Showing and Telling: The Unstable Identities Inherent in Performance and Supplement

When cultures read bodies, the results are often accepted as an expression of some

internal essence, and such misguided representations have the potential to continually

shape the subject’s self-perceptions. As the only means of feedback, the bodily meanings

formed because of the convergence of sedimented cultural ideas with physical signifiers

will not only become cultural references, but personal definitions as well. However,

instability inevitably emerges within these interactions, and the subject’s longing to

embrace enduring meanings transforms these instabilities into psychological, albeit

tenuous, certainties. Dieting, then, is the means by which a constantly changing body can

be propelled into a state of control as the mind imposes a narrative over the wavering

physical body, or, as Hilell Schwartz writes in the “Prologue” of Never Satisfied, “As

slow miracle or instant metamorphosis, diets deal in possibility” (4). When it comes to

dieting, the possibility remains that the mind and, of course, the body can be brought

under control. Within the diet industry, nothing offers the hope of greater restraint more

than the dietary supplement, and, as either an appetite suppressant or metabolic

accelerant, the promise of bodily domination lies underneath the claims.

Since bodies are constantly being read, and, as Susan Bordo most emphatically

demonstrates, bodies are constantly being interpreted as metaphorical representations of

personal habits and character traits, the cultivation of the body as the manifestation of

mental traits is paramount. When considering the transference of mental traits to bodily

form, the ways in which bodies are manifested within a culture needs to be considered as

a means to discerning the ontological underpinnings behind the particular moment at

which the body is read. The most important tool for uncovering this ontological

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perspective can be found in the before and after pictures for diet pills. Diet pill images

offer readings corresponding to the modes by which cultural perceptions are made

manifest in personal narratives centered on the body. By looking at diet pill

advertisements, a cultural illusion is exposed, and through an examination of the images

and accompanying narratives, readers can piece together the process by which the final,

and more controlled, manifestations were attained. In this way, the advertisements

themselves serve to highlight the unending process of bodily development. By

displaying the processes by which subjects come to be read as the body toward which

their mental traits had been striving, these advertisements only more firmly establish the

contentiousness of the link between the corporeal and the pre-existing self within the

subject.

When it comes to diet pills, diet programs, and weight loss supplements, success

stories provide invaluable tools for marketing the products. Particularly, before and after

photos become visual implements evoking predetermined responses from potential

consumers. The photos show everyone the story: I went through this wonderful visual

transformation, and, if you follow my example, these results are attainable. The

narratives that accompany each set of photos also tell the story to anyone willing to read

it: my life was not what I wanted it to be, I lost weight, and now I have everything I have

ever wanted. The combination of these techniques proves too powerful for many to

resist.

However, when a closer look is taken, some problems develop concerning the

ways in which the two stories’ validity is established. Each set of pictures offers the

viewer a clear depiction of the transformation of each body, and when showing the

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subjects’ accomplishments, these pictures rely on the viewer’s ability to form meanings

in a similar way to that of the subject. The desired results depend on the meanings

assumed by the subject about their own bodies and the narratives formed by the viewers

merging into a cohesive story. In other words, the ability to have the pictures correctly

understood relies on the subject’s preconceived narrative fostering the desired outcome

within the minds of viewers. Consequently, the success of showing readers what can be

attained depends on the extent to which viewers also agree that the narrative being shown

is the narrative actually being embodied by the images.

In addition, the written narratives provide another reading of the body’s

development, which explains the achievements of the dieters even more. For each given

set of pictures, these written narratives hold the verbal cues needed to successfully

construct the desired meaning proposed between readers and the narrative’s author.

What remains the most important aspect of these types of narratives centers on the ways

in which previous (overweight) lives are implicitly juxtaposed to new and improved

(normal weight) lives. Every key aspect of the new lives projected is defined, directly

and indirectly, by how different it has become from the previous behaviors,

characteristics, and habits experienced before the body’s transformation.

After demonstrating how these narratives are confirmed by readers, each one of

these stories will, at last, need to be reconsidered with a post-structural perspective, a

perspective grounded in identifying deconstructing moments and possible interventions.

Within this post-structural perspective, these products will need to be deconstructed to

point out the inability of each relied upon ideal to remain firm, complete, and closed.

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The very nature of the products themselves will point out the inconsistencies that exist

between the whole being proposed and the supplements needed to attain the whole.

Showing

Because diet pills have offered a multitude of images, the most important means

for understanding the embodied meanings of subjects is through the use of Judith Butler’s

conceptions of gender. Fundamentally, Butler plainly writes, in “Performative Acts and

Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” that “social

agents constitute social reality through language, gesture, and all manner of symbolic

social sign” (270). The social sign becomes the basis on which meaning is made about

the subject in question (whether male or female or, in this case, fat or thin) by each

viewer. Gestures and symbolic signs engender a meaning on which both the subject and

the viewer cannot help but agree since each meaning is merely the convergence of

personal traits with cultural references. Meaning is constituted, never part of an inner self

waiting for expression.

Butler also points out the ways in which gender comes into being as a readable,

recognizable object. She writes, “Significantly, if gender is instituted through acts which

are internally discontinuous, then the appearance of substance is precisely that, a

constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience,

including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief”

(271). If we can substitute fat bodies for gender, a grasp of how performatives are

accomplished for the fat body that becomes thin is attainable. The appearance of specific

bodily results will always remain just that, and the discontinuous, contingent nature of the

performed acts remains socially obscured as belief in the product supercedes its

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ontological truth. When gender, or body size, is performed, the mere recognition of the

social act always proves more important than its underlying production. Further, as

performatives accomplish their goals in the creation of a bodily meaning, each

accomplishment fosters meaning by “rendering specific of a set of historical possibilities”

(272). The sets of images produced for diet pill advertisements inevitably come to be

seen as the real embodiment of the proposed appearance, which must be based on

whatever social possibilities are currently available. As the images of fat bodies who

become thin are proposed, so too are the unstable beliefs supporting the ways in which

these bodies are supposed to be read.

When physically looking at the images provided, certain storylines are offered to

viewers as a means of producing desired, deliberate performances. Each person depicted

is already a paid model, and each set of images willingly performs all the internal traits

supposedly manifest on every fat and thin body. Two different diet supplements will

offer two sets of pictures: Hydroxycut and RapidslimSX. These two represent well-

known and well-advertised products.

The first product, Hydroxycut, offers Jon as its resident spokesman, placing him

in national commercials lauding the product (See Figure 1). In his set of images, Jon is

offering his body to us in hopes that we will acknowledge the obvious struggle his life is

undergoing. He tries to stay fit, evinced by his already-developed arms, chest, and neck.

However, all of his efforts fall just short of the hard body expected of men. Jon’s picture

shows his ability to perform the typical experience: an experience purported to be layered

with over-consumption (the protruding belly), and general lethargy (the sagging, slumped

posture). These performances are supposed to impress on viewers the notions that Jon is

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losing the battle he is supposed to be waging against the expansion of the flesh attached

to his body, as it continually drags his body down in ways beyond his control. He wants

us to see his body as losing its ability to remain tight, which is to say controlled, directed,

and distinctly formed. Jon’s picture allows viewers to visually accept the body

performed as the only way the body can be seen.

After Jon’s grueling eight-week ordeal, his performance has changed

dramatically, as viewers are asked to find his performance as the real definition of his

self. Now that his body is tightly controlled, Jon is able to hold his shoulders back, lifting

his body. His arms no longer dangle uselessly at his sides, and, instead, are held slightly

away from the body, allowing each body part to be seen separately, not as a single mass

(seen in the previous image). The belly has gone away, offering a new performance for

the supposed consumptive power inherent within Jon. He no longer is forced to live with

his body protruding onto the world, and his new performance allows viewers to find him

living up to the ideal that was within his own body, maximizing himself, not merely

performing the dominant male role.

Jon’s performance directs viewers to follow his journey from his previously

stigmatized body to the new body proposed. Previously, Jon was shown to be taking up

space, allowing his body parts to expand without direction onto the world. Following his

transformation, Jon’s body is now partaking of and living within the definable world.

From the ways in which his body had merely taken up space, a clear manifestation of

taking in resources, the more correct (innate?) performance centers on Jon’s ability to

define for himself the space his body will take up, leaving this final step of control in his

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power. While taking up space with his body, Jon’s body was the current extension of his

will and control over the world, which was continually conspiring against his inner self.

Another well-known product, RapidslimSX, uses a similar technique to explain

the transformation of a young women who has used the product. Sydney’s picture offers

viewers the performance expected of a typical young woman (see Figure 2). When

reaching the age of being a professional, certain aspects of Sydney’s life are supposed to

become harder to maintain, and her body’s new shape defined by its impressionability.

Her body is offered as the soft manifestation of the ways in which others are taking parts

of her, stopping her from achieving or maintaining the real inner self she had embodied in

the past. Further, her performance is also dominated by the act of doing for others

instead of herself. Certain maternal characteristics are also performed more obviously

with the overstated bikini bra amplifying her breasts. Also, instead of staying active and

fit, Sydney’s body is asking viewers to find her body moderately overweight, performing

her flesh as being unable to be contained by an undersized bikini bottom. Ironically the

out of control flesh is assumed to be produced by a never-ending personal indulgence,

but, for Sydney, her performance hinges on the ways in which viewers read her body as

providing for others first.

After a five-month weight loss period, Sydney’s body is performing very

differently. Her bikini outfit remains the same size, but now every individual body part is

easily contained within the limits of the fabric. Her breasts easily rest within her top, and

her hips are no longer bulging around her bottom piece. More importantly, her body is

performing its ability to define itself. Viewers can now see Sydney’s body as the

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manifestation of her ability to draw her body as she desires, not allowing the impositions

of others to continue to define the body to which she is relegated.

Sydney has moved away from a body that had grown beyond her inner self

because of her adopted performances, performances dominated by the ways in which she

could provide for others. Sydney’s transition from an impressionable body to one upon

which she can impress herself forms the core of her new body’s performance. She has

impressed upon her body the shape she knows to be a more realistic expression of the

inner body she believes to be real. Sydney has shown viewers she can perform

effectively the body of a mom who has shaped herself actively, instead of allowing others

to define her body’s shape. Her performance is also dominated by the notion of total

attainment; she can have a baby while also impressing on her body her desired shape.

When performing, each social agent, to use Butler’s term, must merely act. The

meanings are not made before the performance, and, consequently, both Jon and Sydney

have their bodies on display in hopes that viewers will form the meanings they do when

they look at their images. Only by looking at these images can either the subject or the

viewer actually make a meaning, which directly fosters the need for both pictures to be

presented. Presented alone, the images would flounder in the numerous cultural

references at its disposal, but, with the pair, each image is given the chance to stake its

claim to the historical possibilities available. By knowing the product’s intent and being

offered a visual narrative in a direct form, viewers can finally allow the references to be

attached to their appropriate performances, as the viewer merely reconstitutes the

possibilities of each image.

Telling

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Each visual narrative offers all the pieces needed to assemble a coherent,

complete story of each body’s transformation, but, in case viewers didn’t quite

understand all that was going on with each visual narrative, a written one is provided as

well. Each written narrative relies on some of the same principles as the visual

narratives. Both reader and author need to use the cultural references available to make

meaning, and both also need to commit to the narratives as much veracity as possible. As

will be seen, each written narrative is the means by which ideals are grounded and

reinforced by both authors and readers alike.

Most of what readers learn about Jon’s life before Hydroxycut is told through the

juxtaposition available in his brief diet narrative. He was eating “two or three huge meals

a day, which were mostly carb-rich foods,” which helped contribute to the body he

disliked (Jon). The time constraints of graduate courses also changed his habits and

body. The narrative is asking us to take a few pieces of information and extrapolate them

into the back story Jon already predetermined he was going to convey, including an

ending Jon had already formulated as he guided us to his particularized reading. The

graduate course work helped define a stressful time in his life, allowing some of the

responsibility for the change in his body size to be attributed to things beyond his control.

The lack of time led directly to the large meals, which are supposed to be read as binging

episodes, not defined, controlled meal times. The carb-rich foods bring with them other

characteristics, too. These food choices are supposed to be read as poor decision making

(nonetheless made by some one who is studying to become a medical doctor). His life

before his miraculous transformation, then, is dominated by a lack of knowledge and

control, which manifests as an excess of the body. Jon was unable to control his time,

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possibly triggered by his now-lethargic body, and The resulting lazy attitude carried over

into his decision-making abilities with food. In order to deflect these detrimental

attributes, which enable him to later say that they were not really what his body (or life)

actually is, Jon immediately offers the time constraints school forced onto him as

evidence of his mind's innocence in allowing his body to become undesireable.

Jon’s narrative directly states that the decision to change his lifestyle habits and

patterns actually is the point at which his life physically began to change. This important

revelation appeals to our ability to successfully negotiate Jon’s account of his mind’s

ability to overcome the problems that had previously plagued his body. Then, after this

decision was made, Jon “felt more confident and in control” (Jon). The ways in which

the mind is the vehicle by which the body can be transformed centers on Jon’s ability to

take back control of this life. If his life was previously out of control, manifested by his

out of shape body, then to have control over his life directly leads to his control over his

body. He also changed his eating habits, eating evenly spaced, small meals. The

confidence again translates into a physical manifestation as Jon curbs what had been

depicted as consumption beyond his control. His desires have been mastered through his

more controlled mind and life. He finally states “Getting in shape takes self-control and

commitment. Not only will you look good, but you’ll also feel better about yourself”

(Jon). Jon’s appeal to readers finally revolves around the objective account of happiness

rendered by the presentation of a specific body type.

In the narrative construction of life before and after Hydroxycut, Jon is appealing

to the reader's predisposition to agree with the narrative's accounts of his bodily

transformation. However, since the narrative’s goals also dictate its rhetoric, viewers are

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also asked to identify with Jon for commercial purposes. When we learn that Jon is in

school to become a doctor, our own poor decisions become even more acceptable. If

some one as educated as Jon can reveal his own problems with weight control, then

readers, too, should feel no shame in accepting the help available through a fine product

like Hydroxycut. Most of this narrative’s rhetorical power lies in the viewer’s ability to

internalize Jon’s struggle as their own, allowing guilt-free purchasing decisions.

In addition to Jon’s economic aims, the narrative itself engenders a type of guided

invention Jon wishes readers understand concerning his life. In order to extend meaning

beyond the few words in the narrative of Jon’s utter success, Jean Paul Sartre’s idea on

writing can explain the ways in which writing becomes a negotiation. Sartre writes, in

"What is Literature," “To write is to make an appeal to the reader that he read into

objective existence the revelation which I have undertaken by means of language” (54).

By writing, Jon has expressed his desire to make objective the subjective narrative he had

envisioned before even contributing his written narrative. Further, the acceptance of

Jon’s story by the reader is the vehicle by which the story he had hoped was written is

actually given objectivity, creating a mutually inclusive collaboration between the writer

and reader which engages the production of the already-established work to be taken as

fact.

Like Jon’s narrative, Sydney’s narrative guides readers down a specific path

geared towards allowing culpability to be abated. Sydney instantly tells readers some key

details about her life before her Rapidslim transformation. Even though she continued to

run a successful business as a mental health professional, Sydney allowed external

influence to dominate her life. Her child took up time, and she was forced to eat junk

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food at times of convenience, not designated periods. Overall, Sydney laments,

“Although, my life was successful on the outside, I felt miserable and disgusted on the

inside” (Sydney). For Sydney, raising a healthy child and running a successful mental

health facility were not sufficient in instilling confidence and happiness. Sydney declares

she let the complications of life interfere with spending time on herself, and the

complications remain as predictable as possible as she allows nearly any female reader

who has had a child to empathize with her plight. A career woman is supposed to keep

her business going and sacrifice herself for the good of others, especially a new child.

She is supposed to let herself go because she loses control of her life, her actions, and her

emotions. Sydney finally states, in case the point was obscure, “I felt aggravated, angry,

and ashamed knowing I had completely let myself go” (Sydney). Sydney’s narrative

builds towards a truth rooted in giving to others, a typically feminine role with which she

hopes other moms will identify.

Sydney’s life takes a familiar, dramatic turn away from shame and back towards

the better days before gaining weight. Sydney directly recognizes a turning point, and

she writes, after finding an old picture of herself, “I was thin, toned, and confident in

myself” (Sydney). The choice was made, and the transformation began, with little regard

as to why her mind was unable to curb her body’s urges previously. After losing the

weight, her confidence soars, and now her happiness can be reflected both on the inside

and outside of her body. Within this narrative, the power of the mind becomes

prominent, and readers are asked to see how making a decision to change her life actually

engendered a different body. Readers should not have doubted the power of her mind

since she was already well-educated, and she appears to definitely have recaptured the

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ability to control her life through her thoughts, an important aspect of mental health.

Readers can easily place themselves into Sydney’s world, a world in which the mental

power remains strong enough to overcome bodily urges.

One key aspect of Sydney’s story evolves when readers attempt to understand

what Rapidslim really helped her accomplish. She wants others to see how she was

finally able to take control of her life, slowly gaining energy for her daily activities and

becoming more deliberate with her food choices. Her new, ideal life is only produced

when readers begin to confirm what Sydney offers. Sartre writes, “Thus, the writer

appeals to the reader’s freedom to collaborate in the production of his work” (54).

Sydney is asking for the freedom to commit to her story as she tells it, and her insistence

on happiness and unhappiness being associated with body size helps guide the reader’s

invention. Whether she was truly ashamed at a higher weight and proud after losing

weight carries only as much weight as readers give to it. In order for a narrative to

establish these facts, something must be fulfilled, or as Sartre writes, “If [the writer]

wishes to make demands he must propose only the task to be fulfilled” (56). This is

exactly the task proposed by Sydney. Readers are asked to turn her subjective feelings of

shame and anger into objective feelings directly associated with the size of her body.

Once the narrative sets forth the task, readers must fulfill the narrative’s purpose, which,

in this case, includes directly relating mental well being to physical weight.

Unstable Identities

When deciding how to read the presented body, readers take certain initiatives;

however, these initiatives on the part of the reader are inherently grounded in particular

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choices--choices locked in time and culture--used in the development of meaning. As the

subjects propose images of their bodies and the narratives of their transformations, the

author, and consequently reader, arrests the proliferation of possible meanings with

specific ideals. Jon's accompanying narrative directly proclaims, "But Jon made an

important decision to get on track with proper nutrition and regular exercise, and after

that, things changed" (Jon). The crux of Jon's argument centers on our agreement with

Jon on a key ideal: the mind has power over the body. Jacques Derrida, in Of

Grammatology, reads all conceptions of ideals as suspect because of the non-referential

nature of language. One important aspect Derrida focuses on is the supplement,

especially as it relates to Rousseau. As a word with two distinct meanings the

contradictory nature of its usage escapes the authors ability. Derrida writes, “The way in

which [Rousseau] determines the concept and, in so doing, lets himself be determined by

that very thing that he excludes from it, the direction in which he bends it, here as

addition, there as substitute, …neither an unconsciousness nor a lucidity on the part of the

author” (1830). Derrida continues, “And what we call production is necessarily a text,

the system of a writing and of a reading which we know is ordered around its own blind

spot” (1830). For Derrida, then, writing can be full of limiting, contrary words which can

take on meanings as the reader sees fit, since nothing is outside the text. The author’s

blind spot is the negating meaning possible within a text’s reading, and the idea of adding

or substituting to a whole (a whole in the author’s mind, at least) brings into question the

completeness of the original idea.

The simple word supplement, then, functions as Derrida’s sticking point for

arguing against a signified outside the text. Penelope Deutscher, in How to Read

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Derrida, further explores Derrida’s reading of Rousseau. For Rousseau, the supplement

forever takes the place of something else, to which Deutscher writes, “Is the notion of the

supplement coherent within his writings? To answer this question, we must ask: if

everything is a supplement, what is supposed to ‘have been’ supplemented?” (40). When

applying this complicated concept to the ideas proposed by diet advertisements, readers

first need to understand what is being supplemented. For both Jon and Sydney, the

control of the body by the mind is supplemented with diet pills. When readers expand

the supplemented items further, control over the body’s appetites, energy levels, and

bodily urges are also simultaneously supplemented by the diet pills. As a result, what

‘has been’ supplemented becomes questionable as an uncontaminated ideal: the mind’s

control over the body.

When reading Jon's narrative in this light, this proposed ideal, and its assumed

perfectible nature, becomes the focus of our acceptance of Jon's claim. Readers must

believe the mind has control over the body, but, based on what product Jon is pitching,

another reality emerges. Before the transformation, Jon was unable to control his body

and its impulses and indulgences. He directly states that other things became distractions

as his mind lost its grip over the real body available. After his transformation, though,

Jon's mind is miraculously able to keep his appetite, energy levels, and impulses easily

under control, stating "Getting in shape takes self-control and commitment" (Jon).

Obviously, Jon is skipping over a very important aspect: he is not able to control his body

through direct power by his mind. His control is now composed of a synthetic mind

which engenders an illusion of the mind's control over the body. By deconstructing Jon's

control over his body, the perfectly powerful mind formed by the narrative becomes

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irrelevant as merely a cultural supposition given an ephemeral objective existence beyond

the written text, a temporal moment in which Jon's narrative appears to have textual

substance. By exposing the inability of Jon's mind to control his body, all other

constructions start to break down.

When considering the ways in which Sydney implores readers to understand her

new body as the inner self she always has been, the idea of the supplement also comes

into play. Sydney writes, “Under all that weight I had lost the person I once was”

(Sydney). If the expression of a real inner self was such an automatic notion, it would

become nearly impossible to contaminate, but, instead, it has been shrouded by her

physical body. In order to find her inner self, then, Sydney supplements her real body

with chemically altered body, undercutting any notion of what her inner self actually

could be. As an inner self, its natural expression should automatically present itself, and

since its expression is dependent on the intervention of a chemical compound, the inner

self was never available in the beginning.

Another point Derrida also calls into question is violence inherent in the

hierarchies constituting the structure of language, pointing out how subordinated terms

can be seen as tantamount to the definition of the superior terms because of the inability

to the superior term to be fully extricated from the subordinated. Deutscher explores

Derrida’s ideas concerning this relationship.

[Derrida] suggests that such devaluations give cosmetic stability or

identity to what is valued. Such a reading overturns these hierarchies

suggesting ways in which the devaluation has the ‘upper hand’ over what

is valued. It would have been more difficult to assert white superiority in

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colonial politics without its deprecation of and contrast to its negative

opposite: the image of the savage, barbaric other. Pointing out this

dependency on the ‘other’ is a means of reversing the hierarchy. (26)

Within this light, the hierarchical nature of certain opposition proposed by Jon and

Sydney can be explored. Both Jon and Sydney refer to the time during which they were

overweight as unnatural and quite objectionable. This sagging middle section of their

narrative depicts having that extra weight as destroying the body and mind’s well being.

For example, Jon has clear notions concerning the superiority of his transformed self over

his previous self, but, in doing so, he inadvertently depicts his idea of a superior self to be

dependent on the subordinated part of this structural binary. When defining his new self,

Jon mentions how he feels "more confident and in control" (Jon). His confidence

depends on the control he has over his body, which has already been proven to be utterly

illusory, so the control supposedly manifested is dependent on the lack of control his fat

body exhibited. The power to produce any control at all, then, rests in the lack of power

associated with the fat body he desperately hopes to juxtapose himself against now.

Crystallization

The performative aspects involved in reading a body show viewers the ways in

which meaning becomes the sole commodity of the time during which the cultural

references and personal traits merge, not the possession of any real self. The negotiated

readings associated with making any real meaning from written narratives illustrates how

readers perceive narratives as they develop in accordance with an author’s intention,

producing a narrative’s meaning which is again dependent on references outside of the

text. These two aspects of visual and written narratives inevitably produce a clear

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crystallization of cultural references, meanings, and aspirations. Each meaning produced

between viewers and the images brings with it the temporal crystallization of the culture

in which it is shown. The cultural references producing our readings of Jon’s fat body

are particular to the time in which it is shown, and viewers cannot help but conceive of a

meaning that is a clear derivative of culture. In addition, Sydney’s hope for a more

expressive representation of her real inner self is also, out of necessity, the aspirations of

the culture in which she writes her narrative. By writing her narrative Sydney is tapping

into the collective cultural aspirations that yearn for the real self to become uncovered

from the obstacles in its way.

By exploring the ways in which images and written narratives call into being

meanings dependent on narrative structure, readers can begin to more clearly see the

constructed nature of the images proposed by diet pills and their advertisements. Most

important, though, is the realization that with each image, quote, narrative, or

commercial, a supposed person is given subjectivity. When Jon asks readers to confirm

the fact that he was fat and out of control, Jon is actually asking readers to confirm the

fact that Jon actually exists, and if Jon is going to call himself into being, he might as

well construct his life in a way that others will read as positive. Readers are merely his

accomplice in manifestation. Sydney wants others to see the super-mom image, creating

a positive outcome for her life. No matter how each diet pill sells itself, each pushes the

life the culture dictates is possible, and audiences must find each story accessible and

plausible, forcing each diet pill to carefully construct its actors in ways the culture will

read properly. The largest detriment, as can be seen with deconstructive analysis, is that

each constructed subject will never move beyond the performed self, beyond the text

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provided to readers, leaving the anticipated hope of each subject just as elusive as all

externally signified content.

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Figure 1: Jon, a Hydroxycut Success Story

Figure 2: Sydney, a RpidslimSX Success Story

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Works Cited

Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Tenth

Anniversary Edition. Berkeley: U California P, 2003.

Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in

Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." From Performing Feminisms:Feminist

Critical Theory and Theatre. Ed. Case, Sue-Ellen. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP,

1990. 270-282.

Derrida, Jacques. From Of Grammatology. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.

Eds.Vincent B. Leitch et al. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. 1822-30.

Deutscher, Penelope. How To Read Derrida. New York: Norton, 2005.

Jon. "Success Stories." Hydroxycut.http://www.hydroxycut.com/success_stories/

index.shtml.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. “What is Literature?” and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard UP,

1988.

Sydney. “Success Stories.” Rapid Slim SX. http://www.rapidslimsx.com/index.shtml.

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