Magazine Advertisements Affect Women

The media is one of the leading causes of self esteem and body image issues in not only women but men as well. This is due to the fact that thousands of advertisements contain messages about physical attractiveness and beauty. Examples include: commercials for clothes, cosmetics, weight loss, hair removal, laser surgery and physical fitness. The effects of advertising on body image have been studied by researchers, psychologists, marketing professionals and more. Researchers, Mary Martin and James Gentry found that teen directed advertising negatively impacts self-esteem. The advertising industry is setting unrealistic expectations for teens about their physical appearances by using models with "perfect bodies." The modeling industry today has put many pressures on models, causing them disorders of both mental and physical illness. These disorders then creating the look of the “perfect body” have now lead to unrealistic expectations of body image for society.

Every time you flip a magazine, change channels, or go online, you are struck with images of models who are super skinny with flashy outfits and have excessive make-up on. Ads not only try to sell their products, but also promote how females should look like. These models are airbrushed and photo shopped which is false advertisement. The media progressively encourages a thinner body image as the ideal for women. We see advertisements every day. Some of these ads use manipulative strategies that influence our choices and spending habits. For example, “One in every three articles in leading teen girl magazines included a focus on appearance, and most advertisements used appeal to beauty to sell their products.”(Teen Health) To grab the viewers’ attention, especially females, they include

The media group that retouches images skews the “normal” body image of people through many of its outlets, including models in advertising and magazines, and actors in TV and movie productions. “The average model portrayed in the media is approximately 5’11” and 120 pounds. By contrast, the average American woman is 5’4” and 140 pounds” (Holmstrom, 2004). This statistic shows how the media manipulates consumers into believing that because they are not what the average model looks like, they are not living up to a certain standard which implies that they need to look like that to be beautiful. Another research fact that shows a similar concept is that, “In the United States, 94% of female characters in television programs are thinner than the average American woman, with whom the media frequently associate happiness, desirability, and success in life” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This association of female thinness and happiness, desirability and success makes consumers believe they must achieve this unrealistic thinness to achieve more ultimate goals and fulfillment in life. “The media also explicitly instruct how to attain thin bodies by dieting, exercising, and body-contouring surgery, encouraging female consumers to believe that they can and should be thin” (Yamamiya et al., 2005). This idealization of thinness in the media is seen so much, and is extremely harmful to women’s self confidence and is often associated with body image dissatisfaction, which can be a precursor to social anxiety, depression, eating disturbances, and poor self-esteem (Yamamiya et al.,

Body image has become a huge issue in society today, with magazines such as Shape, Covergirl, Vogue, Seventeen, or celebrities such as Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie, or Kylie Jenner. Women, especially teenagers, find themselves thinking that they have to look like the model they saw in a magazine, or on social media. The media is greatly responsible for the growing of the “ideal” thin women. Statistics show that diet and weight control advertisement appear ten times more in women’s magazines than men. Showing thin models next to them which leads girls to eating disorders, harming their bodies so they have an “ideal” image of what they think they should look like.

Advertising is an over 200$ billion industry and according to Jean Kilbourne, people are exposed to over 3000 advertisements a day. Advertisements are everywhere so there is no escaping them; they are on TV, magazines, billboards, etc. These ads tell women and girls that what’s most important is how they look, and they surround us with the image of "ideal female beauty". However, this flawlessness cannot be achieved. It’s a look that’s been created through Photoshop, airbrushing, cosmetics, and computer retouching. There have been many studies done that have found a clear link between exposure to the thin ideal in the mass media to body dissatisfaction, thin ideal internalization, and eating disorders among women. Body dissatisfaction is negative thoughts that a person has about his or her own body. Thin ideal internalization is when a person believes that thinness is equivalent to attractiveness and will lead to positive life outcomes. Less than 5% of women actually have the body type that is shown of

Over the years the size of female models in advertising has decreased significantly. Today the average model ways up to 23% less than an average women. The use of Photoshop adds to this by creating perfect skin unattainable even with makeup, along with making the models appear even thinner. Given that these women often set the standard for beauty wouldn’t this lower women’s self-esteem. These “perfect” and unrealistic models in advertising negatively affect body image (the way we see our own body) and distort our idea of beauty. Negative body image can lead to depression, the development of eating disorders, or the abuse of weight loss drugs or anabolic steroids.

Therefore, the commendation of such look and shape commercializes unhealthy body image and procreates eating disorders. Unfortunately, at present the commercialism of a perfect body is encountered by almost everyone on everyday basis. The public is bombarded daily with images of glamorously thin women in commercials, on billboards, in movies in magazines and etc?According to Melanie Katzman, a consultant psychologist from New York, the media has actively defined the thin ideal as success and treats the body as a commodity. (Rhona MacDonald, 2001) It is evident that the persistent advocating of the media and the society produced a constant pursuit of thinness, which became a new religion. A study conducted by Harvard researchers has revealed the effect of media and magazines on adolescent girls in high schools. The children were exposed to fashion magazines and television commercials, and a while after were given self-rating surveys. The study found that sixty-nine percent of the girls said that magazine pictures

When researchers asked one hundred eighteen female, college-aged students to look at twenty pictures in ads from women's magazines, they felt a sudden change in mood after the pictures were observed. There was notable depression in the women, a depression that has seemed to hit many women after leafing through women's magazines (Key and Lindgren 11). This depression is due to the fact there are so many negative messages being conveyed in advertisements that are published in women's magazines. But who can blame the women for their depression anyway? When the majority of the ads in women's magazines show super-skinny models advertising nice clothes, makeup, jewelry, etc., one might find themselves to be a little down. Skinny models portray their figures to be the cultural norm in Western society today. How often does one find a model in a woman's magazine that is over a size six that is not shown advertising plus size merchandise? The answer is not very often, or sometimes never at all. If women do not see their body type being depicted in

“Advertisers commonly alter photographs to enhance the appearance of models' bodies, and such alterations can contribute to unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image – especially among impressionable children and adolescents. A large body of literature links exposure to media-propagated images of unrealistic body image to eating disorders and other child and adolescent health problems”

My thought process when collecting my magazine ads was that I wanted to showcase the various age groups of each gender. Many magazines have a specific audience in mind meaning that magazines aimed towards a young teen would not be as explicit as a magazine aimed towards a grown woman even though they might both contain the same message. I collected samples from three prominent magazines for females: J-14 (age range 8-14), Seventeen (age range 10-21), and Cosmopolitan (age range 18-34). I also repeated the process and collected samples from magazines aimed at males: Sports Illustrated for Kids (age range 8-15) and ESPN (age range 15+). I collected four ads per female magazine and three ads per male magazine for a total of twenty ads. Each magazine that I used was from 2016 in order to ensure that the ads were relevant because of how gender roles have changed over time. The limitations for my sample include the fact that not all magazines aimed towards females are strictly about beauty and fashion. There are many other types of magazines that appeal to women such as cooking, health, and décor.

In his article, Sheldon referenced many articles that reported how the exposure to thin models in magazines can lower self-esteem and body satisfaction significantly. The authors of the referenced articles found that women who believe they do not have an ideal or thin body tend to be disappointed, and will work hard to achieve the ideal body to be “accepted” into society. This is caused through the media such as magazines and television as the people in those media can be used as a reference point to make unfavorable comparisons between the viewers and the person they are comparing. Through a body image survey made in 1997, researchers (as cited in Sheldon, 2010) found that 43% of them felt insecure about their body when they see very thin or muscular models. About half of women who were surveyed wanted to lose weight in order to look similar to the

In fact, media is contributing to many false advertisements and unrealistic images that cause eating disorders. Media gives us these false beauty standards by making teens think they have to be thin and tall. Meanwhile, many teens want to be like the models and they try to be thin but instead of doing it the healthy way. The way they do it is to skip meals and that develops eating disorders. For instance, Arnett says, “Marketing and advertisement agencies focus on models such as tall, thin women or a muscular man with a chiseled jawbone when casting for photo shoots and television commercial” (265.) Therefore, we experience and seen is that the media do give us a false beauty standard which makes teens want to do everything that is possible to become like models. This has contributed

This power has allowed the creation of new standards for women who are expected to be in perfect in every way and do everything to reach the established standards, even if it means putting their life at risk in order to meet the “ideal” body or face. Being exposed to these models flaunting their perfect bodies millions of women suffer from insecurities and low self-esteem. In the article Reconstructing the Ideal Body Image in Teen Fashion Magazines the writers Malachowski and Myers state that “Magazines are particularly influential because they target an audience in which disordered eating is most common, and display models that are thinner than 98% of American women” (2). Studies show that the most affected by these ideals are girls and teenagers, which is sad because they only care about looking like models in orders to be considered beautiful or just to be part of certain group. In the article No model for girls Fiona Bawdon states that “In a study of 3,200 young women carried out in February this year by Girlguiding UK, over half of 16- to 25-year-olds said the media showed in magazines or fashion advertisements made them feel that "being pretty and thin" was the "most important thing". This proves how the media and The Fashion Industry guide and shape the concept that society has about beauty

Magazines advertisements portray beauty using models that are usually abnormally thin. This makes most woman, especially those who are young, feel inferior and insecure about their own bodies. They believe they will only be beautiful if they look like the women in the magazines. Most women will try going on a crazy diets like the tapeworm diet, or the baby food diet, just to try to look like the models on the cover of magazines. Even young girls see the magazines as a reflection of what they should look like when they get older. Woman will stare at themselves in the mirror and find all kinds of things wrong with their body, face, and clothing. They will compare anything and everything from their weight to their hair to the models on

For example, in the article “Advertising and Image” researchers say that 23% of models weigh less than the average female and because of this 80% of 10-year old girls report having dieted. This happens because teens try to become just like the models on tv and magazine ads.