The Thinning Class |
CounterPunch Exclusives
CounterPunch Exclusives
You can’t miss it these days. Whether it be on a random runway or on the red carpet of the Oscars, women are getting thinner. I mean, REALLY thinner. Jawbones, hollow cheeks, clavicles… it is like watching a revival of that 1929 Walt Disney cartoon, ‘The Skeleton Dance.’
There has been a flood of cultural commentary on the subject, but few of them touch on the underlying machinery that manufactures these trends. It isn’t merely coincidental that this one coincides with food insecurity, an exponential rise in food prices, and a general feeling of unease due to the chaotic, aggressive and uncertain state of our contemporary lives.
The body has always served as the primary canvas of ruling class manipulation. Even more so than the mind. And this is because the body is seen. It is public. It is ubiquitous. And it is the best medium to project an ethos onto society. Whether it be from its adornment or modification, the body is a walking billboard for normative values. And it is the most important tool in distinguishing between the classes.
Women’s bodies in patriarchal societies have always been the delineator of status and the dominant values of the ruling class. In this way, whiteness has been presented for centuries as being the ideal. And white women have been propped up as the standard bearer of beauty, femininity and virtue. Who gets accepted into the whiteness club is dependent on certain physical indicators. In this way, whiteness is understood not so much as race, but as a set of unspoken social rules, understandings and taboos which are then coded as to develop a hierarchy and an arrangement of........