The Impact of Advertising on Body Image - Coursework Example

Advertisement and Woman Beauty Standards In modern world advertisement pays such a significant role that people don’t even realize that in fact they are living in the world of advertisement. Advertisement influences people’s perception of a “good life” and defines their wishes and aims. The shining example of the influence is women’s perception of their bodies which is definitely relevant these days, when human get obsessed with their bodies’ good-looking inspired by advertisement. In order to analyze the reasons why advertisement has become so influential so far it is important to give a definition to the notion. Advertisement is a specific tool of communication created to sell some products, events etc. The messages are being sent through multiple implementations like videos on television, pictures in newspapers, journals, and magazines, or through social media marketing tools. Advertisement is pre-paid by companies who strive to sell their products, thus in order to raise their revenue, the companies need to inform public about their products. Advertising industry contains a lot of institutions that deal with different aspects of advertisement, which includes agencies who create advertising products, companies that advertise, media that presents the advertising production, and the people who work in these companies dealing with all advertising work (“Definition of Advertising” n.pag.). With the development of the newest modern media advertisement rates have grown hundredfold and unlike other technologies that get outdated in time, advertisement hasnt become less in-demand even in such old kinds of media like printed media. There are different advertisement techniques that work on multiple levels of influence and deal with different audiences of consumers. Among them are printed media, for instance, newspapers, magazines, journals, or directories (lists of companies or catalogues where a customer who knows what he wants to buy just looks for firms who can provide him with the best offer on the product); audio media like radio, television (which is both audio and visual kind), outdoor advertisement which is posted for public view on street objects like busses or billboards, and online advertisement , which includes social media marketing and all kinds of online networking (“Types of Advertising” n.pag.). The increase of advertising rates has not only significantly changed its level of influence on people and turned advertisement into a global tool of marketing strategies but the demands of more efficient and influential kinds of advertisement has developed new types of media manipulating approaches. Recent researches on influence of media on human lives revealed that advertisement and messages it sends affect human understanding of quality of life. Watching advertising videos on TV people learn how “good life” should look like (Morse 47). The way media demonstrate to public what it is supposed to consume in order to be healthy and happy makes people want to buy the products they see in advertisements where some happy people assure them how much joy these products have brought into their lives. The messages that transfer the notion of a good life into human minds through advertisement also include an ethical element which in fact nurtures in audience the way of acting which is considered to be normal in the particular society (Morse 48). Thus people perceive information from media on unconscious level because in fact they interpret the phenomenon they see in media like something public and therefore authoritative for all the people in society. This is the reason why it is very important for advertisers to realize how much influence their production has and what important messages it brings to society. Furthermore all the details advertisement consists of are of crucial importance. A significant factor in advertisement influence is the people who demonstrate them in public. Media industry has created a strong institute of celebrities whose opinion is crucially important for audience and whose endorsements make people want the same that celebrities have in order to become closer to their personalities and fame. Celebrities who are considered to be the people who are “famous for being famous” (Choi & Berger 314) are those examples to follow that make people want the things they have which make them happy. Thus when a celebrity makes an advertisement of a product assuring people that the product has made one’s perfect life even more perfect, people go and buy this thing in order to be closer to their idols. The way of presentation of products probably has the biggest influence on consumers. Scientific researches concerning “image advertisements’ influence adolescents’ perceptions of the desirability of beer and cigarettes” (Kelly, Slater, & Karan 295) denoted that alcohol and cigarette advertising often create a strong image of coolness and maturity of those who consume the harmful products in adolescents’ minds. The reason for this is that the images of models and actors’ endorsements demonstrate usefulness of usage of alcohol and cigarettes for increasing of social status and popularity (296). It turns out that the way of presentation of objectively harmful products make people forget of their health hazard and desire them. Thus as far as advertisements plays such a significant role in social life it causes a lot of controversy, especially engaged with ethical backgrounds of advertisement messages. Researches on advertising methods reveal that showing one-sided messages promoting a product is not only less fair towards consumers but also less efficient (Earl & Pride 36). People discern two types of advertisement, the one that promotes some product demonstrating its advantages and the adverse publicity that is supposed to make consumers hate some product. However, psychologists have proven that showing only one side of a product is the problem why often people become victims of modern advertisement and this is the main controversy of modern advertising situations. Reports on U.S. teen smoking show that teens start smoking because they truly believe it is not harmful to smoke on daily basis (Carstensen n.pag.). The point is that the only message the smoking students retrieved from cigarette advertising is that smoking would make them more mature and stylish, however they were not informed about the harm that smoking might do to their health. Another problem that occurs with the rapid growth of technologies is overwhelming amount of advertisement in all the aspects of human life. Social media marketing is considered to be the most influential and contradictory way of advertising, because its approaches are multiple and some of them are completely unethical and send wrong messages to public. For instance, the idea of e-cigarettes harmlessness has expanded throughout the entire Web so far (Erickson n.pag). People that pretend to be knowledgeable about the matter started advertising the newest way of smoking by writing pro-e-cigarettes articles on the Internet. The hidden advertising has made public believe that the cigarettes are totally safe, so they’ve started buying them causing a consuming boom in the realm of e-cigarettes production. Although biologists claim that the e-cigarettes’ smoke is no less harmful and contains nicotine as well as the smoke of the ordinary tobacco cigarettes (Erickson n.pag.) The example with e-cigarettes shows that rapid development of technologies often harms advertisement quality and maintains sending of wrong messages concerning harm and benefit of certain products to public. Still the development also impacts on the expansion of positive messages in advertisement, for example, public service advertising that is spreading rapidly among people increases level of social awareness and moral duty. Notwithstanding that modern development of advertising approaches and methods id rather controversial still it is difficult not to notice the tendency of body obsession advertisement causes in public opinion. Even though advertisement dictates prototypes of perfect bodies to both men and women, still it goes to show that women are more disposed to gain body obsession by getting inspired by advertising models. This happens because there are more body parts that women consider as pointing on their attractiveness and self-esteem, thus in order to feel themselves attractive they need to correct their bodies in accordance with current body standards, because it is the best way for women to evaluate themselves as normal (Myers &Biocca 113). Mass media portrayal of skinny woman body has been promoted for a long time. Even though the fashion standards of woman body have been changing over decades, still the last age when chubby women were in trend was Renaissance. Ever since the time women have started losing their weight. With appearance of mass media women started following the beauty standards they saw in printed media. They tried to fit the standards because it would increase their attractiveness for men and raise their self-esteem (Myers &Biocca 114). With appearance of new technologies and raise of advertising influence, the tendency of following beauty standards has increased. Psychological experiments revealed that in 30 minutes of watching TV shows, programs, and advertisement women become worried about the shapes of their bodies and even start striving to change some of them (Myers & Biocca 108). It turns out that modern advertisement is even more dangerous than the one that existed, for instance, fifty years ago. First of all, it has gained more influence on people; secondly, the standards of beauty it creates and dictates are becoming more and more unreachable. Evidences show that advertising models have become on an average 8.5 kg. lighter than the models that were in-demand in early 1960s, which means that beauty standards have drifted apart from curvaceous type of body. Thus it turns out that according to modern standard dictated by media, in order to fit the currently fashionable shape of body, a young woman of average height has to have an average weight around 42 kg (which is definitely below the norms of healthy body) (Fay & Price 6). The standards were becoming stricter because the images of such unreachable thin models created a controversial feeling of inaccessibility of the standards, implemented in real people, in consumers’ minds. Thus it turned out that the image of the models and the goods they promoted were designed for some “over-men” and not everyone was honored to reach the standard, and this made women want to become the same special persons the skinny beautiful models were. The most terrifying effect of media in this case is that it creates almost paranoid-alike wrong estimation of their bodies in women’s minds. Experimental findings prove that woman who set a high value on the beauty standards demonstrated in media start interpreting their shapes wrongly and often become non-eating-disordered; also, in some cases it even leads to such diseases as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Thus researches show that, for instance, anorexic women usually overestimate their bodies from 25 to 55 percents (Myers & Biocca 114). Although, women with non-eating disorders overestimate their bodies approximately by 25%, but their estimation can vary depending on how much they pay attention to media models; it turns out that they start estimating themselves worse after watching advertisement and comparing their bodies with models’ (p.115). Clinical examinations of anorexic women constructed a portrayal of an average anorexia sufferer. It is mostly a young white female (most likely a teenager) who has an eating disorder; the girl is obsessed with slimness and the image of thin depressive girl, alike to those who walk on fashionable podiums (Peterson 496). When in 90es the number of anorexic and bulimic girls started to grow, the discussion around the issue became heated up. Young women became obsessed with the unrealistic standards of fashionable beauty and literally stopped eating anything (p. 498). Such consuming behaviour became a real health disorder problem worldwide; doctors in the U.S. started considering it as a major mental problem of American nation (Bendfeldt-Zachrisson 57). Thus advertisers and some authoritative fashion resources started a public campaign against the unreachable beauty standards changing body-shapes norms into curvaceous ones. In 2012 Vogue magazine announced a campaign for employment of healthy women for modeling in their pictures and advertisements (Greenfield n.pag). They decided that their models should be, first of all, more than 16 years old and also they should look healthy and curvy. The magazine editors were asked why it had taken so long for them to provide such new policy if the problem of anorexic models appeared yet in the mid-90es. They answered that the health issue had been growing so rapidly that standards of modeling became even more unrealistic, so it was time to change the standard into the one that would be closer to real human being image and also wouldn’t be so harmful for health (Greenfield n.pag.). Thus modern image of woman beauty became more naturalistic and healthy. However, the new standards are also get interpreted strangely so far. Being obsessed with the new standards women started making their bodies “over-healthy” building huge muscle mass and eating proteins, which makes the situation a kind of extreme as well, because women decline standards of woman beauty turning themselves into the men-alike. Notwithstanding that fashionable magazines declined demonstrating unhealthy anorexic models the problem of the mental disorder still didn’t disappear. Because of the Internet and social networking people who were into the old anorexic standards of beauty started creating their own communities where they promoted the anorexic appearance. In fact the issue went out of control, so huge commercial companies along with advertising corporations, fashion magazines, and modeling agencies started their own public service advertising campaigns against anorexic fashionable trends. In 2013 a Brazilian modeling agency Star Modeling released an anti-anorexic campaign implemented in graphic images. The advertisement “which ran with the tag line Say no to anorexia, showed a fashion illustration with typically exaggerated proportions next to a model wearing the same outfit - and the same measurements. While the models had been airbrushed to mimic the unrealistic illustrations, the ad pleaded to young women: You are not a sketch.” The company was supposed to point on the fact that anorexic women don’t discern reality and fiction in woman fashionable standards, so the authors of the advertisement emphasized that being anorexic didn’t mean being beautiful or attractive but vice versa (“Powerful Anti-anorexia Ad Campaign Tells Women You Are Not a Sketch Using Models With Fashion Illustration Proportions”). An Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani took naked pictures of French woman Isabelle Caro who had struggled anorexia for 15 years (she died in 2010) “for the Italian fashion brand Nolita” (Vega n.pag.). The campaign was designed for young women who tried to keep up with fashion but didn’t realize all the dangerous consequences of eating disorders. The examples of anti-anorexic campaigns show that public awareness concerning the problems of eating disorders has risen so far, including the fact that anti-obesity and anti-bulimic campaigns has recently become one of the most problematic concerning. Although it is important to remember where the problems came from and don’t forget that it was media and advertising that made people obsessed with their body-shapes and forced and impacted on the mental disorders’ development. Thus it turns out that advertisement has become such an influential tool of social manipulation that it should be used carefully and wisely in order not to create the epidemic tendencies like those concerning women body obsession. Advertisement is supposed to sell products but advertisers should hold the crucial responsibility for what they issue into public, because their influence tool might become a remedy. Works Cited Definition of Advertising. The Economic Times. 24 February 2015. 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Bendfeldt-Zachrisson, Fernando. “The Causality of Bulimia Nervosa: An Overview and Social Critique” International Journal of Mental Health. 21(1992): 57-82. “Powerful Anti-anorexia Ad Campaign Tells Women You Are Not a Sketch Using Models With Fashion Illustration Proportions”. Daily Mail Online. 24 February 2015. Web. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2311770/Powerful-anti-anorexia-ad-campaign-tells-women-sketch-using-models-fashion-illustration-proportions.html Vega, Nora. “10 Most Shocking Anti-Anorexia Campaigns”. Oddee. 24 February 2015. Web. http://www.oddee.com/item_97738.aspx Greenfield, Rebecca. “The Fashion Industry Suddenly Acknowledges Its Anorexia Problem”. The Wire. 4 May 2012. 24 February 2015. http://www.thewire.com/technology/2012/05/fashion-industry-suddenly-acknowledges-its-anorexia-problem/51922/ Choi, Chong Ju and Berger, Ron. “Ethics of Celebrities and Their Increasing Influence in 21st Century Society”. Journal of Business Ethics. 91(2010): 313-318. 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