Target's Flawed Advertisement Analysis

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.

Under society’s customs for decades, young women have found themselves immersed in the pressure and anticipation to have exemplary bodies. Nearly every young woman prefers to be slim, have a perfectly shaped body, that is beautified by applying pounds of makeup to their face but does not appear ridiculously overdone. Who’s responsible for these measures imposed on young women? When a young girl picks up the model on the cover of Vogue being called flawless, naturally it’s easy for her to then aspire to be a real-life imitation of the that model. 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 surging subject for young girls. Advertisements and pictures of lean female models are all over. Young women are measured and perplexed by their physical appearances with attire intended to raise their physical structures; social media, magazines, the society, marketing campaigns, advertisements, and the fashion gurus add to a strand of excellence.

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.

Lauren Greenfield is a photojournalist that created the expose, Girl Culture, in 2002. Elline Lipkin says in her article “Girls’ Body’s, Girls’ Selves”, “The girls in Greenfield’s photos often see themselves as too thin, too fat, not stylish enough, too trendy, attractive or ugly or desirable or hideous” (596). When advertisements use edited or photoshopped images to sell a product it causes effects like what is seen in Greenfield's images. Advertisements make consumers believe that their products will make them more desirable. When that product doesn’t have that effect it makes the customer believe that something is wrong with them. Queue the, “Honey does this dress make me look fat?” This is especially harmful to younger girls that are more likely to be insecure about their bodies and try harder to fit in. It can even go so far as to cause eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. The media puts out images of extremely thin and fit women which can only be achieved by digital editing and photoshop. The young girl flipping through the magazine has no idea that the pictures she’s seeing aren’t real and aren’t achievable and it ruins her self image.

“Companies should absolutely stand up against Photoshop, especially those that once endorsed it and now see the damage it has caused,” Legleitner said. You may be left wondering: “What damage?”. The damage left from the use of photoshop is immense and it extends much farther than what may come to mind. A research study done by Heather R. Gallivan, PsyD, LP Park Nicollet Melrose Center found that “53% of 13 year-old American girls are unhappy with their bodies. This number grows to 78% by the time girls reach 17.” Her research shows that at approximately the age of 12 girls will have the most confidence in their body and then as the years progress of their youth that confidence will plummet. Another statistic that Gallivan shared was that in 2010 the Girl Scouts Organization did a survey with over one-thousand girls ages 13-17, the results noted that: “ 9 out of 10 girls felt pressure by fashion and media industries to be skinny.” It further explained that 60% of girls compare themselves to the models and use the images put out by magazines as an ideal body to strive for. Women and girls that feel this unethical influence by the fashion industry often times go through impacts including: depression, eating disorders, anxiety or even as terrible as suicidality. Knowing that women face emotional and physical impacts based off the unrealistic edited images put out by their brand should be disheartening to the companies at fault.

Photoshop is known to fix even the slightest imperfections. This sets impossibly high standards for what women expect for themselves. Photoshopped images are destroying America’s body image. The media sets up high beauty and body standards for women. The media takes beautiful women and tells them they are not beautiful enough. Being beautiful nowadays is having a face covered in make-up, being “skinny” is having a thigh gap, and to be perfect is to have no flaws. Women need to start realizing they are beautiful with their flaws, but it’s a hard process to love your flaws and imperfections. Dove made a commercial about loving something as simple as your curls. A handful of young women (ages 5 to 11) were asked about how they feel about their

Ever find yourself looking into the mirror at your body and thinking: wow I’m fat or I’m ugly? According to Advocates for Youth, approximately 91% of women are unhappy with their bodies and resort to dieting to achieve their ideal body shape. Unfortunately, only 5% of women naturally possess the body type often portrayed by Americans in the media. The media creates an unrealistic image for women to strive for. Many companies like Victoria's Secret, Hollister, Abercrombie and Fitch, and so on promote their products using skinny, anorexic looking models. Recently, Victoria's Secret launched the “Perfect ‘Body’ Campaign.” The slogan, which refers to the retailer's "Body" lingerie line, appears with images of Victoria's Secret angels otherwise

This article talks about how photoshop allows advertisers to give models different body types that they did not had before. The false images affects the way that people see beauty in an unrealistic way, also false image cause low self-esteem and negative impact of people body image. With false advertisement women feels pressure to have the perfect body either by plastic surgery or unhealthy diet plans. This article is useful to use because it shows what the media uses to bring people self esteem down and how people would look at their body image differently

Youthful kids today are so stressed over what they look like and how they dress. Today 42% of young ladies in grades 1-3 need to be more slender, 51% of 9-10 year old young ladies feel better about themselves when they are eating less, 53% of 13 year old young ladies are despondent with their bodies and when they are 17, 78% of them will be. For what reason do you imagine that these young ladies feel along these lines? Promotions of ladies being 'flawless' impact pre-adulthood. When they are 17, these young ladies have seen 250,000 TV ads revealing to them they ought to be an enhancing object, sex question, or a size they can never accomplish. In this promotion it demonstrates how photoshopped this female model is. In the best picture she has

There’s just no way an image would be released without any retouching at all so every single ad would have that disclaimer on it. And absolutely 100 percent of what’s in fashion magazines is retouched. With fashion itself, sometimes the clothes are not fitting the way they’re supposed to. They’re always pinned in the back, for example, and then the wrinkles are taken out with retouching. So the clothes are kind of a lie, too. Nothing is going to fit that perfectly when you try it

They need to accept what they have and do the best with what they have. Help others and lift them up instead of tearing others down. Victoria Secret needs to realize that self-imaging is more serious than it has ever been, therefore, they need to make it known no matter women’s shape or size, they are all accepted into society. Low self-esteem, eating disorders and body shaming is not something a young lady should have to worry about when walking out into today’s society. Therefore, Victoria Secrets “perfect body” campaign has recently driven women away from their store and their advertisements because of these

Ads show heavy use of photoshop to make women appear thinner, whiter, and taller. These ads are seen by lots of women who are tricked to believe they have to look the same way. Women do not realise that these women do not look the way they are advertised in these ads. A survey done on about 2,000 women, 15% of 18-24 year olds were convinced that the models in the ads looked the same way in real life. Also over 650 of the women surveyed reported having confidence issues and 24% of the women reported they were unconfident in their bodies. Photoshop in ads can set an unreachable goal in people who are not aware that the pictures are

Most advertisements in magazines can be symbolized as propaganda art. In many cases, pictures in magazines can be false information. For example, pictures that advertise make-up or skin care products can be a big piece of propaganda. The false information, in this case, is the fake pictures that they edit to make the models look good. From an article written by Jo Swinson from CNN, he states, “One study found that one in four people is depressed about their body, another found that almost a third of women say they would sacrifice a year of life to achieve the ideal body weight and shape, and almost half of girls in a recent survey think the pressure to look good is the worst part of being female (Swinson 2011)”. I agree with Jo, as these women that he talks about hate what they look like, including their face and body. The women see these models and think that they look pretty because of these products, so they seek to buy and use these products. Magazines are filled with false information, which is considered propaganda and

Adverts use Photoshop to enhance female features and to get rid of any traces of flaws, thus creating a perfect image. Rekha & Maran’s (2012) findings indicated that exposure to media depicting images of a thin ideal body related to body images for women. According to their research, using a survey, 76% of women desired to have smaller body sizes then their current size because of the pressure of advertisements’ ideal body image. They concluded that the inaccurate perception of appearances in adverts leads to woman’s low self-esteem and increase body dissatisfaction among themselves (Rekha & Maran, 2012). The models used in advertisements often represent role models for a number of teenagers and women. Therefore, their appearance can have an impact on the women who look up to their perfect figure. Similarly, Gangopadhyay stated, “Female models are shown to look perfect and in effect inspire the women to try hard to attain the all-important standard of beauty and perfection as set by the visuals of the advertisements” (2011). In effect, media is creating unattainable beauty standards that are becoming the norm in society supporting the media ecological theory, that media does influence and shape our attitudes. In this case, attitudes on the ideal body image is being directly influenced by the thin depiction of women in

As a marketing ad, Victoria’s Secret 's The Perfect “Body” ad is very effective. The beautiful girls in attractive bra and panty sets exude an unique mix of class and sexiness that it isn 't easy to do. Even if you are not the size pictured or you do not have the same “perfect” body type, you may believe that you can look sexy in their bra and panty sets. There is also a subconscious element that may lead some young women to feel good about their body and make them feel free to show their body off, if it matches the body type shown. The reverse of that is that for some women the ad would make them feel fat and want to keep their bodies covered up.