Fashion, Thinness, and Female Empowerment:
smoking as a modern feminine lifestyle in the U.S.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18568/cmc.v20i58.2849Keywords:
cigarettes, lean body, neoliberalism, biopolitcs, feminismAbstract
Our objective is to verify the performance of advertising communication as a biopolitical call for body thinness, and for a lifestyle that associates thinness, fashion, and female empowerment through smoking, between the 1920s and 1990s in the United States. For this, we analyzed an empirical material composed of cigarette ads aimed at women from three American brands (Lucky Strike, Max, and Virginia Slims), aired in two periods (1920-1930 and 1970-1990). As a theoretical-methodological procedure, we will be guided by reflections on biopolitics (FOUCAULT), biopolitical calls (PRADO), female body, beauty, and aesthetic pressure (BORDO and FEATHERSTONE), and stigma to the fat body (FARREL and FRASER). These ads show a biopolitics that acts on the body of the female population in two moments, first for the thin body, in the 1920s, and then, in the 1980s and 1990s, for the modern lifestyle. They also evidence a paradox in "choosing" to engage in practices that ultimately reinforce the norms of the body, going against the freedom and equal rights that women had earned.
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