Aashiq Razee
First post- 15 year old.
“My boyfriend said that he loves me for my mind, I have never been so insulted in my life.”
I’ve always considered Advertisements to be a very powerful educational force. It’s an over *$250 billion a year industry just in the USA and the average American is exposed to over 3000 ads every single day.(Kilbourne, Jean) We may believe that we are not influenced by a majority of these ads. But let me correct you over there, advertising’s influence is quick and subconscious. “ Only 8% of an ad’s message is received by the conscious mind. The rest is worked and re worked deep within the recesses of the brain.” (~Richard Crain.) So I can now say that when society especially women are exposed to ads that are provocative from a very young age it affects them subconsciously to a great extent that they want to look like the model in the ads. Thus women learn from a very early age that beauty is the only thing that matters, so they spend enormous amounts of their time and money trying to look like the models in magazine covers such as Vogue or Seventeen and these models seem to be incredibly thin, and since that’s the extremely high standard set by society we have women who turn anorexic just so that they can look like one of those models. Advertising has created a type of woman, an “Ideal” woman, who has long legs, no wrinkles, no acne, no pimples, no scars and a body so thin that Irina Lazareanu would be jealous. And this the woman who men desire and this is the woman who females want to be but she does not and never will exist in the real world. Advertisements now days use something called Photoshop, which is an extremely powerful photo editing tool. Which is used to edit these “models.” Using photoshop advertisement companies merge the face of one woman with the body of another and merging another woman’s nose with the face of another woman. So we could be looking at one woman but it’s actually 3 or even 4 women. Models are often photoshopped to make them look thinner, taller and so on and so forth. Images now days are rather constructed than real. It’s gone so far that in one of the magazine covers a girl was portrayed with her pelvis being larger than her head, an anatomic impossibility. And real women and girls measure themselves against the images of this “Ideal” woman every single day.
These advertisements often turn women into objects. How is this objectification achieved? It’s achieved by focussing on breasts and grotesquely positioned limbs. Some advertisements even put thoughts rape or “sex” into the subconscious mind of the viewers, thus leading to an increasing amount of rape around the globe. These ads often display men as dominant over the female, creating a sense of masculinity and power inside the male mind. These ads that depict sex are viewed by girls who are six years old, as a result there’s now bikinis, thongs and other highly provocative clothing that’s made for six year old females. Fairness is also displayed in these ads, making it necessary for a women to have a fair complexion in order to look beautiful. This affects the fairly darker women in a negative manner. They believe that you need to be fair skinned in order to look beautiful. So they undergo cosmetic surgeries. People who are fat undergo cosmetic surgery as well. Since 1997-2007 there’s been a 400.6% increase in cosmetic surgeries. More than 2 million cosmetic surgeries are performed in a year. Since the society lives by the rule thinness is beauty a lot of people go on diets but clearly they seem to be having no effect, dieting only creates problems with your metabolism and causes you to gain wight. 95% of people who go on diets gain weight. 2/3 americans are overweight. 10% of the anorexic population is now men. At any given time, 70% of women and 35% of men are dieting. A 1993 Statistics Canada Survey reported that in women between the ages of 15 and 25, 1-2% develop anorexia and 3-5% have bulimia. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses, with 10% to 20% eventually dying from complications. Men’s bodies are also turned into sex objects but it isn’t constantly judged by society, whereas for a woman she is constantly scrutinised. (Kilbourne, Jean on "Killing Us Softly 4"" Equity Matters. N.p., n.d. Web. 04)
What can be done about all this?
We could begin with supporting one and another and discourage all forms of objectification of the human body, it would take some time but it is possible. We should all support each other and no bring each other down, when someone we know is fat or not so good looking then we should encourage them and not put them down because that’s what true friends do.
However there has been progress. Brigitte, a top German fashion magazine has decided to ban models and use only real life women. Countries like Israel have banned skinny women from appearing in advertisements and doing fashion shows. Progress like this could set the bar and inspire many other countries and magazines to realise that being healthy and strong is more important than looking fine and dandy.
With the media surrounding us all day we often tend to get influenced by it, naturally. But we are who we are and when we accept that is when we truly experience bliss.
Thank you.