Body Image & Self Esteem

Some of these businesses do this in a wellbeing, ethics and health-centred way. Some of the businesses in these industries help people meet important, prioritised health goals, like helping people exercise the right amount for them, helping people eat the right way for them, and helping people to not be overweight or obese following frameworks like the Body Mass Index:

www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/index.html#InterpretedAdults

(keeping in mind that this needs to be modified for each person’s individual characteristics).

But some businesses in these industries are trying to use products and services for appearance, weight or exercise for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with health.

Therefore, you might want to weigh 50kg if you’re a female or have huge muscles if you’re a male for literally no other reason than marketing to you and your friends. There might be literally no other reason than other people’s income needs.

Why do some businesses do this?

If you look at our economics page, one of the most primary needs in this modern age is income. We need a lot of things, but if we don’t have income, that makes achieving most of the basic needs very hard. Most people need to earn an income- most people means that 4+ billion, some in very complex circumstances, each need to earn an income. How do you do this? By selling something you have created, and competing with everyone else.

In this competition, some people try to persuade people to buy things that they don’t actually need- for example- yes, eye shadow or a nice piece of clothing might increase someone’s social status by making them look nicer. But does anyone really need blush? So if you have this product, you need to make all of these strangers think that they really, really, really should buy blush (or any product equivalent).

This isn’t a “bad thing”- it is simply that if people want to get their core needs met, they need the income for this; if they want a comfortable house, they need the income for this; if they want a number of life dreams met, they need the income for this. Everybody does.

However, the side effects of this are that you might strongly believe that you should weigh a certain weight or have a certain body type or look a certain way, even if deep down, the truth is that you could be perfectly happy without any of these.

Again- this isn’t people acting bad- it is simply 4 billion people trying to get their material needs met- hopefully in ethical enough ways.

However, with an entire planet full of people, some people and some companies are incredibly good at this, both now and over the past 5 decades. This is good for their employees, their suppliers, their families and anyone who depends on them for income. It’s quite hard to compete with billions of people though- so you had better work really, really hard to sell your placemats with pictures of Walt Whitman on them or your inch long fake nails or your tunic dress.

When you think about the new addition of social media algorithms, we can be strongly marketed to for all sorts of things. If you have 4+ billion people competing with each other to sell you things, the best sellers among these might make you want things that, before you knew about them, you didn’t want.

But again- this is not bad behaviour- it is the best solution people have created over thousands and thousands of years… so far. Have a look at my Economics page to learn more ideas about this topic.