A STUDY OF HOW ADVERTISING CREATES AN UNACHIEVABLE STANDARD OF BEAUTY AND NEGATIVELY AFFECTS SELF-IMAGE. This dissertation examines how the way women are portrayed in advertisements creates an unattainable beauty ideal and negatively affects women's self-image. It will be examined what is currently being done to broaden the ideal of beauty and what else needs to change.
INTRODUCTION
Women are bombarded daily with advertisements telling them what is beautiful and what they need to try to achieve it. From a young age, girls are made to feel that they must change to be accepted as beautiful in today's society. Women are told that they have to spend significant amounts of time and money trying to fit a shape that is unrealistic for the majority of women.
CHAPTER ONE: THE HISTORY OF ADVERTISING TO WOMEN
Many of these women considered themselves feminists and passionately participated in the women's suffrage movement. The Women's Editorial Department placed most of the advertisements in the Ladies' Home Journal in the 1920s (Ibid 6). Cutex sales almost doubled in the first year when the women's editor at JWT took over the account in 1916.
CHAPTER TWO: SELLING MORE THAN JUST PRODUCTS
According to the "The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report" commissioned by Dove, women around the world see beauty and physical attractiveness as increasingly socially expected and rewarded. Dove's study also revealed that 57 percent of women strongly believe that "the attributes of female beauty have become very narrow in today's world (Etcoff, Orbach, Scott & D'Agostino 2004)." More than 60 percent of the women surveyed said they strongly agreed that "the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty that most women can never achieve (Ibid)." Almost half of the women surveyed believe that only the most physically attractive women are portrayed in popular culture (Ibid). She writes, "the cover art of a magazine is its most prominent advertisement for ideal beauty, and the images and text in the magazine in articles and advertisements support and echo the cover art (Sutton 49)." Historian Carolyn Kitch has researched the origins of visual stereotyping in mass media and determined that female illustrators were responsible for the majority of cover art in women's magazines.
CHAPTER THREE: NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF ADVERTISING
Even Cindy Crawford has said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford,” regarding airbrushing and retouching (Kilbourne 2010). Hamilton looks emaciated in the ad, which was only released in Japan but received worldwide criticism (Melago 2009). The 5-foot-10, 120-pound model was later fired for being "overweight" and for not being able to fit into fitting rooms (Ibid). The actress publicly expressed her disgust at her heavily edited image, saying, “The retouching is excessive.
I don't look like that, and more importantly, I don't want to look like that (ibid).” In addition to objecting to the process, her contract with L'Oréal even has a “no Photoshop” clause (Ibid). In a survey conducted for "The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report," women were given a list of positive or neutral adjectives to describe their appearance, such as "natural," "average." One Armani Exchange advertisement reads: "The more you subtract, the more you add (Kilbourne 2010)." The company claims it refers to.
The size 0 and 00 started to appear in the early 2000s because of the size or size of the vanity. In her article for NPR, Vanessa Rancano reports, "the average international runway model has a BMI of 16—low enough to indicate starvation by the World Health Organization's standard." Experts appeal. I felt better in a bathing suit for a while, but it really wasn't a big difference." Overall, Kelly thinks her surgery "wasn't really worth it." In fact, Kelly says she will first have another operation to have her breast implants removed.
In April 2015, a slogan for Bud Light gained resonance: “The perfect beer to eliminate 'no' from your vocabulary for tonight (ibid.).” These messages are.
CHAPTER FOUR: CHANGING THE STANDARD
The study shows that true beauty is a concept that lies in the hearts and minds of women and is rarely seen in advertisements or the media (Etcoff, Orback, Scott & D'Agostino 2004). However, this idea of beauty seems to have been replaced by a narrower and more exclusive definition, mostly limited to physical appearance seen in the media and advertisements. In 2011, Dove revisited the results of its first study and released "The Real Truth About Beauty: Revisited." A new study has shown that four percent of women worldwide consider themselves beautiful ("The Dove® Campaign for Real Beauty").
Some of the ads highlighted in the video show women suggestively eating hamburgers, standing around a truck in bikinis, and naked women in perfume and alcohol ads. Sports Illustrated has also recently been a hot topic in the body type and self-image debate. From Barbie to the cover of Sports Illustrated, the bodypositivity movement is taking off in the United States.
In "The Struggle Over Media," they write, "Media literacy should be about helping people become sophisticated citizens rather than sophisticated consumers (Lewis & Jhally 1998). One of the primary goals of media literacy courses would be to 'denaturalize' the media and deconstruct the way advertising conveys particular cultural norms, such as the subordination of women to men for example (Sheilds & Heinecken 181). Many people believe that the growth of women in the advertising industry has played an important role in the improvement of Representation of women in advertising images.
Women are aware of the ways their gender is traditionally presented in the media: sexual, weak, innocent, thin, homebound.
APPENDIX
A-1, CONTENT ANALYSIS
II. Survey: The survey was distributed through social media and was emailed to various IMC and PR classes and organizations on campus
Qualtrics Initial Report: Advertising and Self-Image Survey
Please select your gender
What year in college are you?
Do you agree with this statement: "When I feel beautiful, I generally feel better." better about yourself in general."
Please rate how much the appearance of models and celebrities in advertisements affects how you feel about your own physical
Please rank in order who affects your self-esteem the most (1 affects you the most, and 4 affects you the least)
Would you describe yourself as beautiful?
Do you think girls who are considered attractive have more success in life overall?
Would you like to see a wider variety of women portrayed in advertisements?
Please select all adjectives you would actually use to describe your appearance
How do you view your weight?
Have you ever dieted to lose weight?
Please rate your level of satisfaction with your overall physical appearance
Please explain the ways how the appearance of models and celebrities in advertising affects you
I see beautiful people and think "I will never look like that" I think it makes me a little sad Constantly comparing what are unrealistic expectations of beauty. They make me feel like I should look like that They make you want to look like them. It definitely makes me want to look more like them, which is kind of impossible since it's like their unrealistic body work.
Makes me want to diet, binge, make healthier choices, get a better wardrobe, a new hairdo Tall, thin, well dressed and all did it, it's hard not to compare yourself to want the life they have. It makes me feel like everyone else is judging me by their looks. I feel like society wants you to look like the models do or you're not beautiful.
I wear makeup in class every day because I don't want to feel ugly in class. Yes, at some points I feel like I don't belong in the student body. No. I feel like I have to do more to maintain my appearance No.
It might make me compare myself more often, but I wouldn't say that being around attractive people makes me feel uglier.
If you could change something regarding your physical appearance what would it be?
I wish my legs were longer and my lips bigger and my smile stuck on the B-side.
Please select all of the options that make you feel beautiful
Would you ever consider plastic surgery?
At what age do you first remember starting to care about what you looked like?
At what age do you first remember becoming interested in how you looked?
Do you think advertising affects how you define beauty? If so, how?
Yes - all products are aimed at becoming more beautiful; models are everywhere, everything is photoshopped to be prettier and thinner. In magazines, beautiful women are used to sell makeup, meaning that if we buy the product, we will look like them. Yes, they always choose the most beautiful women and men to advertise with, when the people most likely to buy their product really look like the average Joe, not a supermodel.
You see photoshopped perfect models everywhere and it creates an image that is practically unattainable Yes, celebrities always look perfect. Not me personally, but people see ads and celebrities in ads on how they should base their appearance Yes, it makes you compare yourself to others. Photoshop has made it impossible to achieve the look that celebrities and models are portraying as the norm, yes everyone in advertisements looks perfect and it's not realistic.
I think they're definitely trying, but I'm comfortable so I don't pay much attention to it. Yes, all the models are super slim and make the world believe that's beautiful, so I feel the need to look somewhat like them. Yes—what you see is often what you feel like you should look like. Yes, advertising creates unrealistic beauty expectations for women. Yes, because we want to look like those people.
Yes, because usually all the people I meet are size 2 models, and they have perfect skin.
Do you think advertising affects the way men view women?
Please explain how you think advertising affects the way men view women
If we expected them all to look like Brad Pit, in reality no one would want each other. They expect us all to look like Victoria's Secret models, and let's face it, there are only a few who actually look like them. Men expect women's bodies and skin to look the same as they do in advertisements, which are extremely edited.
Men see women looking perfect in advertisements and assume that's the way women should look. It makes them think that every girl will look like the girls used in advertisements. Make them have high expectations. Giving them false expectations of what women look like when what they see is often photoshopped and unrealistic.
There are very few of these women, so when they start dating a woman who is average and normal, I feel like they are disappointed because their girl doesn't look like Cameron Diaz. If that's what men see all the time, then that's what they expect, and it gives the impression that all women should look like that. They see models and how "beautiful and thin" those women are, and they tend to be more attracted to women who look like the girls they see in commercials.
They have a stronger opinion of what women should be like. They look at models and then compare them to regular girls.
