In The Two Finger Diet: How the Media Has Duped Women into Hating Themselves, author Benjamin Straight delivers a compelling sociological examination of how the American media advertises to women, a key marketing demographic ruthlessly targeted since 1870. The author traces the historical roots of this phenomenon and its development to the present, carefully scrutinizing the manipulative tactics companies have constructed to pitch the 'beauty myth' to American women. His research addresses myriad themes on the commodification of American women, including:
What is the 'perfect' female physique and who is defining it? What institutions that have emerged to combat the 'obesity plague' and provide products for aesthetic enhancement?
Straight ultimately concludes that the image of the ideal female is purposefully unattainable and leads to a malady of personal and social problems; these include eating disorders, excessive and damaging financial expenditures, and lives diminished by a sense of inadequacy. Furthermore, much of their liberty is mere illusion; their happiness is largely defined and constricted by media and advertising paradigms attempting to make American women feel inferior in order to sell them products. As such, American women will not be truly liberated until they break from the corporate bottom line.
