The Fitness Of Fitness Magazines

Fitness has grown to a multibillion dollar industry. The idea of fitness has influenced millions of lives whether the correlation was as a career, lifestyle, or an occasional hobby. People globally compete in bodybuilding, physique, and powerlifting meets earning thousands of dollars depending on their successes. Though they seem pointless at first, even the sixty second long infomercials on television advertising the new and approved anywhere gym equipment or perfect diet has made the viewer at least contemplate their health. People often confuse fitness as a sole concept of either exercising or dieting, but fitness depends immensely on both. Some people in the fitness industry manipulate diet and exercise to create the body stature they desire.

Advertisers often emphasize sexuality and the importance of physical attractiveness in an attempt to sell products, but researchers are concerned that this places pressure on women to focus more on their appearances. As stated in an article from Body Image and Advertising, the average woman sees 400 to 600 advertisements per day and by the time she is 17 years old, she has received over 250,000 commercial messages through the media. While only 9% of advertisements have a direct statement about beauty, many more implicitly emphasize the importance of beauty- particularly those that target both women and girls. (HealthyPlace)

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.

Advertising plays a huge role in why people buy what they buy. This paper will discuss the different techniques used by brands in order to appeal to the intended group they are targeting. Some brands try to appeal to the most amount of people possible. However, some brands have a specific niche of people they try to appeal to. McDonalds is an example of a brand that tries to appeal to everyone. It has a general message that everyone can get behind, and they market it correctly. This is why they are one of the biggest brands in existence. However, Gymshark is a brand that tries to appeal to a specific niche of people. Their goal is to be the next Nike. They try to appeal to athletic people, who workout very often. Their products are similar to Nike, but they are specifically

In “Feeding Hard Bodies: Food and Masculinities in Men’s Fitness Magazines” Fabio Parasecoli addresses the increasing popularity of men’s health and body image. Many magazines, including Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle and Fitness, are targeted toward men of all ages who wish to improve their physical appearance. The particular body ideal they reinforce is one of high muscle and low fat, a body that can be hard to achieve for the average man. Therefore, specific nutrition is the key in obtaining the ideal body. Men are now becoming more aware of their appearance, body image and body health. With the standards, dedications and effort put into obtaining the ideal body type, food industry is giving men easier ways to get and maintain

The rhetorical imagery that is used to portray a man's body is spread throughout the fitness industry and health advertisements. These images are on the cover of well-known magazines such as “FITNESSRX”, distribute worldwide targeting men, ages 18-30. These magazines give a visual rhetoric as a method of persuading beauty, body image, and the pursuit of “perfection”. These companies target young adults because they believe they have the money to buy their products to obtain the body they want or the body portrayed on the cover of the magazine.

Napoli, Murgolo-Poor, and Boudville examine advertisements across three Australian magazines, aimed at females aged 5-15, in order to see if there is a difference in the images presented to younger and older readers. The physical characteristics and ethnic backgrounds of the females represented in the publication’s advertisements are examined. In their study, the authors discover that regardless of the publication type or the age of the model, the females portrayed in these magazines’ advertisements tend to be of the “ideal” body type—that is, thin and Caucasian.

Nikee. Apple. Covergirl. Weight Watchers. Why do all these seemingly unrelated names sound familiar? That answer is simple: advertising. Advertising, a prodigious business, is a way to market a product or service to the public consumer through TV, internet, billboards, and other outlets. However, this over exposure to unnecessary and unwanted propaganda brings about personal struggles, since ads scream about the absolute desire for self impeccability while simultaneously destroying the spirits of those who listen. This industry’s image of “normalcy” often alters one’s self image. Although many see the benefits of consumer marketing, the industry’s depiction of idealized perfection reveals that manipulating people through advertisements

Advertisements play such a power role in the media area. Advertisements don’t just sell products, they are now showing a way of life, they sell values, they sell body image- the ideal body. We are said to be exposed to an esitamted ‘range from around 250 per day on the conservative side, to 3000 and above’ [1] of adverts. They are now showings us what to strive for within our looks and what we wear. Our hair colour and style and it seems apparent that all

People magazine considers itself a national magazine. Their mission statement states that they are “your everyday escape”, where you become an integral part of a cultural conversation. Its eye-catching covers feature portraits of popular figures and gossips about their relationships. When you grow up surrounded by colorful magazines at the grocery store check outs, the glamor and fame creates the narrative of “us” and “them”, who are exceptional in their lives. However, the more educated you become the headlines seem more absurd and skepticism arises around the truth of the statements they make. At least that is the hope. The advertisement of Kraft’s Zesty Italian dressing in the People magazine (as attached) featuring a physically fit, barely

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.

Basically, these companies are promising healthy weight loss only to make money, knowing that in the end, it is only false advertisement. The worst thing about the media being such a big influence on children and adults is that no one in the media is willing to change the obsession with perfection. As people become more influenced, ill, and provoked, the media only continues to only publish magazines with stick thin models with perfect features.

An individual’s body image, body satisfaction, self-esteem and confidence are affected by unrealistic, digitally altered, and stereotyped images used by the advertising and fashion industries. In the United Sates 94% of female characters on television are thinner than the average American woman (Yamamiya et al. 2005). By associating these images with happiness, desirability and success and stating that women can attain thin bodies by dieting, exercising, and surgery the media encourage female consumers to believe that they can and should be this thin (Yamamiya et al. 2005). While not all women are susceptible, exposure to images in the media of thin-and-beautiful women can lead to body image dissatisfaction which can be accompanied by social anxiety, depression, eating disturbances, and poor self-esteem (Yamamiya et al. 2005). According to studies, women become more body dissatisfied after viewing thin-and-beautiful images than after viewing average-size, oversize, or non-body images (Yamamiya et al. 2005). Due to the media’s emphasis on women’s thinness and attractiveness, females in our society are more body dissatisfied than males (Yamamiya et al.

On May 2014; the Women’s and Health magazine published an advertisement for Sofia Vergara featuring Head and Shoulders. Head and Shoulders is a shampoo product with different kinds of shampoos. This advertisement is selling the green apple head and shoulder shampoo with its conditioner. Who are the targeted audience? Why would any person choose this product not the other? A lot of questions the advertisement must reply on to be considered as a good advertisement. One of the main questions asked would be if this was a persuasive advertisement or not. Such a question is answered through the use of logos ethos and pathos.

The men in these advertisements look nothing like me, despite me being tall, it is still not enough. The media has put into my perception that slender, though muscular, bodies are more successful in romance, career and are self-confidence. These assumptions that the media has portrayed in my mind has left me questioning myself about my own physical body. I quite remember looking at the mirror and seeing that I had belly fat and my arms looked like a shrimp’s compared to the ideal men. I felt incompetent and worthless because the ideology that was put into my mind and my assumption that without the ideal body my career and romance life would come to an end. So I decided I needed to change, so I signed up for the gym to bulk up. This was no accident that I retreated to the gym, supposedly the media idea of achieving the ideal body is realized by working out, dieting, and cosmetic surgery. Pressure was also put on me by women, friends, other men and my parents, especially my father. Through advice like “Be a Man”, something that is easily said, but carried the weight of its message. I was expected to take charge. So I did by taking control of my body with exercise and drinking protein shakes and cutting down my food intake to meet the standards of society. This provided me with a sense of direction, control and achievement; however, it risked my health with symptoms of having eating disorders. Similarly, I have seen many men and women, mostly women,