Lifestyle Drugs and the Neoliberal Family (Popular Culture and Everyday Life)

Since 1997, advertisements for lifestyle drugs have saturated the U.S. airwaves, print media, and the Internet. Viewers are asked to see their children’s difficulty in school as attention deficit disorder, their worry as anxiety, and their flagging sex life as dysfunction. And for each disorder, there is a corresponding pharmaceutical solution. Through the lens of these advertisements, Lifestyle Drugs and the Neoliberal Family unpacks our contemporary obsession with obtaining easy solutions for difficult problems. The ads’ discourse illuminates the experience of living within a society increasingly affected by the policies of neoliberalism, one that requires us to invest and manage our own health with the ultimate goal of a materially productive life. Advertisements for lifestyle drugs promise to make us sexier, happier, and better liked; not to cure us of a disorder, but, ultimately, to make us better workers, suggesting that drugs do indeed work to keep us working. Cover Lifestyle Drugs and the Neoliberal Family Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Anxious Robots, Precarious Work, and Lifestyle Drugs The Marketing of Lifestyle Drugs Precarity of Work; Precarity of Life Affect Conclusion Notes Chapter One: Affective State Apparatus: Theorizing G.W. Bush’s Policy on Mental Health Affect, Louis Althusser, and Affective State Apparatus Achieving the Promise Constituting Affect Capturing Affect Circulating Affect The Affective State Apparatus Notes Chapter Two: Productive Bodies: Women, Work, and Depression Women, Work, and Psychotropic Medication Biopower and the Affect of Contemporary Work The Feminization of Labor Feminine Qualities Put to Work Antidepressant Advertisements Communication The Female Body as Preexisting Condition Conclusion Notes Chapter Three: Impotent Bodies: Viagra, Masculinity, and Potency Cultural Context of Viagra’s Emergence Biopolitical Power Pfizer’s “Bob” Commercial Spinoza and Affect Circulation Affective Potency (Im)potency Pillow Talk Notes Chapter Four: Children as Abilities-Machines: ADHD and Future Workers of America Cultural Representations of ADHD ADHD Investing in Children as “Abilities-Machines” Advertising the Ideal Child/Worker: Advertising ADHD College Students and ADHD There Is No Holiday What’s Up with Boys and Their Moms? Conclusion: Abilities-Machines and Their Monsters: Back to Justin Notes Conclusion: By Way of the Family Dog Dogs, Drugs, and Desires Doggie Prozac Affecting Work Notes Works Cited Index Through the lens of lifestyle drug advertisements, Lifestyle Drugs and the Neoliberal Family unpacks our contemporary obsession with obtaining easy solutions for difficult problems. The ads' discourse illuminates the experience of living within a society increasingly affected by the policies of neoliberalism, one that requires us to invest and manage our own health.