Regarding a recent lecture at University:
This lecture made me really, oddly passionate. Due to my own
personal beliefs, the subject of status and women is really interesting. After
watching the advertisement videos and assessing them, it's quiet clear that the
marketing of fashion really does escalate the feelings of status anxiety
detailed by A. de Botton. I believe this phenomenon of social anxiety is used
against women far too heavily in modern culture.
In previous years, status was achieved by marrying into a
well-to-do family and almost entirely all status was handed down through the
family to the men or given by your occupation. It is still like this to an
extent and an example of this can be seen in how people respond to what degree
you have chosen to study. For example, you are judged to be more intelligent
and studious if you are doing a law degree than if you are studying a
performing arts degree. Previously, this need for acceptance and status was
barely noticeable but since the beginning of mass media and fast, efficient
networking abilities, the pressure really is on both genders to be the
happiest, fittest, healthiest and best dressed individual the world has ever
seen.
In this instance, fashion and advertising is being used as a
control mechanism, to force men and especially women into the right mental
state of unhappiness and dissatisfaction to spend money they don’t have on
things that they don’t need.
“We spend money that we do not have, on things
we do not need, to impress people who do not care.”
― Will Smith
― Will Smith
However, from the early Victorian era,
fashion has been a way to express status and control people. The corset is a
prime example of this. It was a way to show that a lady was the correct
socially-acceptable shape and held the right qualities to be a woman worth
marrying, but it was also a way to supress their sexuality and in some case
even caused them proper physical harm. There are recorded cases of young women
being forced into corsets by social convention and pressure, to then find that in
their later years they are so disfigured due to prolonged restriction of their
bodies whilst growing that they could never be without the corset again.
I think that all of this is ridiculous.
Women should be allowed to be women, and judged not by how they look but by
their own individual merit. I would much rather be remembered and respected not
for the fact my hair looks perfect or I’ve somehow finally achieved the
pore-less, flawless look that I’m bombarded with every day, but for my contribution
to my field or who I am as a person.
In the presentation, I particularly liked
the slide about cross-stich and swearing, as I have a very similarly themed tattoo.
