Hegemony (9/12/10)

The concept of hegemony, and more specifically the quality of it as a means for the ruling social classes to control the assumptions and ideologies presented to the public, helps reveal the economic and social assumptions typically made in commercials for weight-loss products, such as in this advertisement for Nutrisystem:


In examples like this, hegemony manifests itself as the basic underlying principles that allow ads like this to affect consumers on a gut level (no pun intended) while actually saying very little. People with the power to control advertising are able to frame certain ideas as inherently true consistently enough that those at whom advertising is directed have little choice but to agree. Once certain principles are established in popular culture and media, advertisers can rely on common thought processes produced by these principles to make advertising very easy.

In the case of this particular ad, the advertisers are expecting consumers to associate the pictured woman's apparent happiness with her (supposedly) newfound slim figure and conclude that weight loss like hers is the key to such happiness. More telling are the references to Nutrisystem's low price. The phrase "for as low as" carries the subtextual message that such a price means that a limited budget is not an excuse not to be slim, even though obesity as an epidemic affects more people in lower socioeconomic classes, due in large part to the relative prices of healthy vs. unhealthy food.