A recent piece by Ilona Burton at The Independent caught my attention. She gives a good finger wagging to those who decry the pro-ana sites as the cause of the eating disorder problem. And in general she criticizes the critics of celebrity culture as the source of all evil.
As I've argued at the site Celebrities with Eating Disorders, blaming celebrities in this manner is a ruse of self denial. Eating disorders, whether they're ours or those of our loved ones, are our responsibility, not that of some media conjured straw man. Whatever you think of pro-ana sites, it is baseless to accuse them as a direct cause. In fact, such sites are as much symptom as cause. A brief reminder of pop culture history reveals that this urge to blame some semi-anonymous "other" for the corruption of youth or the corrosion of society is a rather old cop-out.
This silliness can be traced at least back to that old totalitarian himself, Plato, who was suspicious of the corrupting impact of theater and poetry upon the youth of Athens. Of course, the explosion of mass media in the 20th century created unprecedented opportunities to blame every manner of real problem or general anxiety upon some mass medium or another.
The 1940s witnessed social condemnation of swing music as a source of moral corruption, which, it was feared, would harm the character of young men, making them poor soldiers and thus hurt the war effort. (This, remember, was the same bunch of swing dancing youth who decades after WWII would be memorialized as The Great Generation!) In the later 40s and 50s it was comic books that were the scourge; they were alleged to be responsible for an epidemic of youth violence and juvenile delinquency. (And that damn James Dean wasn't helping, either.) Meanwhile, Elvis Presley couldn't be shown on television below his hips and there was much anguish about how his primal, libidinal (dangerously black-sounding) music was causing proper young girls to swoon.
By the 60s, TV was itself a form of social decay, rotting the brains of youth everywhere. And the Beatles were supposedly causing an explosion of free love and psychedelic drug use. There was a Beatle-mania-backlash that led to angry mobs burning Beatles' records in huge bonfires, with some disc-jockeys and politicians calling it devil's music, subsequent to an impious remark by John Lennon. And in the 70s, it was the raw sensuality and physicality of disco music that was alleged to be destroying the fabric of decently modest sexual mores.
Throughout the 1980s and 90s we heard from the anguished voices of left-wing feminists lamenting that pornography created rapists and right-wing moralists warning that heavy metal music caused Satanism. Rap music supposedly caused criminality, raves were hotbeds of social decay and drug induced fatalities, while the recent World Wide Web was accused of turning young people into trance like computer zombies wasting away in their parents' basements.
This is all old stuff. Mass media have been blamed for apathy and violence, teenage pregnancy, social conformism and deviancy. No surprise that today it's blamed for both anorexia and obesity.
At the core of all this is a resolute refusal to either take responsibility for one's own actions or to accept that other's (including those we love) can choose actions that we find disturbing, despairing and destructive. Invariably, of course, such passing of the blame leads to all sorts of exaggeration and distortion. Even if that were not the case, though, the core issue would still confront us.
Each one of us is uniquely responsible for what we do, with our own lives, and in response to the choices of our loved ones. Turning others into our punching bags or scapegoats may provide some momentary relief from the burden of personal responsibility. It ultimately solves nothing, though. The celebrities of stage, screen and runway, are easy targets, but that can't (even if they wanted to) make anyone choose how to live.
If people do not take responsibility for their own actions, their own families and their own communities, every problem will be a chimera, in need of some magical solution. Blaming mass media or popular culture celebrities with eating disorders for our own choices and those of our children is magical thinking.
It creates a straw man upon which to take out our anger, disappointment and fears. But it solves nothing and only momentarily distracts us from real problems - and real solutions.
As I've argued at the site Celebrities with Eating Disorders, blaming celebrities in this manner is a ruse of self denial. Eating disorders, whether they're ours or those of our loved ones, are our responsibility, not that of some media conjured straw man. Whatever you think of pro-ana sites, it is baseless to accuse them as a direct cause. In fact, such sites are as much symptom as cause. A brief reminder of pop culture history reveals that this urge to blame some semi-anonymous "other" for the corruption of youth or the corrosion of society is a rather old cop-out.
This silliness can be traced at least back to that old totalitarian himself, Plato, who was suspicious of the corrupting impact of theater and poetry upon the youth of Athens. Of course, the explosion of mass media in the 20th century created unprecedented opportunities to blame every manner of real problem or general anxiety upon some mass medium or another.
The 1940s witnessed social condemnation of swing music as a source of moral corruption, which, it was feared, would harm the character of young men, making them poor soldiers and thus hurt the war effort. (This, remember, was the same bunch of swing dancing youth who decades after WWII would be memorialized as The Great Generation!) In the later 40s and 50s it was comic books that were the scourge; they were alleged to be responsible for an epidemic of youth violence and juvenile delinquency. (And that damn James Dean wasn't helping, either.) Meanwhile, Elvis Presley couldn't be shown on television below his hips and there was much anguish about how his primal, libidinal (dangerously black-sounding) music was causing proper young girls to swoon.
By the 60s, TV was itself a form of social decay, rotting the brains of youth everywhere. And the Beatles were supposedly causing an explosion of free love and psychedelic drug use. There was a Beatle-mania-backlash that led to angry mobs burning Beatles' records in huge bonfires, with some disc-jockeys and politicians calling it devil's music, subsequent to an impious remark by John Lennon. And in the 70s, it was the raw sensuality and physicality of disco music that was alleged to be destroying the fabric of decently modest sexual mores.
Throughout the 1980s and 90s we heard from the anguished voices of left-wing feminists lamenting that pornography created rapists and right-wing moralists warning that heavy metal music caused Satanism. Rap music supposedly caused criminality, raves were hotbeds of social decay and drug induced fatalities, while the recent World Wide Web was accused of turning young people into trance like computer zombies wasting away in their parents' basements.
This is all old stuff. Mass media have been blamed for apathy and violence, teenage pregnancy, social conformism and deviancy. No surprise that today it's blamed for both anorexia and obesity.
At the core of all this is a resolute refusal to either take responsibility for one's own actions or to accept that other's (including those we love) can choose actions that we find disturbing, despairing and destructive. Invariably, of course, such passing of the blame leads to all sorts of exaggeration and distortion. Even if that were not the case, though, the core issue would still confront us.
Each one of us is uniquely responsible for what we do, with our own lives, and in response to the choices of our loved ones. Turning others into our punching bags or scapegoats may provide some momentary relief from the burden of personal responsibility. It ultimately solves nothing, though. The celebrities of stage, screen and runway, are easy targets, but that can't (even if they wanted to) make anyone choose how to live.
If people do not take responsibility for their own actions, their own families and their own communities, every problem will be a chimera, in need of some magical solution. Blaming mass media or popular culture celebrities with eating disorders for our own choices and those of our children is magical thinking.
It creates a straw man upon which to take out our anger, disappointment and fears. But it solves nothing and only momentarily distracts us from real problems - and real solutions.
About the Author:
Keep tabs on us for all the scoop on all manner of controversies over Celebrities with Eating Disorders . Mickey Jhonny is a super source of insightful and provocative articles on popular culture. If you're a fan of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, his piece ripping off the cover of its dirty little secret is an absolute must read.
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