As I was sitting watching some television, an Ad for a car came up. It was not the usual scene where the car drives on a curvy road and so on. This commercial consisted of a woman being compared to the car, and a voice over said "it works with people, it works with cars." While this is being said a transformed Ashleigh McIvor (gold medalist snowboarder) is standing in a black elegant dress, all of a sudden, the screen go black and an Acura appears. As the commercial proceeds the voice over continues to say "the newly refined Acura TL, aggression in it's most elegant form." Now There is another exact commercial like this, but instead of transforming Ashleigh McIvor, it transforms Receiver Calvin Johnson from a football player to an elegant dressed man. "Mass communication has made possible a kind of national peer pressure that erodes private and individual values and standards, as well as community values and standards." (Kilbourne). Could this commercial be saying that you have to be an elegant person to own a car like the Acura TL? I personally think so.
I also think they could've gone with out actually undressing the people. Images like these are what make people insecure. It is undeniable that the reason they look the way they do is because they are athlete's, but I'm sure the people behind this commercial would have chosen the skinny woman, and fit man for the commercial anyway. Since commercials and especially ad's push so many standards on what is an "acceptable" body image, both men and women have trouble accepting their bodies for the way they are. Although both men and women are being told what is acceptable women seem to be targeted more. "despite some evidence of body dissatisfaction among men (hill, 2003) and the objectifying of idealized male body in some media sources (Nixon,1997), it remains overwhelmingly women who display self-harming starvation:" (Gunther). It is sad to see images of models who look like skeletons. Why do these companies, especially the fashion industry think that looking like a skeleton is attractive? is death really that appealing to them? I don't understand, and I am not so sure I want to. I do however think that there are different ways how to improve these images we see online, on the streets, in the stores, and on television. We can start by being educated.
To be honest I have never really payed attention to any of the models in the ads, or commercials. Now that I am seeing all of this, I find it ridiculous, and unbelievable. I understand that they need to sell what they sell, but when I take a good look at the ad it is unappealing to me. As we have discussed in class, another possible way is to look into the products that we buy. I'm personally not a big fan of makeup, I don't really like to wear it, and when it came up that a powder foundation cost about eight cents to make, it shocked me because people usually spend around 50 to buy this product. So If anyone would find an ad offensive, we could protest by simply not supporting their store or business buy not buying what they sell. Not only should we just educate ourselves, but other too, especially the younger girls.
"A ten-year-old girl wrote to New Moon, a feminist magazine for girls, "I was at the beach and was in my bathing suit. I have kind of fat legs, and my uncle told me I had fat legs in front of all my cousins and my cousins' friends. I was so embarrassed. I went up to my room and shut the door. When I went downstairs again, everyone started teasing me." young women are even encouraged to worry about small fluctuations in their weight." (Kilbourne).
This just comes to show that we need to educated the younger girls. Telling them that they are beautiful the way they are, and that no one really looks the girls in the magazine, not even the girl in the magazine.
Another possible way to fight these mainstream images is to go online and actually do something. At first it was hard to come across websites that actually do something other than just point out the negatives. but after hours of looking I found some great sites that are trying to empower being who they are. It is great and refreshing to see normal women, on line rather than the typical dying model. We do live in a media world, and what better way to go against the mainstream images than online. In one of the links I found it was interesting that they pointed out that a magazine was trying to support plus sized models, but mentioned that even the plus sized models, don't look plus sized, they look normal size. As I was reading this I thought that there is some serous issues if the media won't accept sizes ten and twelve as a normal size. With that in mind I believe we as a whole can start to change things perhaps it will take time to see improvement, but I believe that we can change the mainstream media's image, and I also think we should all be comfortable with who we are, after all not even the models look perfect, because if they did that would be very frightening.
Photo Credit
http://www.dailyspark.com/blog.asp?post=can_you_learn_to_accept_your_belly
http://thebellyproject.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/plus-sized-my-ass/
http://the-f-word.org/blog/index.php/2008/04/28/10-questions-for-kristin-lou-herout/
http://curvylife.com/
http://archive.blisstree.com/live/nows-positive-ads-28/
You know, I feel like girls wouldn't listen if they are told that they are beautiful and that no one looks like that. I can personally say that I did not believe my family or friends because I did not believe advertisements would LIE to me (I know, I was young!) I think girl/women should be shown before and after pictures of the models, maybe then they will understand the magic of photoshop.
ReplyDelete