Advertisements and Anorexic Models - Essay Example

Advertisements and Anorexic Models Should advertisements be allowed to show models that are clearly anorexic? Outline Introduction Attention, Advertisements can cause death Problem Description Moral and Business Approach to the issue Anorexia and advertisements Reports that advertisements may cause anorexia What is Anorexia Self-esteem and weight An excellent example of being creative without anorexia The 1984 Apple Ad The strong female image Rebuttal of arguments Not free speech if it hurts people The market will respond negatively Conclusions There are both moral and business reasons for stopping the use of anorexic models in advertising Introduction The primary issue with advertisers showing models which are anorexic is that such models become the ideal of beauty and the ideal image for many people. In fact, the image can be strong enough to cause the death of those who believe in it (CNN, 2007). These people many not be mentally strong enough to recognize that these models are professionals who are selected for a particular image which may not reflect reality. While it can be argued that advertisers have a right towards free speech and should be able to present whatever images they want, the reality of the situation is that advertisers have to show restraint and have to be regulated since the people have to be protected from those who would seek to exploit them. The arguments for not allowing advertisements that show models that are clearly anorexic is both a moral argument and a business argument since advertising has a tremendous affect on people and their buying decisions. Unethical advertising may actually put people off a certain seller and this makes it a dangerous business decision to use anorexic models. Anorexia and the Affect of Advertisements To understand the affects of advertisements on individuals we must understand the disease itself and realize that advertisements can become a part of the cause of why anorexia exists in such large numbers today. ANRED (Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders) (2007) suggests that advertisements and society at large makes several strange demands from women who are expected to be happy, have positive relationships, have a successful career, maintain her house and remain thin. This idea of remaining and being thin can become a mental disease which manifests itself as an eating disorder called Anorexia Nervosa. The disease itself has several symptoms for example; an individual may have a distorted personal body image and a very low weight that is extremely dangerous for their health. Individuals who suffer from this disease may seek to control their weight and their distorted body image with extreme dieting which may take them to the point of absolute starvation. They may even start vomiting their food intake, engage in too much exercise such as running or trying to lose weight through excessive weight training. They may even resort to using drugs such as Phen Phen in an attempt to reduce their perceived weight (Fry and Veatch, 2000). The advertisers of fashion and other goods are certainly a part of the problem when it comes to Anorexia since their idealized picture of what a woman should look like is nothing compared to what women in the real world are used to. The images used by the advertisers may push women into believing that low weight is the ideal of beauty and attractiveness while normal weight is nothing more than being a failure as an individual. Thus the culture and the media gives an unrealistic target to women and also shows them how the unrealistic image is perfect. The problem is not limited to developed countries alone since ANRED reports that, “in pockets of affluence in developing countries, women often experience unrealistic cultural demands for thinness. These women often respond by linking their self-esteem to their low weight (ANRED, 2007, Pg.1)”. In such circumstances, the continual bombardment of images of extremely thin women who are presented as the ideal of beauty can have a severely negative impact. In the modern world, marketers and advertisers are using advertisements to wider audience to their products and services but connecting the product or the service to the image of very thin woman only creates dichotomies for many women that cannot achieve that level of perceived beauty. Even when dealing with advertisements from the services sector where things such as wealth management or financial services are the product being pushed, the images given to the audience may be connect beauty with the idea of being thin (Lee, 2000). For example, banks and lending institutes may use the image of a thin lady as a baking service provider as an idealized measure of excellence. Essentially, while marketing for both products and services deals with motivating people towards taking some form of action, the image presented to the people should be realistic and not idealized. The idealized image is even worse when it comes to the fashion industry which creates a viewpoint where being extremely thin is the measure of beauty. As reported by CNN and told by the representatives of the fashion label Nolita (2007), “the stereotypes imposed on women by the fashion world” are certainly causing some women to become anorexic as they cannot control their urge to diet and make themselves look thinner than they are. While these images may be creative and represent the idea of free speech in terms of what marketers can show to the public, without responsibility and without knowledge of the affects these have on some women, advertisers are simply fighting against the very customer base they expect to capture. They are certainly aware of the impact they have created by using anorexic models and if the impact was not clear to them in the past, it is certainly clear today. Steps are being taken by the fashion industry to address the situation but perhaps the steps being taken are not enough. The fashion industry ads are persuasive indeed, but an advertiser does not have to exploit some people just to be persuasive. Scott (1991) explains the persuasive power of a really creative ad by taking a literary criticism approach to the 1984 ad created by Apple. The commercial itself can be described as a young lady being chased by soldiers as she rushes past slow bald workers wearing overalls. She is an athlete and a strong one at that since she is carrying a sledge hammer as she runs. Certainly not the anorexic image of a woman which is presented to us today because in the ad itself she hurls the sledge hammer into a screen where a big brother like figure is making a speech. A voice then says that 1984 will not be like 1984 because of the Apple Macintosh (Scott, 1991). Here, Apple uses the image of the feminine but not as a docile and fragile creature but rather as a strong figure which is ready to rise up against her masters when the time comes for it. This advertisement simply destroyed every convention of television marketing known at the time and has been applauded for using a strong female figure rather than the traditional image of the masculine male. This approach taken by Apple certainly worked because when their computer came to the market after the airing of the ad, two hundred thousand people were waiting in lines to put their money down to get one (Scott, 1991). There is no reason why such images of the feminine cannot be used today and the unnatural standards imposed on women from fashion and related advertising today are nothing more than disasters. Supporters of such advertisements may say that it is the advertiser’s right to present their product in whatever light they wish to if it is not misleading the public and may even consider it a part of the freedom of speech and freedom of press. However, Neuharth (2007) reports that these two things are quite different from each other because the freedom of press is an institutional freedom as opposed to the freedom of speech since that is a public right. Additionally, by showing women images of other women who weigh dangerously low as the image of perfect beauty, the advertisers are clearly misleading the public which can be taken as a criminal offence at worst and a violation of the code of advertisers at best. The freedom of the press is an excellent ideal to hold on to but if that freedom leads to the death of innocent individuals or to the severe degradation of life for many others, such freedom itself can be seen as an offence against the public. Conclusions When an individual proponent of free speech such as an advertiser is seen to go too far in expressing something, it is the public themselves who can object to it and get redresses for their issues (Flint, 2004). In fact, Neuharth (2007) makes the same suggestion which is to let the public control what is acceptable to them and what is not tolerated by them. If the market does not accept something that goes too far in expressing freedom, they will simply stop buying or patronizing those media producers. This view is also supported by Anderson (2002) in terms of online advertising and general media content since whatever is acceptable to the people will flourish and thus the freedom of speech will actually be good for society rather than the bonds of regulation that curtail creativity or hold back expression. In these terms, there certainly has been a strong negative reaction to anorexic models coming in advertisements and thus both the moral and the business argument support the proposition that advertisements should not be allowed to show models that are clearly anorexic. More important than business concerns are the idea that showing unrealistic images in unethical if not outright illegal since such images mislead a segment of the population. Works Cited Anderson, R. 2002, ‘Free Speech Online and Offline’, Communications of the ACM, vol. 45, no. 6, pp, 120-120. ANRED (Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders), 2007, ‘What causes eating disorders?’, [Online] Available at: http://www.anred.com/causes.html CNN, 2007, ‘Anorexic fashion ad sparks debate’, [Online] Available at: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/09/26/anorexia.model/index.html Flint, D. 2004, ‘The Elite Agenda and the Media’, National Observer, vol. 61, no. 4, pp. 28-36. Fry, S. and Veatch, R. (2000). Case Studies in Nursing. Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Lee, M. 2000, The Consumer Society Reader, Blackwell. Neuharth, A. 2007, ‘Does Imus trash talk hurt First Amendment?’, USA Today, 13 Apr. p. 11a. Scott, L. 1991, ‘For the Rest of Us: A Reader-Oriented Interpretation of Apples “1984” Commercial’, Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 25, no. 1, pp 67-81. Read More