Beauty in the Real World

Advertisements have an enormous effect on the way that people convey ideas, images, and products to people all over the world. “Imagining the Ideal Body” and “Fat Is an Advertising Issue” both are great examples of how advertisements are used to sell a product. The image in figure 12.2 shows a woman, who looks like she is extremely beautiful at first glance, but a closer look shows that she is injured and bandaged; this is an example of the costs of looking attractive in the eyes of men and their peers. The stereotypical images that younger females learn to see as the way to look stick with them throughout their teenage years, pushing them to look beautiful like the women in the advertisements that they have seen for years.

            The article “Fat is an Advertising Issue” shows that the image of skinny girls is very prominent in the advertisements of the world. Even food commercials have skinny girls in them. For example, the Hardees commercials are provocative and have sex appeal to attempt to sell their burgers. This show that sex sells, as Hardees is one of the top burger restaurants in the world. The people in charge of Dove advertising wanted to show a product in their commercial that didn’t make it seem like beauty was impossible, but something that women just had to work at to make it possible. A commercial like this, as everyone knows, would sell to women all over the world, from the ones who are already beautiful to those that are beautiful, but not confident in their looks. The appealing look of being skinny is so prominent in the world, women will do anything to look like models. The statistic that 1 in 4 college girls have an eating disorder is all too real, and is a statistic that can and should be changed.