Being a twenty-five year old women I know all about the “Iron Maiden”, and have been forced to come to terms with it on my own. The authors of The Iron Maiden made some great points and this has been my favorite reading to date for this class. I relate to more of this reading than I care to admit. I am reluctantly going to let it all loose, not knowing if I am supposed to or not. Here goes. In my teen years I never fit in with the status quo. I listened to different music, I didn’t care for the popular dress code (that’s what it is in Staten Island – A dress code not fashion) and I really could care less what other people looked like or listened to. What I did know was that I CAN NOT BE FAT and I CAN NOT HAVE PIMPLES. I remember sitting outside my high school with a couple of friends. Sitting on the cold concrete I pulled out a copy of Seventeen from my messenger bag. I flipped through the pages while the other girls talked and giggled. “What the fuck is this?” I recall interrupting causing laughter. I went on to show them how each girl had the perfect skin and stick thin figure. They even seemed to have a glow…”how does your skin naturally glow like that?” As they laughed I had to repeat how serious I was. “Why do all these girls have perfect glowing skin?” “How do I get skin like that?” By the end of my rant I was just pissed off. Not only did I have more pimples than a girl ever wants, but my friends turned my serious question into a filthy joke. I thought that my answer would be in the magazine. I searched through and found that a handful of companies like Neutrogena, Noxzema, and Oxy advertised they were the best. A beautiful girl washes her face with Noxzema; another girl’s prom night was saved by Oxy and dermatologists recommend Neutrogena. At home I am bombarded with more perfect images of women on television along with commercials for diet pills. When I got some money I blew it all on these products and my first indulgence into the ever lying world of diet pills.
The facial cleansing products caused my skin to break out even more. I soon visited a real dermatologist (not one made up by Neutrogena) who told me I have sensitive skin, and that I could not use these over the counter cleansing products on my skin because it is too harsh and causes me irritation. I was chubby in high school but not obese (that came later) but this didn’t stop me from plunging head first into the dangerous world of the diet industry. “Surrounded by ads that depict the Iron Maiden as a stick figure, few women can eat in peace. On any given day, 25 percent of American women are dieting, and another 50 percent are finishing, breaking, or starting diets.” The Glamour survey found that 50 percent of respondents used diet pills, 27 percent used liquid formula diets, 18 percent used diuretics, 45 percent fasted, 18 percent used laxatives, and 15 percent engaged in self-induced vomiting.” While women have purged and starved themselves, the diet industry has grown fat.” For the next five years you name it – I tried it. I became so obsessed with what people thought of me I fell into depression At this time the weight I struggled to keep down ballooned higher than ever and at the age of 22 I developed acne…again. It was this time I was seduced by another industry. Meet Zoloft, Paxil & Wellbutrin. These commercials convinced me I needed help, that I wasn’t abnormal, and with a visit to my physician I could get this magic medicine that would turn it all around and no one would ever know. At 23 I gave in, after a trip to the doctor’s office I was prescribed paxil. Within a week I felt a lot better. I stopped caring what people might think of me…within a six months I stopped caring about anything altogether. I weened myself off the drug. A year later I gave in again, but this time to good old diet and exercise, which is working, better for me than any diet pill I could have imagined.
The authors of Iron Maiden make a strong point when they proclaim “advertising helps to keep the masses dissatisfied with their mode of life, discontented with the ugly things around them. Satisfied customers are not as profitable as discontented ones”; and I truly have proven to be gullible. What I didn’t know and found out the hard way is that if you can’t love and accept yourself you will never be happy with your appearance. I embarrassingly know I fell for it all. Jacobson and Mazur do question whether “ads cause harmful social effects or simply mirror them”. It is both, we have to take responsibility for our actions.
*On a side note, I really appreciated that the authors didn’t strictly write this article about women only. It pointed out that advertisements are an equal opportunity offender, as they pull on the insecurities of men almost equally.
