Women Commercialized: Having a Woman's Body is Existing Through a Problem-Product

Normalized -and expected- self-hatred did not start with us despite it maintaining its status quo through us. It is normal to look into our reflection and list the things we despise seeing; indeed, it is a daily practice for many of us. The habitual repetition of mantras that tell a defect, the self-dooming litany we all affirm and reaffirm in the name of (conventional) beauty. While it is my pre-destined purpose to blame the system, it is also my mission to wake myself up, and others, to the system and deconstruct how it functions through its microorganisms which have secured a comfortable overstay in our daily lives, such as social media, magazines, and tv shows. Humans of any gender, especially women, have been mere objects to be commercialized to sell a product and be of profit to the rich.

To have a body is to shame it for just being. We could categorize and then alphabetically organize the ‘’flaws’’ over which we have walked the walk of shame in the school corridors, on the beach, after getting out of dressing rooms, at crappy parties, and many more locations where all we had to do instead was just exist. But to do that is to be not pretty. And as renowned musician Mitski uttered before, and I know many of us can relate to her in this quote: ‘’But If I gave up on being pretty, I wouldn’t know how to be alive.’’ And the catch is that they know this. The industry cannibals know that we thrive on being applauded for not having the ‘’flaws’’ that they make us believe are flaws. So, this article will talk about a ''flaw'' of design: cellulite. 

Have you ever wondered who or what made way to celebrity or non-celebrity women being on the covers of high-end magazines with their upper thighs circled with blood-red colors and an equally shameful red arrow pointing out their fatal flaw, cellulite? Cellulite was unearthed in 1873 by French doctors Émile Littré and Charles-Philippe Robin. It was defined to be tissue that was in a state of inflammation. Its status quo maintained the neutral placement until 1933 when French Magazine Votre Beauté presented it as a feminine issue to be solved. So, cellulite, or the harmless dimples that appear mostly on the upper part of our thighs due to factors like skin structure, muscle condition beneath the skin, hormones, genetics, and age, became a women's medical condition from which the beauty industry could profit.

We all know this telltale by heart: things we were unaware of about our bodies growing up are now marketed to us as ''flaws'' to be corrected and refined. Then, upon many others, came the ‘’problem’’ of cellulite to sell gazillions of pennies worth of ‘’tropical creams’’ and ‘’cellulite-ending thingies,’’ and ‘’miracle solutions’’ which helped -generously- the post-war French medical economy to revitalize the inevitably -depolluted from trivial matters- post-war women’s manufactured feminine insecurity.

Now, the world is experiencing another millennium, there have been multiple people on the face of the moon, and scientists are having conversations about probable life on other universes, let alone planets. Yet, here we are still influenced by the system and its ravenous industries. I do not know when women’s bodies will be just bodies that exist and not be scrutinized, profited, and scapegoated. It is easy said than done, that I know. And I also know that change starts from within. May the previous generation and its demons not be victorious through and through. Here is to generational healers.