Cover Girl Ad Analysis

Victoria’s Secret’s ad The Perfect ”Body” features ten young models each wearing a unique bra and panty set standing side by side. The target audience of the ad is Caucasian women ages 18 to 30 years old although the ad could be relevant to girls as young as 15 years old and as old as 40 years old. They are targeting them by featuring primarily young Caucasian women in their ad. While the ad appears to feature two non-Caucasian women, I believe this is a simple nod of inclusion as they are not representative of the diverse women in America. Both models have straightened hair and very European facial features.

Contemporary visual media contributes to the social construction of gender in that the way that men and women are portrayed in advertising is vastly different.

In our society today a business is not a business without an advertisement. These advertisements advertise what American’s want and desire in their lives. According to Jack Solomon in his essay, “Master’s of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” Jack Solomon claims: “Because ours is a highly diverse, pluralistic society, various advertisements may say different things depending on their intended audiences, but in every case they say something about America, about the status of our hopes, fears, desires, and beliefs”(Solomon). Advertisers continue to promote the American dream of what a women’s body should look like. They advertise their products in hopes for consumers to buy them, so they can look like the models pictures in the ads. Behind these ads, advertisers tend to picture flawless unrealistic woman with the help of Photoshop. In our society today to look like a model is an American dream and can be the reasons why we fantasizes and buy these products being advertised. “America’s consumer economy runs on desire, and advertising stokes the engines by transforming common objects;signs of all things that Americans covet most”(Solomon).

For women, advertising exemplifies the ideal female body. According to Kilbourne, young girls are taught from a very early age that they need to spend lots of time and money to achieve this “physical perfection.” But realistically this cannot be achieved. The ideal woman’s body is Caucasian, very skinny, big breasts, no flaws, and pretty much no pores. This cannot be achieved because it is physically impossible to look like this; the illusion comes from the secret world of Photoshop. No woman is beautiful enough so they leave it to technology to create perfection. The supermodel Cindy Crawford said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford!” She knew the realities of Photoshop and body image, and more women and girls need to become aware of this as well.

Why does the media use Photoshop? The internet, magazines, television, and advertisements in any public or private places uses Photoshop to create an illusion of what a perfect girl or person is. The photoshop the media is used to erases cellulite of the models and cuts parts of their body to make them thinner. But some people may say they might not like seeing someone fat or a more realistic picture because it would make them feel bad. The problem in that is these younger or naive girls are being affected and feeling bad about these unrealistic pictures of these super skinny models. Using photoshop is creating illusions of these models that look anorexic and if the media used something more realistic they would realize they are normal and not need to drastically lose weight, go tanning or whiten their teeth. Ashley Brown said “Photoshop has the power to manipulate appearances beyond recognition.” She writes in an scholar article how Photoshop can change appearances in a

When someone looks at an advertisement there is more that meets the eye than just pictures

The Cover Girl ad from March 2011 includes a picture of Queen Latifah in a beige like colored background with her green eye shadow on. Queen Latifah has small brown eyes with very long and luscious black eye lashes. She has a big and beautiful smile with shiny white and straight teeth. Queen Latifah also has a nice pair of small, gold, round dangling earrings in her ears. The word “Cover Girl” is displayed in big and bold green letters across her forehead, all to help improve her the way she looks. Queen Latifah is written in small green letters underneath in the right-hand corner right underneath the word “Cover Girl”. This picture of her is from her head to her shoulders, just enough for the viewers to focus on Cover Girl’s product, which is the makeup. You cannot really tell what type of shirt she is wearing in this photo but the little piece of frill coming off of her shoulder matches pretty well with the whole color scheme of the ad. She also has her hair pulled back into a long pony tail to also help show off their product even more. This advertisement by Cover Girl effectively uses logos, ethos, and pathos to convince the viewers to buy Cover Girl products.

Advertising is everywhere, it’s online, billboards, magazines, and the most popular television. Different advertising are mostly targeting towards a certain gender, age, or interests. Covergirl advertising is mostly targeted at women, and is also seen in every place you can think of. You most likely could go up to any girl and ask her-what is the Covergirl slogan? Easy, Breezy, Beautiful, Covergirl. Covergirl has done a great job at advertising there make-up products. Covergirl has branched out to every type of advertising there is. They have commercials, bill boards, online ads, there in many magazines, and they are also being promoted on the poplar show America’s Next Top

Fashion plays a major role in a person’s life because it is expressing how one looks and feels about one’s self. Clothing, accessories and makeup communicate fashion, which are all successful ways of bringing attention and persuasion to popular fashion brands. However, can also lead consumers to higher standards thinking that they can resemble the professional model posing in the advertisement. Like a Cover Girl advertising fade proof, waterproof, and ignore- proof mascara and new intense eye shadow blast that has a photo of Drew Barrymore behind a light grey background with light blue eye shadow around her entire eye. Likewise, revealing Drew Barrymore’s greenish blue eyes with perfectly curled black eyelashes that one can have from the use of this particular new Cover Girl eye shadow blast and mascara.

In 2013, UN Women launched an ad campaign that revealed the prevalent and rampant sexism and discrimination against women worldwide. Memac Ogilvy and Mather Dubai, the creators of the advertisement, placed authentic Google search text boxes over the mouth of the woman pictured, as if to silence her voice. By using a Muslim woman in a hijab, real searches via Google, and highlighting the true, subconscious feelings and attitude of the audience, the advertisement attempts to expose the negative biases towards women, ranging from stereotypes to blatant denial of their rights.

In opposition, many would state that Photoshop gives beauty and promotes financial in marketing. America is surrounded by money. For instance, studies show that America's primary export is entertainment, while other countries exports include textile, spices, etc. In opposition, many other countries are putting a stop to the false advertisement of models. For example, France has proposed a bill asking editors to put a health warning on ads or photos that have been retouched, so that women know that their bodies can no look that way. Editors of magazines portray their models as being thin, young, and full-faced, which are from technology, not the actual model. For example, when Meghan Trainor appeared on a past cover of a magazine, she seemed to have a bigger hip than usual. She then took this issue to the media and put the actual picture side by side. Many editorials

magazines, on the internet, and practically everywhere there are ads. They make the customer feel as though they are not good enough, as if they have something missing. Weight loss products make claims, that are usually false, promising that the buyer will look and feel better about themselves. By showing pictures of other's results after using the product, a customer could be convinced into investing in the product themselves. Beauty products are advertised in a similar way. Usually targeted towards women, most of the time they contain pictures of beautiful women, using or wearing whatever lipstick, nail polish, or shampoo that the particular company is advertising. When a

Advertising uses a lot of different techniques to show the public the perfect female image. Body doubles and computer retouching are two examples of how advertisers are able to “doctor” images. The majority of women we see in magazines, music videos. and movies do not appear in reality, as we perceive them in the media. We may actually believe we are looking at one woman’s body when we are actually looking at sections of three or four women’s bodies, which, when spliced together, shows us the best parts of each women’s body as the final product. Women cannot attain these impossible standards of attractiveness. Young girls learn very quickly that they must spend much time, energy, and money on achieving these standards.

On May 2014; the Women’s and Health magazine published an advertisement for Sofia Vergara featuring Head and Shoulders. Head and Shoulders is a shampoo product with different kinds of shampoos. This advertisement is selling the green apple head and shoulder shampoo with its conditioner. Who are the targeted audience? Why would any person choose this product not the other? A lot of questions the advertisement must reply on to be considered as a good advertisement. One of the main questions asked would be if this was a persuasive advertisement or not. Such a question is answered through the use of logos ethos and pathos.

A) The four advertisements I chose are all women’s clothing. The first pattern I noticed in the advertisements was that all four of them showcased just one woman by herself and the second pattern was that each woman had quite a bit of skin showing. In each of them they were doing something slightly different though. In the Bottega Veneta advertisement the woman is posing with her arm up and looking off at something out of the shot and her legs seem to be never ending and completely revealed. In the Ann Taylor advertisement the model is Kate Hudson and she is sitting down on a chair with her legs crossed and is leaning a bit forward and resting her head on her arm. The slit of her dress goes up very high and reveals most of her legs and a slightly deep cut around her neck revealing part of her chest as well as all of her right arm. Also this advertisement is specifically for the new little black dress line. In the Express advertisement girl seems to be walking with her hand on her neck while simultaneously swirling the bottom of her dress around from walking. Her arm is uncovered and you see a good amount of her legs and the movement of the dress draws your eyes to that. In the Levi’s advertisement the woman is facing away from the camera so we see her from behind. She is pulling up her Levi’s shorts, which draws the eyes to her bottom half.