https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/advertisings-toxic-effect-on-eating-and-body-image/
When
watching countless amounts of commercials at home, online, and even in zero
period watching my classmates’ presentations, I noticed a common trend within
advertisements that I found strange and demeaning of the companies who made the
commercials. Several of the commercials we watched starred thin, tan,
physically attractive people, many of which who are happy, in a relationship,
etc. showing a common trend of the companies idea of the people who they are
trying to market to. But, obviously, not every viewer/consumer, is tan, thin,
and physically attractive, so what kind of message does this give to people who
constantly have to live seeing several of these advertisements every day in the
media?
Victoria Secret
is a perfect example of a company who portrays the message to young girls that
in order to be just like the girls in the advertisement who Victoria Secret
tries to make look appealing to men and popular, they need to be skinny,
pretty, light skinned, and wear their products. Seeing advertisements like
Victoria Secrets’ all over media every day, makes women and girls start to
compare themselves to the people portrayed in the ad. The ideal of beauty and
standards that are being created by these companies make girls at a young age
start to worry about they look and how much they weigh.
Author and
ad critic Jean Kilbourne told an audience at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public
Health on March 3rd, 2015, “People often claim to ignore
advertisements, but the messages are getting through on a subconscious level.”
The event she hosted was constructed around the subconscious message
advertisers create, and how they create a “toxic cultural environment” around
what we look like and what we eat. “The average American encounters 3,000
advertisements every day, and spends a total of two years watching TV
commercials in their lifetime. At the center of many of these ads is an image
of idealized female beauty. Models are tall, slim, and light skinned, and
digitally altered to ever-more unrealistic proportions,” Kelbourne says.
Advertising creates a normalize environment that the ideal woman is skinny and
has no desire for having an appetite, and if you are not like the women you see
in media, then you deserve being shamed for it.
The use of
how these ads are make take a bigger mental toll on people then the marketers
think they do. Through the use of Photoshop, makeup, and several different
fashionable high end products and the models themselves, a false, unrealistic
standard is being released in the media that creates a toxic environment for
viewers to live in. There needs to be a transformation in the way ads are being
produced, and looking one certain way shouldn’t be promoted instead of the
product itself.
This is very insightful and brings attention to aspects of advertising that are often kept hidden by corporations in order to promote their product. The "toxic cultural environment" created by the media has contributed to the idealization of a certain body type that is often unhealthy, though desired by all. Your example of the Victoria's Secret ad campaign is accurate; by showing only people of this impossible body standard in their products in an attempt to appeal to male viewers, women have no choice but to compare themselves to not only the women in the VS campaign but in advertisements all around, ultimately creating a harmful attitude toward their own bodies and contributing to the already high number of eating disorder rates. The media's creation of an impossible body standard harms consumers' mentalities and their perception of what is beautiful.
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