Vested Interest: Mad Men- Tobacco Companies

     After watching a video from the series of Mad Men (first episode); in which a Tobacco company, Lucky Strike, was looking forward to create a believable advertisement about their cigarettes; we had to analyse where can we find the vested interest and why Peter's idea fails and Dom's idea doesn't.
  We can say that the company has a vested interest because it has something to gain or to lose from the information released which stated that tobacco causes lung cancer, this statement affects the sells of the cigarettes therefore the company has to defend certain point of view so as to avoid the dropping of sells.
   Peter's idea consisted on accepting that tobacco was bad for health and/or dangerous but also stating that also were cars, but people still use and buy them. On the other hand Dom decides to "compare" Lucky Strike with other cigarette companies. While other cigarettes are bad for health, Lucky Strikes are toasted. This is a manipulation of evidence, they may not tell a lie, but they would be hiding the truth by showing certain evidence and hiding other. This worked because it makes people believe that other tobacco is unhealthy, but Lucky Strike's isn't.

Tobacco advertising

In class we talked about vested interest and how it influences companies to distort the truth in order to obtain a profit from it. We worked on how it affects tobacco companies and their advertisings with the next two questions:

1-  Advertising helps the tobacco because it can disguise a harmful product and alter the evidence so as to  make it seem as something that we need, something essential and beneficial in a certain way.

2-  Cigarettes companies have a vested interest in the profit they gain from the sales of tobacco. Therefore cigarette advertising tend to have distorted the truth, for example regarding the side effects tobacco causes in our health. this is due to the fact that they hide the evidence showing the bad aspects of tobacco effect on us and yet assuring their bussiness. 

(Image analysis) Tobacco companies have a vested interest in the profit they gain for selling the cigarettes, that's why advertisments have to be presented in a way that it makes you believe there is something from

The product that benefits you or helps you in some way. In this case, the advertisement aims to make men believe that by smoking, they will be more attractive to woman. Wants to show them that only by "blowing in her face" smoke girls will fell for him.

Crêpes

Pour 24 persones

INGREDIENTS                                                              GRANITURE (quantitè au goût)

1kg de farine                4 cuillères de sucre            Confiture du lait             Caramel

6 oeufs                         2 pincées de sel                 Crème chantilli               Almonds

2l lait                                                                        Noix

1. Mettre la farine, le sucre et les oeufs dans un saladier.
2. Progressivement ajouter le lait et battre.
3. Mettre deux pincées de sel.
4. Melanger jusqu´à obteuir une pâte sans groumeaux.
5. Laisser reposer la pâte à crêpe.
6. Prendre une poêle et la mettre au feu.
7. Verser un demi-louche de votre pâte dans la poêle.
8. Faire cuire 1-2 minutes par face.

• Vous pouvez manger les crêpes avec quelque graniture.

• TIP!

Laisser reposser la pâte tout le soir pour un mellieur preparation.

Women and eating disorders: society’s image of perfection.

How far is society's image of beauty and perfection to blame for eating disorders? 

       All too often society associates “thin”, “skinny”, etc. with beautiful, hard working, perfect and self-disciplined, on the other hand “fat” is reference to lazy, ugly and weak; under stereotype we believe that what is beautiful is good and what’s under most people’s expectations is bad: the good princess is always beautiful, the bad stepmother is always ugly. This is an irrational, even though predominant, belief which states that physically attractive people possess the most desirable characteristics: intelligence, beauty, competence, confidence etc. Mostly due to this pressure and high, unachievable and unrealistic expectations women are hardly happy or satisfied with their bodies and sometimes this leads them to search for a “perfect imaginary appearance” that actually, is impossible to achieve. On account of what was mentioned before, women have been pushed to look for unhealthy and extremely harmful ways of satisfying society and ended up suffering from different kinds of eating disorders that destroy them not only physically but psychologically. 

        First things first: What is an eating disorder? There are mainly four different classifications for eating disorders, these are: Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Binge Eating Disorder and finally other specified feeding or eating disorder (OSFED). Nevertheless these are all serious, potentially life-threatening diseases, there are not usually treated as serious as a usual, common sickness. Anorexia Nervosa consists on extreme food restriction, obsession and fear of gaining weight and often vomiting; Bulimia Nervosa involves cycles of binge eating, eating an extreme amount of food in a short period of time, then followed by a purging behaviour whether by forcing vomits, usage of laxatives, diuretics and many more alternatives; Binge eating disorder involves eating an unusually large amount of food in a short period of time and feeling a loss of control during this episode, binge eaters do not purge afterwards but often feel a lot of shame and/or guilt about their behaviour; lastly other specified feeding or eating disorder (OSFED) involves some combination of symptoms of the other eating disorders such as an intense fear of weight gain and a preoccupation with food (thinking about food or having food related thoughts most of the day), for example, many cases involve certain symptoms of the disorders mentioned before but may not follow the exact criteria. As a consequence it also leads to obsession; anxiety; depression; fear of gaining weight; body distortion, seeing something in the mirror that is not what it actually is; ever-exercising, much of a good thing sometimes turns out to be bad, specially if on top of that someone does not consume enough calories to use for energy at the time of exercising; and of course this can have serious consequences for health, productivity, and social relationships. 
        
        Since forever men and women from all around the world have been establishing standards of beauty and every culture had its own distinctive concept of the ideal physical attributes. In spite of the fact that this have always existed, nowadays it is harder and most dangerous than ever mostly to blame the massive media and technology growth, apart from standards being harder to achieve every second. Not only the fact that the standard of perfection is constantly being shown everywhere (television, commercials, books, magazines, web pages, etc.) but the fact that these are actually fake and actually, a hundred percent unrealistic, because they are modified and edited to be: taller, thinner, skinnier. So women fight to achieve an impossible wish that ends up harming and even killing them. 

         Despite the fact that there are men in this world who also suffer from these horrible diseases, as a percentage, much more women suffer from it due to the fact that a lot more pressure to look like a certain “accepted” way is put on top of their shoulders. And this is a heavy weight that not many of them can carry along well. Up to 8 out of 10 women will be dissatisfied with their reflection, and more than half may see a distorted image of their body on it. 
          As a conclusion women end up punishing themselves physically and psychologically for their failure to achieve and conform to society’s stereotype. Many women may not be suffering from an eating disorder, but are surely not entirely comfortable nor happy with their body and how they look in general. Because despite all the efforts, fighting, damaging and sacrificing, the standards established are higher than any woman can reach, because society will always expect more from women. As Naomi Wolf said: “No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society.”. Eventually for a safer, happier and actually better world, what is needed is a drastic change in society and people’s expectations and standard. Therefore abolishing gender role expectations and stereotypes seems like the solution.