A Tentative Study Of The Causes Of Slimness Fetish Of Women In The Context Of Consumer Culture

According to the idea of dualism, body has been considered below the spiritualexistence. Therefore, academia didn’t pay more attention to it. Not until post-moderntimes, body gradually became a research subject and later reached its climax whenpost-modern feminists began to focus on females’ physical practice influenced bymicropower. In the age of consumerism, the typical way of physical practice is tobecome slim by all means.In the1980s, Kim Chernin, an American scholar, put forward a new phrasenamed “slimness tyranny”. In recent years, weight reduction has transformed into afashion term from a medical term, showing the distorted tendency. People who seekslimness have intensely grown. Some media place emphasis on females’ goodappearance and figure as opposed to the inner beauty, inducing most of them topursue slimness blindly at the cost of damaging health and losing identity. As isknown, the world is constructed, so is the culture. Therefore, how do the social systemand power operate behind the culture of slimness?Therefore, this thesis will analyze female slimness fetish from perspectives ofeconomy and social construction to prove the thesis statement: consumer cultureprovides theoretical possibility for slimness fetish and patriarchy sets the aestheticstandard for females—slimness means beauty. This thesis will also take an Americandocumentary entitled “Life Stories: Eating Disorders” as a typical example. Byanalyzing the characters and dialogues, the thesis statement will be further proved.At last, the author strongly hopes that the whole society and females themselves canbuild up correct female values and aesthetic notion and then construct healthy self-image.