Someone is watching over your whole self

As Michel Foucault discusses on the panopticon, one would try to imagine that the panopticon, as Jeremy Bentham conceptualize in 1785, as a place that is best equated to the modern prison. Examples of this would be that of the Muntinlupa prison here in the Philippines.
And yet, one fails to see that the concept of the panopticon can be seen beyond the image of the prison. In fact, there are a lot of good examples of panopticon-structured places, like malls, hospitals, and even your typical school.
The idea of the panopticon was to ensure that the inmates who are within the system will assume that they are always being watched by the watchguards, even if there are times that there are no watchguards actually guarding the panoptic structure.
Because the panopticon is structured such that it sees everyone, this then gives a double edged sword for both the watch guard and the inmate. It benefits the watchguard such that he has a view of practically everyone within the structure, making his guarding duties much easier. On the other hand, this pressures the inmate as he / she cannot determine if he is being watched by the watchguard of his / her acts, making him unable to do whatever act he / she would desire to do.
In the modern context, the panopticon gives an internalization of the gaze by us being succumbed through all of the advertising materials made by the capitalist society. This internalization of the gaze can be seen in quite a number of examples, of which some of them are actually common to the everyday, normal, typical person.
The first case to be discussed is on clothing. Basically, the essence of clothing is to protect our bodies from the harsh particles, from the bad weather, from germs, and the like, which would mean that as for basic clothing all we need is just something to cover our bodies. But in a capitalist perspective, the big companies actually dictate to the human what is in for a particular season in the field of fashion, what is out, what is hot, what is not, what is cool, what is the fad. Because of the existence of “fashion watchdogs”, the typical everyday consumer is then pressured to conform to these standards as he / she perpetually assumes that someone is looking at his / her choice of clothing. Because of this constant watching over him / her, the person would try to avoid such criticism by choosing the good clothes.
An analogy to this is that for example in buying a pair of pants, since the consumer would like to be in and fashionable with his / her friends, that person would have a tendency to buy a pair of pants from Zara or Levi’s, of which costs around three thousand pesos, rather than buying pants from Jag or Bench, in which their pants would not even reach the one thousand mark. The point here is that since the person is being conscious of the kind of clothes he / she would buy, that person would buy a branded one that is suppose to be “more fashionable” than other brands; hence, this creates the continual flow of capitalism in our country. Even if the pants of Bench is similar in terms of function as compared to the pair of Levi’s, the consumer would spend two thousand pesos more for the sake of trying to be “in”, and to prevent any criticism from his / her peers.
The second case would be in terms of beauty. With the advent of beauty critics, people tend to strive for the ideal beauty: white skin, thin and lean structure, straight hair, white and straight teeth, perfect nose, perfect butt, perfect bosom (for the girls) and the like. As a result, the capitalist community respond to the needs of the masses for the ideal beauty through the advent of whitening creams, metathione pills, diet pills, and forms of cosmetic surgery like breast and butt augmentation, face lift, liposuction and many more. As the people, the masses., become more conscious of their overall appearance as they are being “watched” by watchguards, thus pressuring the masses to have a take on these beauty services in order for them to be accepted in society and in order for them to avoid further criticism. For example, if a person knows that he / she’s fat, that person will avail of liposuction services in order to be accepted into society and not be discriminated by their peers as well. If their peers would criticize them for having dark skin, the consumer will find his / her way on how to have a fairer skin, regardless of the cost of having the skin whitened or the cost of taking metathione pills.
If you would come to think of it, the whole panopticon idea of having these watchdogs monitoring inmates and inmates being paranoid that they are being watched is best exemplified with the big brother principle first evident with the advent of Totalitarianism, wherein the phrase “Big Brother is watching you” entails to the people fearing big brother, and thus being more careful of their acts.