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i should be a bit clearer: i dont think that problems generated for body image by the usual run of things in viscult is the result of a conspiracy of producers of advertising material--i think it is mostly an unintended consequence--that you can think about in system terms and integrate into other patterns of domination.
what i wonder about is the extent to which these images function as reference points across the board, with explicit problems resulting for a subset of people.
if anything like that is true, then questions of relatively "shallowness" of members of that subset--those folk for whom these images generate problems--is moot.
i can say that i do not consider myself to be particularly shallow, but that i have some trouble synching up my image of myself physically with how i appear to be these days--all kinds of strange things result from this--like a tendency to suppress--to the point of sometimes not experiencing--desire; this strange assumption that seems to come from nowhere i can get to that i should not experience it or need not experience it--all this comes from my reaction to being 300 lbs or so heavier than i am now and my reaction to that experience. since i dont enjoy a spectator's relation to my own psyche, i cant say the extent to which these reactions derived from any particular source: but i can say that if there are problems of synch between who or what you imagine yourself to be, or what you are physically as over against what you feel that you should be, that they are real and complicated problems.
it seems to me ridiculous to attempt to limit them to Others who you have decided are Shallower than You.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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