to one upon
which she can impress herself forms the core of her new body’s performance. She has
impressed upon her body the shape she knows to be a more realistic expression of the
inner body she believes to be real. Sydney has shown viewers she can perform
effectively the body of a mom who has shaped herself actively, instead of allowing others
to define her body’s shape. Her performance is also dominated by the notion of total
attainment; she can have a baby while also impressing on her body her desired shape.
When performing, each social agent, to use Butler’s term, must merely act. The
meanings are not made before the performance, and, consequently, both Jon and Sydney
have their bodies on display in hopes that viewers will form the meanings they do when
they look at their images. Only by looking at these images can either the subject or the
viewer actually make a meaning, which directly fosters the need for both pictures to be
presented. Presented alone, the images would flounder in the numerous cultural
references at its disposal, but, with the pair, each image is given the chance to stake its
claim to the historical possibilities available. By knowing the product’s intent and being
offered a visual narrative in a direct form, viewers can finally allow the references to be
attached to their appropriate performances, as the viewer merely reconstitutes the
possibilities of each image.
Telling
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Each visual narrative offers all the pieces needed to assemble a coherent,
complete story of each body’s transformation, but, in case viewers didn’t quite
understand all that was going on with each visual narrative, a written one is provided as
well. Each written narrative relies on some of the same principles as the visual
narratives. Both reader and author need to use the cultural references available to make
meaning, and both also need to commit to the narratives as much veracity as possible. As
will be seen, each written narrative is the means by which ideals are grounded and
reinforced by both authors and readers alike.
Most of what readers learn about Jon’s life before Hydroxycut is told through the
juxtaposition available in his brief diet narrative. He was eating “two or three huge meals
a day, which were mostly carb-rich foods,” which helped contribute to the body he
disliked (Jon). The time constraints of graduate courses also changed his habits and
body. The narrative is asking us to take a few pieces of information and extrapolate them
into the back story Jon already predetermined he was going to convey, including an
ending Jon had already formulated as he guided us to his particularized reading. The
graduate course work helped define a stressful time in his life, allowing some of the
responsibility for the change in his body size to be attributed to things beyond his control.
The lack of time led directly to the large meals, which are supposed to be read as binging
episodes, not defined, controlled meal times. The carb-rich foods bring with them other
characteristics, too. These food choices are supposed to be read as poor decision making
(nonetheless made by some one who is studying to become a medical doctor). His life
before his miraculous transformation, then, is dominated by a lack of knowledge and
control, which manifests as an excess of the body. Jon was unable to control his time,
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possibly triggered by his now-lethargic body, and The resulting lazy attitude carried over
into his decision-making abilities with food. In order to deflect these detrimental
attributes, which enable him to later say that they were not really what his body (or life)
actually is, Jon immediately offers the time constraints school forced onto him as
evidence of his mind's innocence in allowing his body to become undesireable.
Jon’s narrative directly states that the decision to change his lifestyle habits and
patterns actually is the point at which his life physically began to change. This important
revelation appeals to our ability to successfully negotiate Jon’s account of his mind’s
ability to overcome the problems that had previously plagued his body. Then, after this
decision was made, Jon “felt more confident and in control” (Jon). The ways in which
the mind is the vehicle by which the body can be transformed centers on Jon’s ability to
take back control of this life. If his life was previously out of control, manifested by his
out of shape body, then to have control over his life directly leads to his control over his
body. He also changed his eating habits, eating evenly spaced, small meals. The
confidence again translates into a physical manifestation as Jon curbs what had been
depicted as consumption beyond his control. His desires have been mastered through his
more controlled mind and life. He finally states “Getting in shape takes self-control and
commitment. Not only will you look good, but you’ll also feel better about yourself”
(Jon). Jon’s appeal to readers finally revolves around the objective account of happiness
rendered by the presentation of a specific body type.
In the narrative construction of life before and after Hydroxycut, Jon is appealing
to the reader's predisposition to agree with the narrative's accounts of his bodily
transformation. However, since the narrative’s goals also dictate its rhetoric, viewers are
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also asked to identify with Jon for commercial purposes. When we learn that Jon is in
school to become a doctor, our own poor decisions become even more acceptable. If
some one as educated as Jon can reveal his own problems with weight control, then
readers, too, should feel no shame in accepting the help available through a fine product
like Hydroxycut. Most of this narrative’s rhetorical power lies in the viewer’s ability to
internalize Jon’s struggle as their own, allowing guilt-free purchasing decisions.
In addition to Jon’s economic aims, the narrative itself engenders a type of guided
invention Jon wishes readers understand concerning his life. In order to extend meaning
beyond the few words in the narrative of Jon’s utter success, Jean Paul Sartre’s idea on
writing can explain the ways in which writing becomes a negotiation. Sartre writes, in
"What is Literature," “To write is to make an appeal to the reader that he read into
objective existence the revelation which I have undertaken by means of language” (54).
By writing, Jon has expressed his desire to make objective the subjective narrative he had
envisioned before even contributing his written narrative. Further, the acceptance of
Jon’s story by the reader is the vehicle by which the story he had hoped was written is
actually given objectivity, creating a mutually inclusive collaboration between the writer
and reader which engages the production of the already-established work to be taken as
fact.
Like Jon’s narrative, Sydney’s narrative guides readers down a specific path
geared towards allowing culpability to be abated. Sydney instantly tells readers some key
details about her life before her Rapidslim transformation. Even though she continued to
run a successful business as a mental health professional, Sydney allowed external
influence to dominate her life. Her child took up time, and she was forced to eat junk
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food at times of convenience, not designated periods. Overall, Sydney laments,
“Although, my life was successful on the outside, I felt miserable and disgusted on the
inside” (Sydney). For Sydney, raising a healthy child and running a successful mental
health facility were not sufficient in instilling confidence and happiness. Sydney declares
she let the complications of life interfere with spending time on herself, and the
complications remain as predictable as possible as she allows nearly any female reader
who has had a child to empathize with her plight. A career woman is supposed to keep
her business going and sacrifice herself for the good of others, especially a new child.
She is supposed to let herself go because she loses control of her life, her actions, and her
emotions. Sydney finally states, in case the point was obscure, “I felt aggravated, angry,
and ashamed knowing I had completely let myself go” (Sydney). Sydney’s narrative
builds towards a truth rooted in giving to others, a typically feminine role with which she
hopes other moms will identify.
Sydney’s life takes a familiar, dramatic turn away from shame and back towards
the better days before gaining weight. Sydney directly recognizes a turning point, and
she writes, after finding an old picture of herself, “I was thin, toned, and confident in
myself” (Sydney). The choice was made, and the transformation began, with little regard
as to why her mind was unable to curb her body’s urges previously. After losing the
weight, her confidence soars, and now her happiness can be reflected both on the inside
and outside of her body. Within this narrative, the power of the mind becomes
prominent, and readers are asked to see how making a decision to change her life actually
engendered a different body. Readers should not have doubted the power of her mind
since she was already well-educated, and she appears to definitely have recaptured the
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ability to control her life through her thoughts, an important aspect of mental health.
Readers can easily place themselves into Sydney’s world, a world in which the mental
power remains strong enough to overcome bodily urges.
One key aspect of Sydney’s story evolves when readers attempt to understand
what Rapidslim really helped her accomplish. She wants others to see how she was
finally able to take control of her life, slowly gaining energy for her daily activities and
becoming more deliberate with her food choices. Her new, ideal life is only produced
when readers begin to confirm what Sydney offers. Sartre writes, “Thus, the writer
appeals to the reader’s freedom to collaborate in the production of his work” (54).
Sydney is asking for the freedom to commit to her story as she tells it, and her insistence
on happiness and unhappiness being associated with body size helps guide the reader’s
invention. Whether she was truly ashamed at a higher weight and proud after losing
weight carries only as much weight as readers give to it. In order for a narrative to
establish these facts, something must be fulfilled, or as Sartre writes, “If [the writer]
wishes to make demands he must propose only the task to be fulfilled” (56). This is
exactly the task proposed by Sydney. Readers are asked to turn her subjective feelings of
shame and anger into objective feelings directly associated with the size of her body.
Once the narrative sets forth the task, readers must fulfill the narrative’s purpose, which,
in this case, includes directly relating mental well being to physical weight.
Unstable Identities
When deciding how to read the presented body, readers take certain initiatives;
however, these initiatives on the part of the reader are inherently grounded in particular
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choices--choices locked in time and culture--used in the development of meaning. As the
subjects propose images of their bodies and the narratives of their transformations, the
author, and consequently reader, arrests the proliferation of possible meanings with
specific ideals. Jon's accompanying narrative directly proclaims, "But Jon made an
important decision to get on track with proper nutrition and regular exercise, and after
that, things changed" (Jon). The crux of Jon's argument centers on our agreement with
Jon on a key ideal: the mind has power over the body. Jacques Derrida, in Of
Grammatology, reads all conceptions of ideals as suspect because of the non-referential
nature of language. One important aspect Derrida focuses on is the supplement,
especially as it relates to Rousseau. As a word with two distinct meanings the
contradictory nature of its usage escapes the authors ability. Derrida writes, “The way in
which [Rousseau] determines the concept and, in so doing, lets himself be determined by
that very thing that he excludes from it, the direction in which he bends it, here as
addition, there as substitute, …neither an unconsciousness nor a lucidity on the part of the
author” (1830). Derrida continues, “And what we call production is necessarily a text,
the system of a writing and of a reading which we know is ordered around its own blind
spot” (1830). For Derrida, then, writing can be full of limiting, contrary words which can
take on meanings as the reader sees fit, since nothing is outside the text. The author’s
blind spot is the negating meaning possible within a text’s reading, and the idea of adding
or substituting to a whole (a whole in the author’s mind, at least) brings into question the
completeness of the original idea.
The simple word supplement, then, functions as Derrida’s sticking point for
arguing against a signified outside the text. Penelope Deutscher, in How to Read
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Derrida, further explores Derrida’s reading of Rousseau. For Rousseau, the supplement
forever takes the place of something else, to which Deutscher writes, “Is the notion of the
supplement coherent within his writings? To answer this question, we must ask: if
everything is a supplement, what is supposed to ‘have been’ supplemented?” (40). When
applying this complicated concept to the ideas proposed by diet advertisements, readers
first need to understand what is being supplemented. For both Jon and Sydney, the
control of the body by the mind is supplemented with diet pills. When readers expand
the supplemented items further, control over the body’s appetites, energy levels, and
bodily urges are also simultaneously supplemented by the diet pills. As a result, what
‘has been’ supplemented becomes questionable as an uncontaminated ideal: the mind’s
control over the body.
When reading Jon's narrative in this light, this proposed ideal, and its assumed
perfectible nature, becomes the focus of our acceptance of Jon's claim. Readers must
believe the mind has control over the body, but, based on what product Jon is pitching,
another reality emerges. Before the transformation, Jon was unable to control his body
and its impulses and indulgences. He directly states that other things became distractions
as his mind lost its grip over the real body available. After his transformation, though,
Jon's mind is miraculously able to keep his appetite, energy levels, and impulses easily
under control, stating "Getting in shape takes self-control and commitment" (Jon).
Obviously, Jon is skipping over a very important aspect: he is not able to control his body
through direct power by his mind. His control is now composed of a synthetic mind
which engenders an illusion of the mind's control over the body. By deconstructing Jon's
control over his body, the perfectly powerful mind formed by the narrative becomes
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irrelevant as merely a cultural supposition given an ephemeral objective existence beyond
the written text, a temporal moment in which Jon's narrative appears to have textual
substance. By exposing the inability of Jon's mind to control his body, all other
constructions start to break down.
When considering the ways in which Sydney implores readers to understand her
new body as the inner self she always has been, the idea of the supplement also comes
into play. Sydney writes, “Under all that weight I had lost the person I once was”
(Sydney). If the expression of a real inner self was such an automatic notion, it would
become nearly impossible to contaminate, but, instead, it has been shrouded by her
physical body. In order to find her inner self, then, Sydney supplements her real body
with chemically altered body, undercutting any notion of what her inner self actually
could be. As an inner self, its natural expression should automatically present itself, and
since its expression is dependent on the intervention of a chemical compound, the inner
self was never available in the beginning.
Another point Derrida also calls into question is violence inherent in the
hierarchies constituting the structure of language, pointing out how subordinated terms
can be seen as tantamount to the definition of the superior terms because of the inability
to the superior term to be fully extricated from the subordinated. Deutscher explores
Derrida’s ideas concerning this relationship.
[Derrida] suggests that such devaluations give cosmetic stability or
identity to what is valued. Such a reading overturns these hierarchies
suggesting ways in which the devaluation has the ‘upper hand’ over what
is valued. It would have been more difficult to assert white superiority in
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colonial politics without its deprecation of and contrast to its negative
opposite: the image of the savage, barbaric other. Pointing out this
dependency on the ‘other’ is a means of reversing the hierarchy. (26)
Within this light, the hierarchical nature of certain opposition proposed by Jon and
Sydney can be explored. Both Jon and Sydney refer to the time during which they were
overweight as unnatural and quite objectionable. This sagging middle section of their
narrative depicts having that extra weight as destroying the body and mind’s well being.
For example, Jon has clear notions concerning the superiority of his transformed self over
his previous self, but, in doing so, he inadvertently depicts his idea of a superior self to be
dependent on the subordinated part of this structural binary. When defining his new self,
Jon mentions how he feels "more confident and in control" (Jon). His confidence
depends on the control he has over his body, which has already been proven to be utterly
illusory, so the control supposedly manifested is dependent on the lack of control his fat
body exhibited. The power to produce any control at all, then, rests in the lack of power
associated with the fat body he desperately hopes to juxtapose himself against now.
Crystallization
The performative aspects involved in reading a body show viewers the ways in
which meaning becomes the sole commodity of the time during which the cultural
references and personal traits merge, not the possession of any real self. The negotiated
readings associated with making any real meaning from written narratives illustrates how
readers perceive narratives as they develop in accordance with an author’s intention,
producing a narrative’s meaning which is again dependent on references outside of the
text. These two aspects of visual and written narratives inevitably produce a clear
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crystallization of cultural references, meanings, and aspirations. Each meaning produced
between viewers and the images brings with it the temporal crystallization of the culture
in which it is shown. The cultural references producing our readings of Jon’s fat body
are particular to the time in which it is shown, and viewers cannot help but conceive of a
meaning that is a clear derivative of culture. In addition, Sydney’s hope for a more
expressive representation of her real inner self is also, out of necessity, the aspirations of
the culture in which she writes her narrative. By writing her narrative Sydney is tapping
into the collective cultural aspirations that yearn for the real self to become uncovered
from the obstacles in its way.
By exploring the ways in which images and written narratives call into being
meanings dependent on narrative structure, readers can begin to more clearly see the
constructed nature of the images proposed by diet pills and their advertisements. Most
important, though, is the realization that with each image, quote, narrative, or
commercial, a supposed person is given subjectivity. When Jon asks readers to confirm
the fact that he was fat and out of control, Jon is actually asking readers to confirm the
fact that Jon actually exists, and if Jon is going to call himself into being, he might as
well construct his life in a way that others will read as positive. Readers are merely his
accomplice in manifestation. Sydney wants others to see the super-mom image, creating
a positive outcome for her life. No matter how each diet pill sells itself, each pushes the
life the culture dictates is possible, and audiences must find each story accessible and
plausible, forcing each diet pill to carefully construct its actors in ways the culture will
read properly. The largest detriment, as can be seen with deconstructive analysis, is that
each constructed subject will never move beyond the performed self, beyond the text
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provided to readers, leaving the anticipated hope of each subject just as elusive as all
externally signified content.
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Works Cited
Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Tenth
Anniversary Edition. Berkeley: U California P, 2003.
Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in
Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." From Performing Feminisms:Feminist
Critical Theory and Theatre. Ed. Case, Sue-Ellen. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP,
1990. 270-282.
Derrida, Jacques. From Of Grammatology. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.
Eds.Vincent B. Leitch et al. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. 1822-30.
Deutscher, Penelope. How To Read Derrida. New York: Norton, 2005.
Jon. "Success Stories." Hydroxycut.http://www.hydroxycut.com/success_stories/
index.shtml.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. “What is Literature?” and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard UP,
1988.
Sydney. “Success Stories.” Rapid Slim SX. http://www.rapidslimsx.com/index.shtml.
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