By: Daniel Griffith

Profit-driven market strategies have been used for the past century or so to dictate human behavior into compactable, superficial roles to sell a product so that we as a society will buy said products to look ‘normal’ so that we might fit in and be accepted by society. In essence, it is a commercial enterprise that preys on the vulnerabilities ubiquitous in all societies, and exploits humanity’s desire for companionship into personal profit.

As an idea, it’s not all that new. It’s been relatively admitted, and in some ways accepted, by marketing firms that they use duplicitous techniques to lure in self-conscious individuals to sell crappy products with no real use. But unlike previous decades, today’s society faces these marketing techniques being cultivated with even more advanced technology than ever before. As the video below suggests, companies are willing to spend millions of dollars in advertisement revenue to manipulate the population into buying more and more ridiculous products.

And this is not just the fashion industry, but also the entertainment, alcohol, tobacco, firearms, soda, and many other industries, all of which have been known to use visually enhancing software to exploit the ideal of beauty so that people will believe that if they drink a particular beer, buy a particular brand of cigarettes, or chug down a specific soda until their cholesterol’s content, then they will become more liked, better looking, and acceptable members of a ‘beautiful’ society. It’s a symbolic social system based on unfulfilled pretenses, and, it is the opinion of this author, that if the recent surge and spike in mental disorders were to be attributed to any specific causes, then the exploitation of what a woman and man is supposed to look like by these corporations is at the root of it with their taunting of societal complexes and insecurities.

While many believe that it does not affect them, that they are above the often surreptitious enticements of marketing strategies created by profit-driven companies, it is not a confined effect, but rather has a pervasive and overarching affect on how social contracts are composed. And when people base their decisions on what is acceptable on superficial markers of thinness and techno-manufactured beauty, then society falls to the perils of an emptiness that manifests in the form of psychological and personality disorders that pervade throughout the entirety of our culture.

It is only through acknowledging the commercialization of the body image and the fact that a prescribed aesthetic has dictated societal interactions for this past century that we can begin to take charge in this new century by dismantling the empire of whatever industry’s hold on our bodies. Once aware of the manipulation, as sociologist Dr. Francesca Healy stated, we no longer have to buy our bodies but can rather live in them.