The, Colorado And California A & M Kingsville

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.

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.

The fashion industry is one of the largest and most valued industries in the world and is crucial to society because most people are influenced by it on daily basis if they come into contact with anything apparel related. Unfortunately, the industry executes their motives of promotion in the wrong way. The industry indirectly pressures women and young girls into eating disorders because of how they portray the industry with such thin models. To solve this issue of the spreading of negative body image, the fashion industry should cease the promotion of extremely thin models to advertise because it causes people towards changing their body images in an unhealthy way, thus leading to eating disorders. The fashion industry affects the body image of the sufferers with the help of social media decisions made by the fashion industry and society.

The fashion industry plays a huge role in portraying bad images of ideal beauty, which in turn affects today’s society perception of their own body image. Not only are women affected by what is seen and heard about how the perfect body should appear, children of young ages are now feeling insecure and obsessed with their bodies before they reach teenage years. This ‘ideal image’ the fashion industry continues to enforce only focuses on very thin models who seem to be in shape and are very healthy. Furthermore, many people think of the influence from the fashion industry as being human representations (models). Because of the rising problem with the image of beauty within the fashion industry, it is shown that even mannequins and non-human representations (mannequins, dolls, photoshopping) of bodies play a significant role in women’s body image; which causes problems to the individual. (Anshutz & Engels, 2010). Body image and self-satisfaction, eating disorders and non-human representations all can cause harm to the individual, if prolonged.

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 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.

The culture of media has now taken a large affect on young girls and their body images. Young girls are feeling dissatisfied with their bodies because of the way society views women. The media tells us what to look like, what clothes to wear, make-up, what cars to drive, and sometimes what to eat. Media is changing people constantly through advertising and by showing us the looks and fashions of celebrities. Advertising has negative effects on the formation of oneself as seen through the nature of the promotion of its’ products. This effect is particularly prevalent among young adolescent girls. Young girls feel the need to join dietary plans or result to eating disorders Advertising in society results in negative effects on girls through self-image that leads to harmful consequences. The media is the biggest factor contributing to girls’ dissatisfaction with their bodies, causing eating disorders.

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

Advertisements, magazines, and billboards come into our everyday lives without our consent. One cannot go a single day without catching even the smallest glimpse of the beautiful, thin girls that pass you as you drive on the crowded hallway and cover the shelves of grocery store registers. The images women see every day affect the way they perceive themselves, causing them mental and sometimes physical pain. Maureen Connor calls this idea to attention as an exhibition. In this paper, I will discuss Thinner Than You by Maureen Connor (1990, Stretch net over stainless steel dress rack, 60” X 16” x 8”) and how it discusses the pressures on women to be desirable in today’s society.

The model’s face, hair, body shape, dress, and just their overall physical appearance can cause the viewer to have a positive opinion about the model in just a short amount of seconds of just viewing the image. When teens view a model on TV, or in a magazine all they think about is looking “like a supermodel: perfectly thin, tall, sculpted, and commanding,” which is “our cultural epitome of feminine success” (Zimmerman p 2). With this, american society plays a role in determining whether it is acceptable for a woman to look “thicker”, or better yet to look like a beautiful more common woman that is “thin”. We tend to follow what other people want to see rather than listen to our own self which is why models and advertisements have taken control over the minds of many teen girls. In “The Skinny on Models,” the writer brought to the attention that a Brazilian fashion model named Ana Caroline, who showed creations of a famous designer, Giorgio Armani, dies due to the eating disorders, she had because of the ultra thin body images the fashion industry was promoting, bringing the attention of banning skinny models (“The Skinny on Models”). Furthermore, many models portray to be “the perfect” girl, which in many cases leads for teen girls to be turned into someone they wish to be because of the view that models have given to the world. For example, fashion runways and contests have given us a perspective of what many people look for because the such model has won the “Ms. Universe” title. With the idea of body image, insecurities start to develop in the mind of a teen girls, creating low-self esteem. Teenagers are in a stage of life where all they care about is acceptence towards a group of people and media creates and ideal image of what one should look like. Model’s weaken a girl’s self esteem by

Furthermore, in order to generate a social demand, image-making through symbols is a significant progress of production, such as skinniness bodies is a symbol of the perfect female body shape. Wernick (1991:18) argues that ‘symbolic manufacture and advertising fused’, which advertising is the fictive process of representation. For instance, Victoria’s Secret describes the bodies wearing its products as the ‘perfect’, which in order to convey a message that ‘wearing Victoria’s Secret and thence become perfect’. In this sense, a symbolic value (perfect body shape) applies to Victoria’s Secret’s product that makes it attractive. Indeed, body image on billboards and magazines suggests an idea and an aesthetic that excessive thinness is an ideal

Advertising has always been an important part of our society. The history of advertising can be traced to pre-modern history when it served an important purpose by allowing sellers to effectively compete with other merchants for the attention of clients in Ancient Egypt. From 1704 when the first newspaper advertisement was announced, it gradually grows into a major force in American society based primarily on newspapers and magazines (Ad Age Advertising Century, 1999). It not only helps to raise the target demographics’ awareness of issues, but also educate consumers with the benefits of the product. However, advertising cannot target a particular person before the emerging of World Wide Web.

The author engages the attention of young women by using a picture of a model on the cover of the magazine. In the middle of the magazine, there is a model with perfect skin and hair. The author also uses phrases like, “My life as a size 18…” to occupy the attention of young girls because nowadays countless young girls are concerned about their weight. The use of images and phrases make the