Liz Canner is a filmmaker concerned with revealing the role of pharmaceutical companies in constructing a false disorder against which women can measure the status of their sexual lives. For nine years, Canner follows the company Vivas and their attempt to get a drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that combats the newly-labeled Female
Sexual Dysfunction. She reveals pharmaceutical interests and the way they are intertwined in the public’s perception of healthy and “normal”.
The film is focused mainly on the pharmaceutical company Vivas, a company that was originally responsible for the first FDA approved erectile dysfunction medication. Soon after the introduction of their drug, however, pharmaceutical advertisements were …show more content…
As Western culture shifts more and more towards sex as a commodity, that which is expected, desired, and anticipated becomes instead what is “normal,” leading to more and more cases of dysfunction as women do not meet the set standard. Further, after advertisement regulation was drastically loosened during the Reagan administration, people are constantly bombarded with messages paid for by drug corporations that tell consumers what they should feel, experience, look like, and want. Legislation, medicalization, and media all contribute to the social construction of what women’s sexuality should or should not be.
Drug corporations are searching for a physiological reason for any difficulty women face in sex, but for most women difficulty in bed does not arise from some fault of their body.
Pharmaceutical companies are using women’s sexual liberation as another tool to make women
feel bad enough about their bodies to look for ways to change, enhance, and alter it at the cost of actual physical harm to themselves. Female sexual dysfunction as a diagnosis is a manufactured pyramid scheme that takes advantage of women’s insecurities and the public’s lack of sexual education for the profit of the pharmaceutical
Sexual Dysfunction. She reveals pharmaceutical interests and the way they are intertwined in the public’s perception of healthy and “normal”.
The film is focused mainly on the pharmaceutical company Vivas, a company that was originally responsible for the first FDA approved erectile dysfunction medication. Soon after the introduction of their drug, however, pharmaceutical advertisements were …show more content…
As Western culture shifts more and more towards sex as a commodity, that which is expected, desired, and anticipated becomes instead what is “normal,” leading to more and more cases of dysfunction as women do not meet the set standard. Further, after advertisement regulation was drastically loosened during the Reagan administration, people are constantly bombarded with messages paid for by drug corporations that tell consumers what they should feel, experience, look like, and want. Legislation, medicalization, and media all contribute to the social construction of what women’s sexuality should or should not be.
Drug corporations are searching for a physiological reason for any difficulty women face in sex, but for most women difficulty in bed does not arise from some fault of their body.
Pharmaceutical companies are using women’s sexual liberation as another tool to make women
feel bad enough about their bodies to look for ways to change, enhance, and alter it at the cost of actual physical harm to themselves. Female sexual dysfunction as a diagnosis is a manufactured pyramid scheme that takes advantage of women’s insecurities and the public’s lack of sexual education for the profit of the pharmaceutical