The Reducing Craze – Physical Culture Study. Reducing and the Rising Consumer Culture. America saw the beginnings of what we know as a consumer culture emerge. The Weight Loss ProgramAccording to that great bastion of knowledge, Wikipedia, Consumer Culture is a social and economic order and ideology that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever- greater amounts. But it’s more than that. Consumer culture is predicated on the idea that acquisition of goods or indeed of health, contains an intrinsic value. Mike Featherstone has argued that, “Consumer culture uses advertising to generate continual dissatisfaction and self consciousness, especially in the age of physical appearance to get people to buy exercise courses, pills etc.”In the 1. Product X/Y/Z in order to be happy. This was especially true in the case of reducing, where women were told that to be happy was to be slim. To be fat was to be unhappy. The number of reducing advertisements in magazines tripled from 1. The main vehicle for such messages? Magazines dealing with the emerging power of Hollywood. Showbiz and Slimming. Hollywood, and popular media in the US, had a lot to do with the reducing craze of the 1. Star truly began to sweep America. No longer were actors and actresses peripheral figures. They were now seen as contributing to, and influencing the zeitgeist. Magazines began to emerge detailing the routines of actresses, filled with titillating rumors and photos of the stars. Richard De. Cordova classified this process as the creation of a Star Discourse. De. Cordova argued that the movie Star’s influence (be they male or female), began to expand beyond the cinema and into the emerging consumer culture. In the 1920s a new fitness craze hit white America called reducing. This was no ordinary weight loss craze. Weight Loss in 1920s America: The Reducing Craze. The Newest Weight Loss Craze – Artichoke Pills. People have been asking me to research this new “natural” weight loss pill for several weeks now. She has been working out regularly for a few years but she admits it’s not easy to lose weight. Is Sugar the New Health Food Craze? Don't Believe the Hype. On the 17-Day Diet plan or is it just another weight loss. New Diet Plan: The 17-Day Diet. That’s what the latest diet craze. New weight loss craze It works in a number of ways to promote fat burning: it by nature shuts out fat product, enhances your metabolism, and restrains your hunger. Actors and actresses became brand ambassadors for a new way of life concerned with material consumption and health. Health in many ways became the latest thing to be consumed. So when photos emerged on a weekly basis of slim female stars, US marketers began to promote products to turn the average woman into a Hollywood star. The parallels with the current debate about body image and size 0 models are particularly apt in this case. Hollywood stars became a mirror for measuring one’s own physique against. In much the same way that men had looked at Eugen Sandow in the 1. US women were looking towards Hollywood as a means of judging their own appearance. A dangers combination that led to a cacophony of dangerous and frankly useless, reducing products emerging in the US market. The End of Reducing. For the greater part of the 1. US marketers. As consumers demanded more and more, advertisements, endorsements and sponsorships increased year on year. It wasn’t until the Wall Street Crash of 1. Whilst 1. 92. 9 may have marked the formal death of reducing products, it’s fair to say that the factors that drove the craze, namely body consciousness, consumer culture and popular media, continue to drive our own health fads, Whilst we may sneer at the ridiculousness of the reducing advertisements, the emphasis on appearance, on consuming health and on quick fixes to weight loss, has remained to the present day.
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