How Does American Apparel Portray Women

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

Her research reviewed 21 studies of the media’s affect on more than 6,000 girls, 10 years or older. The results showed that the more the girls were exposed to the fashion magazines, the more they struggled to have a positive body image. (L2)

In “The Fashion Industry: Free to be an Individual” by Hannah Berry, Hannah emphasizes how social media especially advertisements pressure females to use certain product to in order to be considered beautiful. She also acknowledges the current effort of advertisement today to more realistically depicts of women. In addition, these advertisements use the modern women look to advertise products to increase women self-esteem and to encourage women to be comfortable with one’s image.

The first advertisement I found was the “For the Benefit of Mankind”, Under Armour Ad. At first glance we see a very masculine male, with a chiseled body modeling his Under Armour briefs. But, if we take a closer look into the background we see a young, and beautiful woman loosely wrapped in a sexy gown. The setting of the advertisement looks like an expensive bachelor pad. The purpose of this picture is to advertise Under Armour’s new briefs, by making them look appealing to the directed audience. Along with the briefs, women stereotypes are also being advertised. Although the woman isn’t meant to be the main focus of the ad, she is added to show if a man wears these boxers, they can get with a beautiful woman. In the text below the picture the product’s features are being flaunted, but in the picture the only thing being flaunted is the masculinity of the man in the picture. One gender stereotype that is portrayed in this picture is that woman are physically weak. The man in the photo is very muscular and enlarged in the photo. The thin female model is posed in a delicate position in the background of the picture. This shows that she is less important, and just added to highlight the male model’s masculinity. A woman perceived as sexually active might be labeled as a slut while a

For example at one point the characters come across a magazine that’s titled “Hot Naked Chicks & World Report”. The fact that the magazine has “Hot Naked Chicks” makes people want to purchase it, the marketers are just using the sexual appeal to sell their news magazine. Everything from the news to cigarettes is sexualized in the 2505 society of Idiocracy. Another example of the hyper-sexualized marketing is a cigarette poster. On the poster a well built man is blowing smoke from his mouth with no shirt on. The man is looking into the camera, staring at the viewer. The poster is targeted at women. It’s meant to incise them and show them that if they smoke cigarettes that they too can have a man as well built as the man on the poster. Both the sexualization of women and men to sell products can be seen in society today. For instance Abercrombie & Fitch has been using shirtless males to sell their products for years. In fact the Encyclopedia Britannica said that “its advertising and its clothing [are] perceived by many as encouraging its target audience to adopt a sexually promiscuous lifestyle”. Abercrombie & Fitch took this sexualization to the extreme and it worked, in fact “In 2012 the company had grown to include more than 1,000 stores with annual sales surpassing $4.5 billion” (Thrasher), all of this was after they hyper-sexualized their products. Because the sexualization of products works, companies do it more

Perceptions of a Girl in Childlike vs. Sexualizing Clothing” written by the authors Kaitlin Graff, Sarah K. Murnen, and Linda Smolak, they do a study on how girls are perceived in societies eyes when dressed in a more sexual manner. In the study there are pictures of a fifth-grade girl dressed in either childlike clothing or super sexualized clothing. A group of diverse students are presented with three different types of pictures and they define whether the girl is average or above average in her achievements. Concluding in their study it presents that wearing more sexualized clothes do affect how they are looked upon and they don’t regard their achievements throughout life. In the study it states, “sexualization of women in advertisements increased significantly in the U.S. between 1983 and 2003” (Graff, Murnen, & Smolak 765) proving that sexualized advertisements have drastically been impacting societies ideal

The sexualisation of women in advertising has become a very prominent and controversial issue in today’s society. Many brands, products and campaigns we are presented with portray women as being available and willing sexual objects, who exist to cater to the male gender. Gucci is one such brand that does this, focusing on emphasizing the sexual appeal of the female gender in order to sell their products, because as advertisers know: ‘sex sells.’ This new cultural shift can however, be seen as politically regressive for women, as the ideology it brings negatively impacts how women are viewed by society and how they view themselves.

Recently American Eagle’s lingerie brand, Aerie, completely changed their advertising campaign to AerieReal. The AerieReal campaign consists of only un-retouched and no Photoshopped models. Before the AerieReal campaign, Aerie used models that were retouched and Photoshopped to make the models appear skinner and “more attractive”. The AerieReal campaign’s focus is to defy what other lingerie brands, such as Victoria’s Secret, sell in their advertisements. Aerie is trying to challenge the message of true beauty is only if you are skinny by saying that “The real you is sexy”. Aerie is accomplishing this by changing their advertisements in the hopes that girls will grow up to be socialized with a more positive and inclusive message, defy gender roles associated with women, and lastly, confront stereotypes of white and colored women.

The Fashion Industry is affecting our body image in a huge way. They are the number one contributing factor in how we perceive ourselves and what is normal, especially in young girls. The following research shows some of the negative effects of the Fashion Industry. First, the negative effects of the media on body image and how it give countless an unrealistic views of what is normal. Second, how the Advertising and Magazines can affect our self-image in a negative way by using extremely thin models to promote sales. Eating Disorders will be looked at lastly, to reveal the high number of women and young girls suffering from anorexia and bulimia and how much responsibility falls on the Fashion Industry. The conclusion will end with the review of key factors and how the fashion industry has affected the self-esteem and body image of our society.

Under society’s norms for decades, young women have been put under the pressure and anticipation to have perfect bodies. That is, thin and curved, beautified by applying pounds of the makeup to their face but not appear ridiculously overdone. Who’s responsible for these standards imposed on young women? When a young girl picks up the model along the cover of Vogue being called flawless, it’s easy for her to then aspire to be a real-life imitation of the photocopy. These companies produce magazine covers shown with girls’ images daily. As if keeping the perfect body wasn’t hard enough our culture also forces girls into the forever expanding world of composition, however, body image is a pressing issue for young women. Advertisements and posters of skinny female models are all over. Young girls not only could be better but need to be more upright and feel driven to throw the perfect figure. Moreover, girls are evaluated and oppressed by their physical appearances. With supplements and apparel designed to enhance a facial expression; social media, magazines, and marketing campaigns and advertisements add to the burden of perfection. The fashion industry is a prime object of body image issues, as they believe clothes look better on tall and svelte women. Established on a survey participated by 13 to 17-year-old in the U.S., 90% “felt pressured by fashion and media industries to be skinny”, with more than 60% routinely compares themselves to models, while 46%

The company Abercrombie and Fitch has been sued countless times because of the rules the government has imposed on hiring and firing people. Abercrombie is trying to target attractive looking people to their line of cloths. During an interview Salon Jeffries the CEO of Abercrombie stated… his business was built around sex appeal… “He believes that good-looking people attract other good-looking people”… If a clothing line

Today’s world is dominated by the great influence of advertising media, which often depicts the objectification of women. The film Killing Us Softly 3, discusses how influential the negative portrayal and misrepresentation of women is throughout advertising media. The Versace advertisement I have chosen to analyze displays a slim, scantily clothed woman of color guarded by a shirtless, muscular man. Based on concepts from the film and the course’s text, it is clear that this advertisement sets a particular feminine beauty standard and, nonetheless, illustrates women as solely being sexual objects of men, having little to no power. This fashion ad influences the way women view their physical appearance, along with their position and function in society.

What do you see when you look in the mirror? Do you like what you see? In Jean Kilbourne’s article, “Two Ways a Woman Can Hurt,” she discusses the sexualization of women in advertising and how it plays a role in violence against women. Elline Lipkin discusses the causes and effects of negative body images in her article, “Girls’ Bodies, Girls’ Selves.” Although I agree with Kilbourne that advertising and violence can be related, it is important to consider Lipkin’s argument about how advertising shapes body image in a negative way because while a lot of women experience violence, everyone experiences the effects that advertisements have on body image.

Walking into the library at most high schools brings to the eye an array of fashion magazines in the front shelves. Most schools acknowledges that fashion has a large audience, but the skinnier and skinnier models have created a large group of people with eating disorders and bad self-images. In her article “What’s Wrong with Skinny?” that discusses eating disorders linked to the fashion industry, Lisa Hilton states that women are “so pathologically stupid that they are unable to distinguish the fantasy of the runway from the realities of their own bodies”. Fashion is something that many girls let influence them into changing how they dress, feel, and eat; the skinnier the models are (or are “retouched” to look), the more it supports eating

The roles of males and females in society have significantly changed, as opposed to the predominant roles in our history. In the modern culture of today, women have begun to break out of the mold that which society has placed her in. This much can’t be said when it comes to modern gender representation in mass media advertising. It can be safe to state that woman are seen as sexual, fragile, exotic—whereas men are portrayed as tough, in control, and aggressive. This trend can be one seen as an inhibitor to the advancement of our culture, because especially for women, it is hard to pull away from the stereotypes that are continuously represented. As examples of the given trend, the following