Advertisements need to be reinvented to stop further damage to people

Dark Spots are not Ideal, Product advertised to Fix You

           We are surrounded by advertisements wherever we look. Ad's are on train stations, automobiles, television, internet, etc... you cant even hide inside your own house. Advertisements are used for the sole purpose of selling products, but to many people it does more than sell the actual product, it sells people lifestyles. Advertisements are causing lots or problems with what they present. They show images that depict women as super thin models all the time, leading to unintended increases in people feeling uncomfortable with themselves.  Companies invest lots of money in advertisements to sell their products and they do it  with two steps, "it should persuade you that you need something; it should make you feel guilty, inferior, or somehow "less than". Second an ad must provide a solution" (Cortese, 63). Advertisements are designed to make people uncomfortable for the purpose of selling their products, that's low.

           

Are these the basics our young population should be Seeing?

          One of the main demographic that sees all of these advertisements are teenagers and young adults. With their limited exposure in the world they absorb advertisements that show beautiful women/men and interpret them as models for their lives. In the past children had less technology and spent more time with their families, they were brought up by parents and experience from actually being outside but “today our children are not brought up by parents, they are brought up by the mass media” (Kilbourne, 129). They are brought up on false images, and make it popular among themselves to look like models themselves. In educational settings kids and teens get bullied on how they look because the media shows skinny models as normal and everyone else as outcasts.

          Apparel Companies portray skinny models in advertisements all the time and  promote their unobtainable bodies as ideal. These companies use the models to promote their clothes even though most of their customers do not have that body type. As a result people feel that they are not normal, they go on diets to look better. Even people who are not fat go on diets because they aren't as skinny as the models they keep seeing. This leads to unintended effects such as depression because people do not fully comprehend that normal people don't look like that. They don't realize that photoshop is used advertisements "Photographs of the models are often trimmed with scissors. "computer imaging" -the controversial new technology that tampers with photographic reality- has been used for years" (Wolf, 83) There should be laws that prevent the use of photoshop to alter bodies of humans. Then there are people that take dieting so serious they end up with anorexia which is a extremely serious condition which can result in death.

Photoshop is used in many images, Its should be illegal to use altered images in Ad's

White man in charge, Black men as subordinates

         Another unintended effects that emerge from advertising is the portrayals of racism and sexism. Countless times again and again there are advertisements for men's products that show women as sexual objects that exists to pleasure men. But even in women's advertisements they are depicted as sexual objects who need to buy the products shown to please their man. The advertisements are created for the male gaze and they are patriarchal. We need to put an end to placing women in these submissive positions in which they are portrayed, it takes away their power as human beings. We notice sexism all the time but its a little harder to find racism. That's partly due to the fact that we hardly see ads that portray people of color. Most of the advertisements are directed towards the white public, and when there are ad's with other races they tend to play into stereotypes. The people who create the ads might not even realize that they are being racist because putting these people in their ads makes them believe that they are not racist already. It reminds me of television shows that insert one black character just so they can say that are not racist.

Video Showing how Sexism has not progressed over time

          There needs to be lots of changes in the advertisement industry. This is a very hard task because the advertisements are created for our patriarchal society. The ads play into many of the stereotypes that we have learned to accept since we were kids. The best way we could change this is to get rid of our patriarchal system and set up something equal for the sexes and races but that is impossible. The next most obvious solutions would be to ignore the ad's and acknowledge that they are a load of bull, that would be too easy. Some people are trying that at this time and those are the people that get picked on and bullied for looking different. I believe the best way is to have a company with diverse groups of men and women who judge advertisements before they get published. They would have to make sure that the pictures do not depict racism and sexism. They also have to make sure that models are not photo shopped and the models are the appropriate age, meaning there aren't 13 year olds modeling for clothes that are targeted for adults. This wouldn't exactly fix our problem completely but I believe its the first step we should take before jumping the gun and putting advertisements of plus sized models all over the place.

           

Wolf, Naomi. "Culture." The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women. New York: W. Morrow, 1991. Print.

Kilbourne, Jean. The More You Subtract, the More You Add Cutting Girls Down to Size. 1999. Kilbourne Copyright. Print

Cortese, Anthony Joseph Paul. "Chapter 3." Provocateur: Images of Women and Minorities in Advertising. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. Print.