“HOCUS-POCUSING” THE BODY. TECHNOLOGY AND FEMININITY IN PRINT ADS

Abstract

The starting point of the present paper is the observation made by a number of French scholars that we are now living in hypermodern times, i.e. we are living in an era which is mainly characterized by excess at all possible levels (cf. Aubert 2004, Tissier-Desbordes 2004, Lipovetski 2005). These scholars argue that the postmodern world, with its back turned on modernity, has been replaced by a world characterized by the increased intensification of modernity’s most cherished beliefs, i.e. consumption, science, and individualism, a world whose underlying principles are fast-forward and ever-more. In Lipovetsky’s words: “We had a limited modernity, now is time of consummate modernity” (2005: 30).