The Effects of Weight Loss Advertising Essay

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

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

Have you ever been watching television and a commercial for Hydroxycut comes on featuring a male or female who went from 250 pounds to 150 pounds and looks like a fitness model just from using Hydroxycut? Although these results may seem extreme this is what many fitness advertisements promote; portraying unrealistic body images and displaying false results. Fitness advertising can be found in print and broadcast forms. While fitness advertising can be viewed as having both positives and negatives, I believe fitness advertising is negative. This paper will discuss the negatives of fitness advertising, to include creating negative body images and promoting false results. It will, also, address the counterarguments against fitness advertising being negative.

This is particularly apparent with the effects of advertising media. Bordo points out that “miracle diet pills and videos promising to turn our body parts into steel have become as commonplace as aspirin ads,” (par.1) which influences an idea of the kind of body one should aim to achieve. Additionally, it presents the notion that, with such products, reaching one’s weight goal will come with more ease. It gives an incentive and makes people accustomed to the belief that losing weight is necessary. By exhibiting this pattern and concept that advertising media is inducing, Bordo gives insight as to why there is an influx in the desire to lose weight and to achieve it by any means necessary. She also suggests that the “ideal of the body beautiful has largely come from fashion designers and models” (par 2).With the exaltation and emphasis on the gratifying physique of a woman’s body, many young women find themselves corresponding to the ideals the fashion industry places on both its fashion and models. Remarkably enough, Borodo conveys that, not only are females following in the fashion industries’ steps, men are falling underway as well as “more ads featuring anorexic-looking young men are appearing too” (par.2). In presenting the fashion industry for what it represents and influences, Bordo effectively reveals a fellow cause of

Moreover, as Richins (1991) reports, women always make social comparisons between the advertising models and themselves. As a result, advertising images create negative affect and increases women’s dissatisfaction with their own appearance. Since those images are edited through the consistent usage of digital technology, these idealized images do not portray women in a healthy manner. Indeed, these enhanced images would give these young girls the impression that they need to be ‘perfect’, just like these ‘fake’ images. According to Reist in ABC’s Gruen Session (2010), ‘young women get the message that they need to be thin, hot and sexy just to be acceptable’ in this society. Therefore, by generating the wrong perception of real beauty, the responsibility is pushed to the marketers, as they portray women with this stereotypical body type as acceptable. In addition, as the brand, Dove’s tagline in its advertisement - What happened to the ‘real beauty’? (Reist, 2010), marketers need not market their products in manners portraying women as airheads. Consequently, marketers gave most consumers viewing the advertisement, the wrong impression that

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.

Accompanying unrealistic images of women, the media spends billions of dollars yearly to advertise the various techniques that eliminate body discontents such as dieting pills and exercising machines, and exploits female magazine reader’s insecurities. Whether magazine advertisements aid in the gradual depletion of body image or fail to impact it at all will be the purpose of this investigation, supplemented by a literature review and organized by a theoretical framework, to support a firm analysis.

Since the early twentieth century, Americans have adopted an obsession with the “thin ideal” - the concept of the ideally slim female body. As displayed throughout advertisements, magazines, television, and social media we are constantly bombarded with images of the ideal “skinny woman”. This, however, is not an accurate representation of the average woman’s body and can have an

Every day there are masses of women that are bombarded with today’s “thin-ideal media” of the so-called “picture-perfect” body. These unrealistic photos portray images in magazines all over the country to entice to our youth; which gives them the indication that they are skinny enough or pretty enough. The term “thin-ideal media” is a term that shows images and films that enclose unrealistically thin females as their centerfolds or lead characters. This is something that occurs habitually in the fashion industry, such as in magazines, clothing catalogs and television shows that appeal mostly to teens. Thin-ideal media gives the idea that being thin is a good thing and something that they should view as desirable and in some cases even strive to be like. Even if it could be potentially hazardous to one’s health by not

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

“To be happy and successful, you must be thin,” is a message women are given at a very young age (Society and Eating Disorders). In fact, eating disorders are still continuously growing because of the value society places on being thin. There are many influences in society that pressures females to strive for the “ideal” figure. According to Sheldon’s research on, “Pressure to be Perfect: Influences on College Students’ Body Esteem,” the ideal figure of an average female portrayed in the media is 5’11” and 120 pounds. In reality, the average American woman weighs 140 pounds at 5’4”. The societal pressures come from television shows, diet commercials, social media, peers, magazines and models. However, most females do not take into account of the beauty photo-shop and airbrushing. This ongoing issue is to always be a concern because of the increase in eating disorders.

Today 's society is constantly presented with misrepresentations of the ideal body image through the advertising of diet plans and supplements. Companies in the fitness industry scam people into buying useless products or services by advertising with individuals that have, what the mass media sees as, the 'perfect ' body composition. In addition to getting consumers to buy into a product or service, these companies also aid society with the spreading of this fake idea of what classifies as the perfect body. They portray a body image that is unattainable for most individuals in society, despite how many of those supplements being advertised they buy. The models used in these advertisements, are in most cases, starving themselves, enhanced via illegal substances, or are photo-shopped to the point where even they do not look like the model displayed in the ad. All this has led to many people wanting to strive for that perfect body, that in reality, is impossible to achieve. In order to show the affect these advertisements play in our society, I will be deconstructing multiple ads in the fitness industry, as well as multiple peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles centered around the impact media has on an individual 's self-image.

Americans have always had the mentality that bigger is better. Bigger cars, bigger houses, and bigger salaries are just a few ways that Americans supersize their lives. But, there is one other thing that has been growing in American households: their weight. Portion sizes are out of control, video games always beat a playground, and everything is motorized. This is the way that American children are growing up, and out. But in a society that is so obsessed with looking good and thus, thin, how are these children getting so large? Advertisements. The news has been attacking advertisements aimed at children, and rightfully so, they are showing unhealthy lifestyles and eating habits in a socially acceptable way. Children watch cartoons.

A beautiful, thin woman in a bikini smiles happily at the viewer from a contorted pose as the pill ad she is on declares that it is a guaranteed weight-loss supplement. Weight loss ads are primarily targeted to women, so it is usually a woman that will be featured on the cover. Something I’ve noticed is that health communication messages for women are almost always tied in with appearance, so I chose an ad that has to do with both. I’ve found that it is rare to find an ad that is about promoting health that does not also appeal to vanity.

The problem I am addressing is how to help teenage girls resist pressure from advertisers to look thin. I will be proposing ways to change people’s specific attitudes and behaviors that will potentially close a gap between what is happening and what should be happening. The goal is not to educate or increase awareness about this issue because it is a very widely talked about topic. The ‘problem’ is that teenage girls (who) should not be peer pressured to look thin (what) in today’s (when) society (where). What is happening today is that teenage girls have this societal pressure to look thin. This is mostly due to companies and advertisers putting out campaigns with smaller, thinner models and celebrities. With the rise of technology, people are becoming more and more influenced by what they see on television, the Internet, and social media. Teenage girls see these beautiful, thin celebrities and aspire to look like that. Girls are more vulnerable than ever today and some will do just about anything to give in to the pressure and try to look like someone else. What should be happening is that companies and advertisers should use a more diverse group of woman when putting out campaigns. Beauty comes in all shapes, sizes and colors. They should be embracing the diversity throughout the world and show that off when advertising. This is impacting mostly teenage girls as their bodies are changing and as they are trying to figure out who they are. However, this pressure is not just