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Kimberlyn Wayland

Instructor: Malcolm Campbell

English 1102

11/30/13

Size 00 and Photoshopped Images: Why Ad Companies Want Women To

Shrink Until They Disappear

About a week ago, I was browsing through the mall and stumbled across a store with

something quite different that I hadnt really seen before. The mannequins looked proportionate

to the average woman, and their bodies actually looked like human bodies. Wow, our culture is

really taking a step in the right direction regarding positive body image in the media, I thought

to myself. Until I glanced above and realized the store sign said Womens Plus Sizes. The

mannequins in the store window looked like healthy, average weight bodies to me. Thats a

shame. Its too bad to think that we as a culture are making women think that their bodies are

overweight because they are healthy and are more than just skin and bones. After seeing that

particular store window, I decided to go on a search, scavenger hunt if you will, to see if I could

find any sort of positive means of advertising throughout the mall. Unfortunately, in most

womens clothing stores and department stores, all photos and ads typically showed an overly

thin and photoshopped woman and the mannequins were so frail-looking and emaciated that they

began to not even look human. And nearly all of them had the garments they were wearing

clipped in the back so that they would fit the mannequins. What kind of example are we showing

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to female consumers, and why do we think making them think negatively about their own bodies

is the best advertising method?

Toxic Advertising Culture

Advertising companies feed on making consumers feel negatively about themselves but

at the same time, they show us their products that are promised to fix all of the flaws that they

have just told us we possess. It is a corrupt and toxic culture in which we live, and although we

may not think advertising greatly affects us, it does much more so than we know. In regards to

what advertising says about the female body, feminist

author, speaker, and filmmaker Jean Kilbourne states in

her filmKilling Us Softly 4 that "Ads sell more than

products...To a great extent they tell us who we are and

who we should be. Well what does advertising tell us

about women? It tells us, as it always has, thats whats

most important is how we look. So the first thing the

advertisers do is surround us with images of ideal female

beauty. Women learn from a very early age that we must

spend enormous amounts of time, energy and above all

money, striving to achieve this look and feeling ashamed and

guilty when we fail. Failure is inevitable because the ideal is based on absolute

flawlessness" (Kilbourne). The ideal body type we are so accustomed to in American culture is

typically tall, slender, white, with long, luxurious hair. For example, in this Nine West ad we see

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the perfect example of this type of ideal American Beauty. We are immersed in imagery that

depicts the "perfect" idea of American beauty, when more often than not, it's a form of hyper-

reality because the photos have been edited, retouched, and retouched again. Body Image

depicted in advertising is almost always unreal, yet many viewers don't realize this, because we

are taught to think that this unachievable look is what is expected of us.

Rewarding the Small in the Fashion Industry

The reason for negative body image in advertising may be perhaps because we think the

best way to sell a product is to glamorize the outcome and make consumers think all their wildest

dreams will come true and that they will achieve impossible perfection if they buy a certain

product. Wrong. Reality is rarely shown in the media in regards to body image. Many dont

realize just how much editing goes into the final image that many people, just like myself see,

when theyre walking through the mall, for

example. The majority of the time, the

models body is edited to make it fit the more

ideal body shape; even in this photo of a

plus-sized model, the editor felt a need to

modify her body a great deal. By seeing

images like this where the plus-sized woman

is made to appear much smaller than she actually is, the

expectations thrown upon us by the media are that females should be small, even if they are full-

figured, and even smaller if they are of average size. What we are being fed is unhealthy and

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toxic and does little to no good, as well as causing damage to self esteem. There is also a very

narrow range of what is considered the ideal beauty in our culture. American fashion model

Cameron Russell stated in her TEDTalk For the past few centuries, we have defined beauty not

just as health and youth, and symmetry that we are biologically programmed to admire, but also

as tall, slender figures and femininity. And white skin. And this is a legacy that was built for me

and a legacy that Ive been cashing out on. And I know there are some who are skeptical of what

Ive said at this point. Unfortunately I have to inform you that in 2007 a very inspired NYU Phd

student counted all the models on the runway, every single one that was hired, and of the 677

models that were hired, only 27 or less than 4 percent were nonwhite (Russell). Not only does

race play a big part in how body image is represented in the media, but weight does as well.

Mike Jeffries, the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch says he doesnt want larger people shopping in

his store, he only wants thin and beautiful people. He was quoted saying that he doesnt want

his core customers to see people who arent as hot as them wearing his clothing because people

who wear his clothing should feel like one of the cool people writes Robin Lewis, co-author

of The New Rules of Retail (Lewis). Therefore, Abercrombie & Fitch doesnt sell pants above a

size ten and shirts above a size large because its bad for their image to have larger sizes.

Certain companies and stores are blatantly saying that they only want a specific target market

that falls under the ideal beauty category for our culture, and thats highly upsetting and quite

frankly, discomforting.

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Dismemberment Advertising

Not only are we made to think that our bodies arent the

right size, but that we as females are objects used to sell products

in a variety of ways. One way is to include making the female

body look like a product (for example, a beer bottle) like this

advertisement for Michelob Beer, or literally morphing our

bodies into a certain product. Another way that is quite

disturbing is only using part of

the body in an advertisement,

therefore dehumanizing the body and only emphasizing parts of

the female body like the breasts, legs, or butt, such as in this

Mercedes Benz Advertisement. This is called Dismemberment

Advertising and makes women think of themselves as

individual parts, rather than a whole person and if one part is

flawed or not as satisfactory as other parts, then her view on her

own personal attractiveness is often destroyed. Yet another type

of female objectification in Advertising is the blending of

different acceptable features from different models being

blended together to make a perfect or ideal woman who doesnt actually exist. Advertising

companies are creating unattainable goals that we strive to be like and often at deadly costs.

Even famous celebrities who seem perfect are often overdone in photo shoots and dont truly

look how they appear in advertisements. But, viewers dont often realize this because Photoshop

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makes these changes virtually impossible to notice unless you were to see the original photo. For

example, in this Rolling Stone

cover featuring singer Katy Perry

where the editor decided her

breasts just werent quite perky

enough, and her thighs and arms

were just a tad bit too big, oh and

dont forget, those lines on her

stomach were just not acceptable

for the public to see (Duca).

Some changes are just completely

unnecessary and when images like this get out to the public, most women who see this begin to

dislike their own bodies because they may not have a perfect body like the media makes us

believe celebrities have. Perhaps, if these flaws were kept in the photo, we would be able to

relate more to celebrities we look up to and have a higher overall sense of worth. American

clinical psychologist and author ofRevivingOphelia, Mary Pipher, ( a novel about the societal

pressures put on young girls) states Girls developed eating disorders when our culture

developed a standard of beauty that they couldn't obtain by being healthy. When unnatural

thinness became attractive, girls did unnatural things to be thin (Pipher). The body type we are

shown in advertising is one that is unachievable to most girls and if it is achievable can only be

done through harmful avenues such as starvation or overexercising.

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Skeptical Ad Campaigns

There is clearly an unequal representation of different body types and appearances in the

media. Although some have tried to create a positive outlook and promote positive change in self

love and body image, like the Dove Campaign, for example, there is still a lot going on behind

closed doors that we dont see. Many have seen the Dove Campaign For Real Beauty

commercials encouraging women to love their bodies no matter what size they are. The Dove

Company states regarding their campaign that: The campaign started a global conversation

about the need for a wider definition of beauty after the study proved the hypothesis that the

definition of beauty had become limiting and unattainable. Dove has employed various

communications vehicles to challenge beauty stereotypes and invite women to join a discussion

about beauty. However, did you know that this company is owned by the same company that

creates the advertisements sexualizing women in order to sell mens fragrance sprays and soaps?

This debate on who is really for the bettering of the nations body image arises when the very

company who markets themselves to women as being a body positive company, Dove, is also

owned by the same company who has extremely sexist ads geared towards men, this brand being

Axe Body Spray and the company being Unilever. They defend themselves by saying that their

advertising efforts are tailored to reflect the unique interests and needs of the audience. I found

this information on usnews.comin an article written by Danielle Kurtzleben who is a business

and economics reporter for US News and World Report(Kurtzleben).

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The Positive Movements

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are certain individuals in the media

aiming to end the negative voice of the media regarding body image. One great example is when

Jessica Simpson did a photo shoot for the magazine Marie Claire

and asked them to not put any makeup on her and not to retouch

the photos at all. The message created by this brave act is that she

is showing viewers that she is a real person and not a perfect

charicature of what the media expects her to be. And guess what?

She is still beautiful, what a shock! What is so remarkable about

this particularly, is

that having photos

completely

untouched featuring

a celebrity with no

makeup is rarely seen in any magazine. Its

refreshing and definitely a step in the right

direction. Not only did Jessica Simpson participate

in this photo shoot, but she has also teamed up

with a organization called Operation Smile to

create her own campaign calledA Beautiful Mewhich aims to help teens embrace their inner

beauty (DoSomething). Another positive body image movement on a smaller and not-so-famous

scale is a tumblr-wide project called Stop Hating Your Body. On this blog, individuals can submit

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anonymous stories of how they came to peace with loving their own bodies and their own

personal struggles/successes regarding body image (Laney). Movements like this have great

impact because they connect us all by allowing us to connect to one another, and by seeing

others both speak out about their insecurities and what they love and embrace about their bodies,

we are able to maybe accept and love our own a bit more.

Conclusion

We become confused as a culture when we are constantly being fed advertisements and

images in the media that tell us that we can only look a certain way in order to be considered

beautiful or worthwhile. "The average American is exposed to about 3,000 advertising messages

a day." (Publicity.com) Its overwhelming the amount of media we are faced with each and every

day. A majority of these advertising messages deal with body image and what we should strive to

be like and many times, this is something that is unattainable. Unrealistic social norms are then

created by over-saturation of false ads and images. I think we need to focus on educating the

consumer rather than the advertising companies, because we can change how we view the

falsehoods made by these companies, but it would be very challenging to change how they

market to us because, unfortunately, their methods sell and they dont want to quit. We must

educate ourselves and others on how to unveil the fact that these images are not reality and the

opinions of those in the media have no affect on our own personal self-worth because what they

have deemed the cultural high expectation is NOT the only form of beauty and its definitely

not the most valid either. We can boycott certain companies that have negative body image

throughout their ad campaigns and even spread positivity through different campaigns like the

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tumblr-wide project Stop Hating Your Body. We need to become media literate, meaning that

we need to gain the ability to know that the images we see in advertising are not real by any

means, nor are they something we should strive to be like.

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Works Cited

Duca , Lauren. "The 9 Most Unnecessary Instances of Celebrity Photoshop." Huffington

Post. (2013): n. page. Web. 4 Dec. 2013.

Laney, Annie. "Stop Hating Your Body." Stop Hating Your Body. N.p., 2013. Web. 4 Dec.

2013.

Lewis , Robin. "A&F: Exclusive or Exclusionary?."Huffington Post. (2013): n. page.

Web. 23 Oct. 2013. Lewis, Robin. "A&F: Exclusive or Exclusionary?." Huffington Post. n. page.

Print.

Kilbourne, Jean , dir. Killing Us Softly 4. Media Education Foundation, 2010. Film. 16

Oct 2013.

Kurtzleben, Danielle. "Unilever Faces Criticism For Real Beauty Ad Campaign."

usnews.com. US News, 07 26 2013. Web. 23 Oct 2013.

Lucas, Scott A., Ph.D. The Gender Ad Project South Lake Tahoe, California, 2002.

Web Images. 30 Oct. 2013.

Pipher, Mary, dir. Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. Media

Education Foundation, 1998. Film. 23 Oct 2013.

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Russell, Cameron, dir. Cameron Rusell: Looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a

model. . TedTalks, 2012. Film. 16 Oct 2013.

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