MEST 4: Research & Production: March 2010

''There is a secret "underlife" poisoning our freedom; infused with notions of beauty, it is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging, and dread of lost control."
Does contemporary advertising still perpetrate, ‘The Beauty Myth’?

This essay will discuss whether contemporary advertising still promotes the so – called ‘Beauty Myth’. Naomi Wolf’s "The Beauty Myth" speaks of women comparing themselves to mere sex objects; it also ‘examines beauty as a demand and as a judgment upon women’. However, my key texts, The Dove Adverts, contradict this view, since they have screened women of all shapes and sizes, not portraying them as sex objects. Although other texts researched all complement Wolf’s “Beauty Myth”. This essay also hypothesizes that ‘The Beauty Myth’ is still used throughout contemporary advertising. “The purpose of advertising is fairly straightforward: to persuade people to buy goods and services in a market economy”; advertisements are primarily produced in order to sell products. However, within the beauty industry they are also responsible for destroying the lives of many women of all shapes and sizes and difference ethnicities: an extreme result of this being serious eating disorders.
The commercial media is there to generate profit therefore it undermines that in order to sell products it needs something a ’lure’ that most women will want to become their inspirations. The media knows that sex appeal sells to both genders, therefore this is what it has resolved to, and subsequently, it has flourished. Advertising is the foundation of the mass media and not only does it sell products but services it also sells a lot more: ‘values, images, concepts of love, sexuality, of romance, success and, perhaps most important, normalcy’

In some areas women are there for the entertainment of and ‘gaze’ of men, therefore having for example, cleavage on show means satisfaction and gratification. This results in women having to maintain sexualized appearances and look more like the models they see in advertisements. This is mainly because men are being redounded to an impossible patriarchal image: woman’s reduction to an instrument of sexual pleasure in the mind of another person, generally assumed to be a man’
Advertising tells us today that the most important factor for women is to look like the ideal woman: “To a certain extent adverting tells us who we are and what we should be”. Within the increasingly globalized industry advertisers have started to emphasize the importance of women’s images indirectly through the reinforced physical attractiveness on show, in order for them to sell products.
It is important to know that we are increasingly exposed to these images and messages: ‘In the United States – one of the worlds most advertising saturated societies – over 40% of the mail deliveries and over 25% of television time consist of advertisements’ . Because of this female audiences are pacified and adverts make women want to go out and purchase what they think will make them feel better about themselves, in other words promising more confidence and courage, ‘television ads celebrate the greatness of diet pills; energy drinks can speed up your metabolism’ .
Over the years women’s body image has changed in several ways, looking at defining women as ‘beautiful’. Advertising has traditionally relied on the use of stereotypes to put across information in a format that is quickly and easy for the viewer or reader to understand”, in the 1950’s, women in adverts were seen as stereotypical housewives and caring mothers. Some were seen as idols; Marilyn Manrow for example.
Within the 21st century we have girls from the age of 10 suffering from anorexia and being to afraid to eat incase they become fat. This is mainly because of what is perceived to them in the advertising industry.
Skinny size zero model Kate Moss is a prime example of this, she is seen as the new definition of ‘beautiful’, ‘Supermodels or "typical" models are a small percentage of the population but appear as the norm because the type is repeated constantly’.
Tall, slim, voluptuous breasts, flawless skin no wrinkles or blemishes, this ideal image has become impossibly perfect and has been promoted throughout advertising. What has just been described is not seen as realistic, but as an ‘unrealistic’ image of beauty, either you are born with it or in many women’s cases, you are forced to become it. Researching many images that are shown within advertising clearly shows how even beautiful women such as Keira Knightley will still be airbrushed to look perfect in all ways with no imperfections, “The tall, nearly emaciated mannequins that push the latest miracle cosmetic make even the most confident woman question her appearance.”
Because this is leaves only a small percentage of women feeling comfortable within their own skin, "Just 2% of today's women see themselves as beautiful” . Because of this viewers do not relies that technology has now taken over ‘the beauty myth’, Photoshop is used to airbrush away any unperfected paws. This is only so that products are being sold, advertisers know that a woman who is insecure is woman who will force herself to become something else, meaning she will purchase products that the ‘ideal’ woman is seen advertising in. The difference of advertising within historical times and the 21st century, is then women were seen as mere sex objects but advertising as housewives and careers. However, this has changed dramatically as women are now being sold within advertising as sex objects. "Throughout the twentieth century, a decade was rarely defined by only one look" . Taking a look at Vogue magazine, shows how the image of women is seen in the same way.
Having taken a close look at two Vogue issues, one of which is from the 1970’s and the other from 2009, has allowed me to pin point the similarities and differences of both articles.
The 1970’s issue shows a female on the phone, she is giving a seductive look towards her readers, with a strong bone structure the image is a close up of her face, focusing mainly on her facial expression. Where as the 2009 print features model Natalia Vodianova in nude. The similarities with both texts are both women are seen as beautiful creatures, slim, flawless skin, and perfect bone structures.
You would expect the magazines to change within the vocabulary they have used around the image. Blunt words such as ‘food’ ‘beauty’ and ‘sun’ have been used in the 1970’s issue, could it be that the world now thinks that women’s beauty is seen through the outer rather then the inner?. The 2009 issue is represented through the body, words such as ‘naked’ ‘style’ ‘figures’ and ‘shapes’ , have all been used. “With sex held hostage by “beauty”, the myth is no longer just skin deep, but goes to the core” .
Women are not only seen as just mere objects within magazines, but advertisings to the lowest such as video games “A study of video games found that the few female characters in those games are often highly sexualized—wearing tight revealing clothing and having unrealistically large breasts and distorted small waists”. This is creating a false image to young boys and girls who play video games; the media is making them believe that if you do not look this way, it means you are not normal.
Within this research I able am to see that the ‘Dove self-esteem fund’ known as the ‘Dove Campaign’ has contradicted what is seen on a regular day of advertising. They have produced short clips indicating how easy it is to produce the ideal women, which in other terms is known as a non existing person, ‘in the space of a minute, the amount of artificial transformations needed to "create" the model of beauty you have sold yourself so easily to’ .

The dove campaign was produced so that women and girls from all ages were able to feel confident in their own skin "beauty is the result of realizing what is special about you” . They are changing the concept of the word ‘beauty’ from being perfectly thin models to letting all females feel positive about themselves. “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted. Every girl deserves to feel beautiful just the way she is” .
The Dove campaign has given a new celebration to beauty; they have used women from all shapes, sizes and ethnicities to create the real term of ‘beauty’. They are making women feel proud to be in their own skin, “The whole point is to make beauty more accessible, as accessible as it can be” . They have had concerns about women wasting their money because the media makes them feel insecure about themselves, because of this women who are seen as beautiful whom advertise skin lotions, beauty products, perfumes and clothing leaves an average women less comfortable the way she is, which increases sales within the beauty industry.
The Dove campaign is one of the first campaigns that have done the opposite of other beauty advertisements, still make over billions in sales they have reached out to women in a positive direction. "We don't want women to give up, we want to tell them; beauty, it's at your reach” . Within this many are resulting to feeling good about themselves, post feminist have argued that women have ‘reached a point in [their] life where [they] feel like its all okay ‘I am who I am’. It is important that women should have “the choice to do whatever we want with our faces and bodies without being punished by an ideology that is using attitudes, economic pressure, and even legal judgments regarding women's appearance to undermine us psychologically and politically” The Dove Campaign brings women together who indulge in courage, love, hope and strength.
In conclusion to this, I think that advertising within the media still have great control over many women and girls lives in society today. Not many advertisements have been produced to promote the natural beauty of a female; more or less they have encouraged the ‘ideal’ image of how women should be looking like. Psychologically women are being brain washed with what they are seeing on screen, where as they do not relies that situations behind the scene are completely different.
Even ultra thin models are finding it difficult to keep up to their appearances. This shows that the advertising industry has taken over, yet they have taken the wrong path, in promoting a product. Advertisers affect the self and the health of women and girls of all ages. Consumers (audience) do not realize that there is more to being skinny which is seen as perfect, which most women do not know, ‘these women only make up 5% of the population’ .
No one should be forced to become something that is not possible; beauty comes within everyone therefore advertisers should promote in a positive way rather than a negative. Real women are not seen as perfect women, real beauty has imperfections, "each face is a canvas, but not a blank one, each face has features that make it unique". Contemporary advertising has not changed to promote the inner beauty of one but instead advertisers have taken over by degrading women as sex objects.

“We live in a world where we think about weight, diets, image and food, or more so a lack of it”.

MEST 4: Research & Production

Monday, 22 March 2010

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Sunday, 21 March 2010

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