Reading the Signs in Public Spaces: ULTA Beauty
The space I chose to observe and write about for this essay is ULTA Beauty in the Greenwood Mall. In this analysis, I will be focusing on the impact of advertisements and products within class, gender, and beauty through the study of semiotics, connotation, and denotation. ULTA sells haircare products, skin care products, perfumes and cologne, high end makeup brands, and drug store makeup brands as well.
Walking into ULTA Beauty, I already had preconceived notions about who was allowed with in this space. I assumed that ULTA was open to just women but looking deeper, I learned that it is for the middle and upper class women and men of society. Throughout the store prices ranged from as
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I also made some assumption about the race among the advertisement within ULTA. I looked at many advertisement and saw that there was racial diversity with the models of the advertisements. There was the usual, tan, blonde hair, blue eyed model but there were also African American, Asian, as well as ethnically ambiguous models, which is good for inclusion and representation for all peoples. While walking through out ULTA, one of the advertisement that really caught my attention was a Benefit advertisement. It was for their “They’re Real” Mascara and it is, for the most part, in black and white and shows a very sultry looking woman with dark hair, dark eyes and more than likely tan skin. Not to mention the most important part of the advertisement being her abnormally large breast, that looked like they were the product of cosmetic surgery. The denotation of this ad implies that “my breasts are as real as your lashes with mascara on.” The connotation is that it is societally okay to lie about yourself and rely on beauty products and cosmetic surgery to make you feel better. This is a terrible message to send to women and girls of all ages because it implies that if you change yourself through cosmetic surgery you will look like all the models you see in the media. Another ad that caught my attention was a not
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 definition of true beauty continues to evolve as generations pass and new ones emerge. Ulta Beauty, a popular cosmetic store, sells products with the aim to make women feel confident in their skin. Their use of advertisements helps spread the word about new, improved product lines and reach out to potential buyers. Selling makeup is the obvious goal of a cosmetic store, but the kind of consumers they attract and how varies between different franchises. When a company displays their products in one shot instead of in a commercial, the task of conveying the message becomes harder. Ulta Beauty persuades women to purchase their products by pointing out buyers’ insecurities while still appearing to promote empowering feminist values.
In “Two Ways a Woman Can get Hurt: Advertising and Violence,” the author Jean Kilbourne describes how advertising and violence is a big problem for women. Although her piece is a little scrambled, she tries to organize it with different types of advertisement. Women are seen as sex objects when it comes to advertising name brand products. Corporate representatives justify selling and marketing for a product by how a woman looks. Kilbourne explains how the media is a big influence on how men perceive women. Kilbourne tries to prove her point by bashing on advertising agencies and their motives to successfully sell a product. Kilbourne’s affirmation towards advertisements leaves you no doubt that she is against them.
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).
Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly surrounded by advertisements. On average, we are exposed to approximately 3,000 ads per day, through logos, billboards, and television commercials, even our choices of brands. But in today’s society, one of the most used and influential tools of advertising are women. But the unfortunate thing is that women are not just viewed as actresses in these ads but as objects for people to look at, use, abuse, and more. In her fourth installment in a line of documentaries, “Killing Us Softly 4,” Jean Kilbourne explains the influence of advertising women and popular culture, and its relationship to gender violence, sexism and racism, and eating disorders.
Jean Kilbourne’s film, Killing Us Softly 4, depicts the way the females are shown in advertisements. She discusses how advertisement sell concepts of normalcy and what it means to be a “male” and a “female.” One of her main arguments focuses on how women aspire to achieve the physical perfection that is portrayed in advertisements but this perfection is actually artificially created through Photoshop and other editing tools. Women in advertisements are often objectified as weak, skinny, and beautiful while men are often portrayed as bigger and stronger. Advertisements utilize the setting, the position of the people in the advertisements, and the products to appeal to the unconscious aspect
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.
Beauty is the quality of undeniable attractiveness possessed by a confident individual. Beauty is culturally valued because of its effect to make someone feel confident, creative, and unique. The beauty industry is expanding faster than ever because of the constant publicity it is receiving, whether it through social media, articles, or blogs. There are stores that are dedicated solely to all things beauty. One store in particular is Ulta Beauty. It is a beauty emporium where makeup gurus, or any ordinary person, could really get creative. Ulta’s popularity continues to grow because of its fun, colorful, and persuasive ads. An example would be an ad which contains a subtle, white, sparkly background, with vivid hues of purples, pinks, golds, and blues clustered together on the right side, with the words “All things beauty. All in one place. Go ahead, lose yourself,” and the large “Ulta Beauty” logo in the center of it all. The ad uses color, text, and gender appeal to connect to the value of beauty and to persuade women of all walks of life to shop there.
Women of color are generally considered beautiful if their of lighter complexion, straight hair and has caucasian features. Ones who are darker are often featured in a jungle- like setting wearing some sort of animal print as if their animals and not humans. Those who create the advertisements are breaking down darker complexion people self- esteem and make them think that they're not beautiful. African- American girls are faced with these challenges at a very young age which has to do a lot media advertising.
Cosmetic brand Maybelline New York has an emotional effect on a variety of individuals. Their company has not only attracted the attention of women but has caused women to identify themselves as fierce, daring, and most of all beautiful. Maybelline’s eyeshadow advertisement “The Blushed Nude” portrays a young women who is striking, bold and beautiful. Maybelline wants consumers to feel beautiful and their advertisement provides the image and desires a women seeks in accomplishing natural looking beauty. Women wish to identify themselves as beautiful and belong to a
Sexualizaton and objectification in the advertisements we see and the media we watch has become a very strong issue in our society. With the idea that “sex sells”, consumers don’t even realize that they’re not viewing the advertisements for what they are, but for the women (or men) that are being portrayed in a very erotic way, posed with whatever product they were hired to sell. Many articles have been written so far to challenge and assess this problem, but one written by Jean Kilbourne (1999), “”Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt”: Advertising and Violence” holds an extensive amount of authority. Using her personal experience with the subject, as well as studies she has conducted herself on the topic of sexualization, she talks about how the amount of sexualization in advertising affects how society views the culture and products consumers buy. She also notes that because of the quantity and prevalence of these ads, the rate of all forms of sexual assault, specifically rape (mostly towards women of all age), increase, as well as other forms of assault. It is important to examine Kilbourne’s use of rhetorical devices, such as ethos, pathos, and logos, and how effective these devices make her article. This way, it can be examined for its validity and her understanding of her own research. Kilbourne’s article is very effective through her uses of pathos and ethos, but at the same time, it loses its effectiveness through her absence of a counter-argument, as well as a lack
The cultural artifact I decided to analyze is an advertisement featured on the beauty company Glossier’s Instagram page on Sept. 16, 2017. The advertisement is a billboard in Santa Monica Place in California, of plus-sized supermodel Paloma Elsesser nude with bronzed, glowing skin holding her right leg up while sitting down. The words body hero in white font on a red label is in the corner. The logo stands out against the white background of the ad. Upgrade your shower at glossier.com is in the bottom right-hand corner in a slimmer and smaller black font than the size of body hero. With Elsesser's hair in a bun, the way she sits highlights her body curves even more. She takes up 95 percent of the billboard. Automatically, I am enticed to Elsesser's
Everyday we expose ourselves to thousands of advertisements in a wide variety of environments where ever we go; yet, we fail to realize the influence of the implications being sold to us on these advertisements, particularly about women. Advertisements don’t just sell products; they sell this notion that women are less of humans and more of objects, particularly in the sexual sense. It is important to understand that the advertising worlds’ constant sexual objectification of women has led to a change in sexual pathology in our society, by creating a culture that strives to be the unobtainable image of beauty we see on the cover of magazines. Even more specifically it is important to study the multiple influences that advertisements have
One will see a white female with pouting red lips and the very petite body that resembles a thirteen-year-old girl. The extremely artificial women and the heavily photo-shopped pictures in these ad’s create a norm and make those women who look differently, feel insecure of who they are and make them feel as if they are less of a woman, for example they tend to over represent the Caucasian, blonde with bright eyes, white complexion and a petite body. This is an unattainable beauty for most women, which has caused many to develop issues such as eating disorders, depression and the very much talked about these days, anorexia.
This essay will be addressing ideologies of consumer fetishism and pseudo-individuality through examining the commodity signs found in the mass marketing and advertising of designer cosmetics, particularly Chanel.