SOC 808 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Sustainability, Overproduction, Externality

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 808
• Professor: Mustafa Koc

Document Summary

Women seek emotional heights, intensity, love and thrills from food. Restriction of food and denial of hunger serve as central features of the construction of feminity. The media constructs idealized images of the thin and well-toned body and also promotes consumer products that help people, especially women, achieve this well-maintained body. While the push for thinness may be media driven, (cid:449)o(cid:373)e(cid:374)(cid:859)s so(cid:272)ial (cid:374)et(cid:449)orks with partners, families, and friends also rei(cid:374)for(cid:272)e the (cid:373)edia(cid:859)s (cid:373)essage for a(cid:272)(cid:272)epta(cid:271)le (cid:271)odies. Eating disorders + obesity are outcomes of the same tensions between physical compulsion to eat and mental control over self (weight) Commodification of food and commodification of female beauty by different corporate sectors are behind eating disorders. Middle class/educated women use self-control (anorexia) to demonstrate independence and personal identity. Working class/poor women use food as a compensatory indulgence for disappointments about missing the impossibly high standards of the society {obesity)