Ads

When looking at billboard ads or even scheming through women's magazines, you can see that women are constantly being objectified. Whether it is a makeup ad or a tennis shoes ad, women must appeal to the public. In many of the ads seen on television and on prints, women as well as men are portrayed as the perfect being that everyone should strive to be. Airbrushing and Photoshopping are used to enhance these average beings to looking like they never aged nor have any imperfections, when in reality we all do.

Even though we have established how a lot of the ads shown in public are demeaning to women, there are a lot more to the techniques used in advertising that we may not know about. We all know society believe the ideal women must be skinny with a sexy body and how women need to watch what they eat because being overweight is consider ugly. In the readings of Body Messages and Body Meanings by Maggie Wykes and Barrie Gunther, they mention in the ‘Thin Commandments’ that “Being thin is being healthy, Thou shall not eat fattening food without punishing oneself after and You can never be too thin” are examples of the pressure society is pushing on women (Wykes Gunther, 6).

Women are not allowed to indulge in food like men can especially fattening food because it is wrong and shameful. And so there have been ads such as this Sunchips ad that says “Guilt is not one of the ingredients” to make women feel like they can eat all they want and not feel bad about gaining weight because it is supposedly more healthy than a bag of greasy potato chips. According to Hunger as Ideology by Susan Bordo, “emotional heights. intensity, love, and thrills; it is women who habitually seek such experiences from food and who are most likely to be overwhelmed by their relationship to food, to find it dangerous and frightening (especially rich, fattening, soothing food…” (Bordo, 6). This stems off from the Victorian Era that gender ideology, the idea that the depiction of women eating large portions of food is taboo.

From seeing all these ads about how important body image is and how women are negatively depicting themselves, I would like to see ads promoting younger kids to do well in school, eat healthy food and help the planet. Children and young adults should not be subject to seeing ads that make them want to sexualize themselves because that would only habit bad behaviors.

Ads like this that celebrates real women should be put out more.

 

 

 

I believe that if more positive ads are shown of women and men, children and young adults would not feel the need to be sexy in order to feel beautiful or wanted.

 

Images provided by Google

 

Works Cited

Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: University  of California, 1993. Print.

"The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill [Paperback]." The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill: Maggie Wykes,Barrie Gunter: 9780761942481: Amazon.com: Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Oct. 2012. <http://www.amazon.com/The-Media-Body-Image-Looks/dp/0761942483>.