Ideology

            Stuart Hall refers to ideology as “the mental frameworks that different classes/social groups deploy in order to make sense of, define, figure out and render intelligible the way society works”. By this he means how society/different classes or even large social groups have different aspects and ideas about what they think is the “norm” for living in your everyday life.

            An example that I have found in society has been the recent blow up of the “healthy eating” lifestyle. Sometimes, or shall I say 99.4 percent of the time I find myself in the same boat as them. When you’re around somebody who’s eating bad (especially someone who’s overweight) society has influenced us to automatically judge them and frown upon what they’re doing. I can’t even count how many times I have seen an overweight person (sometimes not even slightly overweight) and have been with someone who’s made a comment like “well if they ate a salad maybe the wouldn’t be so big” or “someone should hit the gym!” I even find myself, if I don’t eat completely healthy for the whole day I feel guilty, but I’ve never wondered why until now. I find that, that is one ideology that I struggle to keep up with because it seems like it’s never enough; there’s always something new to try as in new cleanses/diets, new foods, new workout routines to do and if you don’t do them you’re not in with the healthy lifestyle. There is also a new fad with Tumblr (a blog site) where you’re categorized under a fitspo, thinspo, or a curvespo. The differences between these are if you want to be skinny, if you want to be fit and healthy, and then if you’re curvy and you want to be fit and healthy.

            Diving into this ideology even more, I’m going to bring up vegetarianism and veganism. Vegetarians (obviously) don’t eat meat, and I’ve known a few vegetarians in my short lifetime. If you are with a vegetarian and you’re eating meat-watch out. You will be given the sad story about the poor innocent chicken/cow/lamb you’re eating and how it was ripped away from its mother at a young age, and you will be made to feel extremely guilty (it worked so well on me I was a vegetarian for a while.) Vegetarians and vegans will make people feel like they’re in the wrong for eating meat, or animal products. Vegetarianism and veganism is fine, I don’t like meat too much to begin with, they just go so far with pushing their own beliefs on everyone else almost like it’s a religion. I also believe that if you’re a vegetarian or a vegan, society sees you differently and automatically considers you a hippy. This is definitely an ideology that I cannot keep up with. If you’re not educated on eating properly you can make yourself sick by going off of all these foods (meat, animal products) that are here to give us energy and to fuel our bodies.

            I think that the healthy lifestyle, vegetarianism/veganism does uphold the social order. The people who benefit from it are the organic and vegan companies who sell the food that they’re looking for. I also think it holds the social order because a lot of the time it’s the wealthier people who can afford this type of a lifestyle. It’s so much cheaper for you to eat healthy, and eat out all the time than to change your diet and to eat all raw, healthy, meatless foods. Lower middle class, and the “working class” will most likely eat not as healthy to save money, while the upper class and the celebrities will be seen being vegetarians and promoting veganism.