Body Image Advertisements Are Targeting Towards Specific Gender Groups Essay

It is no secret that today’s society defines beauty as thin, long-legged women with statuesque bodies. Examples are found everywhere just by glancing at the closest magazine ads or by scrolling down the latest fashion article online. Normal, everyday women are being forgotten and tossed aside to make room for the “Top-Model”-like women currently crowding up Hollywood. Media depicts women as an unattainable image. They pressure ladies to buy the products they’re advertising; luring them with false advertisements promising that with it, they too could be perfect. While the media portrays women in a certain way for advertising and marketing benefits, it has caused numerous negatives effects to women’s self-esteems nationwide, it contradicts

For centuries, women have found it to be difficult to live up and be the standard “runaway model”. Women have the pressure to fit in to be considered beautiful since ads and media have distorted society in how they view and evaluate beauty. The false representation of models in the beauty commercials have made women want to replicate them even though they don’t know what’s behind the editing. Even though this is a huge matter, companies did not stand back but instead made more commercials that self-degrade women constantly, except one. The Dove Evolution Commercial- “Campaign for Real Beauty” focuses on the way they change women sending a strong message to women about beauty and what it really

Throughout their lives, women of all ages are constantly being bombarded with advertisements convincing them they must meet an ideal of the perfect body image. This is all thanks to companies that share a common goal to influence the mainstream population into believing they need to purchase certain products in order to compare to the impossible standards set by the beauty industry. In Dave Barry’s “Beauty and the Beast” he displays that it is planted in young girls minds that they need to look, dress, feel, and even act a certain way. However, men aren’t as affected by these capitalistic marketing schemes. In short, the media has affected the way women think of themselves.

Moreover, as Richins (1991) reports, women always make social comparisons between the advertising models and themselves. As a result, advertising images create negative affect and increases women’s dissatisfaction with their own appearance. Since those images are edited through the consistent usage of digital technology, these idealized images do not portray women in a healthy manner. Indeed, these enhanced images would give these young girls the impression that they need to be ‘perfect’, just like these ‘fake’ images. According to Reist in ABC’s Gruen Session (2010), ‘young women get the message that they need to be thin, hot and sexy just to be acceptable’ in this society. Therefore, by generating the wrong perception of real beauty, the responsibility is pushed to the marketers, as they portray women with this stereotypical body type as acceptable. In addition, as the brand, Dove’s tagline in its advertisement - What happened to the ‘real beauty’? (Reist, 2010), marketers need not market their products in manners portraying women as airheads. Consequently, marketers gave most consumers viewing the advertisement, the wrong impression that

Today in modern society, we are driven by social forces. Not only do we strive for human approval and companionship, we also thrive on social media. The media plays such a pivotal role in what we buy, eat, wear, etc. that we are conditioning ourselves to fit the mold for the “perfect” or “ideal” body type. This social construct has been a pressing issue for many years regarding the female physique, but not as much has been said on behalf of men. When confronted with appearance based advertisements, men are more likely to experience muscle dissatisfaction, weight disparities, and anger and/or anxiety toward showing their body in public. This paper will address these facets of the media’s effect on male body image as well as presenting what has been done to address this quietly debilitating issue.

“Evolving Ideals of Male Body Image as Seen Through Action Toys” points out clearly that this pressure to conform exists for men today as well as for women. While Barbie dolls and GI Joe action figures are not the one and only reason that the majority of people feel insecure about how they look, they are a piece to the much larger puzzle. It is speculated that it takes a large number of combined factors that cause a specific person feel insecure about how they look. Countless times it is something that we unknowingly see or hear that effect how we think about ourselves. If we are always self-concise about how we look we are more likely to buy something that we observe in an advertisement, which claims to transform us to look better. Unfortunately the images that we have and are trying to obtain are unobtainable, so as a result, we continue to invest and spend time in pursuit of this alleged

In her article “The Body Beautiful”, Rosalind Coward (1998) argues that society creates a negative obsessions of the “perfect” female body and it affects women negatively in their daily lives. She explains that women have to think of their bodies in separate parts and believe that each part has a different life of their own. Coward goes on to explain the way society expects women to be seen as by providing readers with example advertisements and how it pushes women toward having the body that is viewed acceptable. She concludes by stating that although society creates a negative obsession of the “perfect” body, it helps women from falling into despair because they keep a vague relation to the ideal image. By analyzing an advertisement for Elizabeth Arden’s anti aging serum, we see Rosalind Coward argues that advertisements for facial product often expect women to be flawless and perfect in their body figures.

Images of female bodies are everywhere. Women, and their bodies, sell everything from food to cars. Women's magazines are full of articles urging women to fit a certain mold. While standing in a grocery store line you can see all different magazines promoting fashion, weight loss, and the latest diet. Although the magazines differ, they all seemingly convey the same idea: if you have the perfect body image you can have it all…the perfect marriage, loving children, great sex, and a rewarding career. The media, whether TV, print, or Internet advertising, seems to play a huge role in influencing women of all ages; from adolescence and teens, to women in their twenties and thirties, as well as

Beauty standards are portrayed everywhere: on magazines, social media, ads, commercials, and even flaunted among peers. While the ideals are supposed to promote health awareness, fitness motivation, and self love, it unfortunately results in many unfavorable consequences. Women are constantly “penalized for not being beautiful and at the same time are stigmatized, even pathologized, for not feeling beautiful, for having low self-esteem, for engaging in behaviors like dieting and excessive exercising, or for having eating disorders” (Johnston and Taylor 954). Beauty standards are unrealistic and unhealthy to pursue, and misinforms the public on what true beauty is. While not all beauty image ideals promote negative feelings and dissatisfaction, many believe that the negative effects far outweighs any positive effects.

Women have struggled against stereotypes, stigmas and expectations for generations. In a world where women are surrounded by images of stick figure, perfect models, they often don’t feel they measure up and can’t be as beautiful. That’s why in 2004 the personal care and body wash brand Dove decided to make a change. They started their “Real Beauty” campaign and released a variety of advertisements depicting real, normal women and their real beauty. One of these ads, the 2013 “Real Beauty Sketches,” showed women detailing their appearances to a forensic sketch artist then comparing their sketches to how others had described them. Before long it was “the most-watched video ad of all time”

From a young age girls are exposed to advertisements that give an unrealistic standard of beauty. In previous years, women in these ads are portrayed to have perfect bodies, hair, and skin. These images subconsciously alter self esteem in maturing youth. Many of these young women see these images and feel they are not thin or pretty enough. The feeling to be perfect is overwhelming. Recently, however, there has been a breakthrough of “plus size” models that confidently flaunt their figures and are dauntless about their imperfections. The This Body ad from Lane Bryant break the mold from previous decades and encourage empowerment and self love. This ad reminds women everywhere their body is beautiful and capable of amazing things.

For the few people who meet society’s beauty standards, body-image is rarely an issue. However, most people are left feeling ugly or undesirable, unable to compete with a supermodel’s slim figure, white porcelain skin, and breathtaking looks. The campaign, “#RealWomenHaveCurves”, did not necessarily help the issue, either. Bashing supermodels for the way they look is not the answer. Men’s body image issues are also usually overlooked. Instead, promote beauty in the form of how one feels about themselves, but keep in mind that anyone, no matter of weight, race, gender, etc. can be beautiful.

During the political campaigns, very popular references were made between two powerful political campaigners , Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin, two women of opposite political parties, were hardly ever discussed in news castings without a comment on physical appearance, favor was given to Sarah Palin based on the fact of being a younger and more good looking campaigner. Many newscasters said many statements under the same theme of having to hold sex appeal in order to hold any power, in which media has turned into a very popular advertisement tool. Showing the next generation, women are meant to only to be regarded in importance based on their appearance, a quote from a spokesperson called Newsom while during an interview the director and writer of Miss Representation had said. “ So the message that is then communicated to young girls is why would anyone put themselves in that position to run for a leadership position in

Life & style magazines feature articles concerning the topic of interest to their subscribers: fashion, dating, fragrance, health and fitness, short stories by popular or renowned writers. The mainstay of such magazines, however, isn’t the news, advice, humor, or fiction but the photographs of beautiful young women wearing little or no clothing. In today’s society, most people are more obsessed with body image and their physical appearance, it has gotten to an extreme of having numerous number of ads on billboards and in magazines to influence an individual to lose weight. The “Make heads turn’’ advertisement is effective at reading its target audience of females who are trying to lose weight through the use of a sexy female model to persuade girls of ages 17 and above to lose weight.

Many young women in today’s society struggle with confidence and their body image. This is a huge problem in society and many people have spoken out against the influence of media on women’s body image. However, it continues to be a major problem and more can always be done to raise awareness about societies unrealistic expectations for women’s beauty. Dove’s Choose Beautiful campaign was started to promote the self-esteem of women and encourage them to see their beauty, however there are some criticisms, including the company using this campaign to increase their sales. Dove is selling a product with the expectation that confident, beautiful women will purchase it, however people still have the ability to resist the ad industry.