Gallo 2 Magazine Advertisements example essay topic

Lisa Gallo Gallo 1 Amy Washburn Eng Comp 1 13 October 2003 Advertising and Our Society How does advertising really affect our society? Magazine advertisements have a direct affect on our self esteem. Many of the ways the media affects society, especially advertising, is negative. Often magazine advertisements cause women to think less of them because they are not as skinny as the models that are glorified in these advertisements. This in turn often causes eating disorders in many of these women. Over the years we have become a society that is completely consumed with our self images.

For a lot of people how thin and attractive they are is a main priority in their lives. The cause of this change in values has a lot to do with magazine advertisements. Nowadays if you look at a fashion magazine all the advertisements are filled with unnaturally skinny models. In the September 2003 issue of Glamour magazine, mostly all the advertisements in the issue are filled with societies basic idea of what the so called "perfect" woman should look like which is basically tall, extremely thin and flawless. On page 190, there is an advertisement for Hard Tail clothing which shows four different extremely thin and attractive women in revealing clothing. Now is it wrong to have thin attractive women?

No, but if it's all a person ever sees in a magazine then it begins to warp society's idea of what women should look like. Women start to believe that there is something wrong with them if they don't meet these perfect model standards. Gallo 2 Magazine advertisements often subconsciously give women warped idea's of what they should look like. On page 64 of Glamour there's an advertisement for Lycra which shows the backside of a slender women in skin tight jeans and the tagline just simply states "HAS IT". This article directly means that the jean she wears has lycra in them so she "HAS IT. But this advertisement is also subconsciously giving women the message that they have to look like that in order to "have it".

Also on page 75 for a Paul Mitchell hair advertisement, there is an upper body shot of a beautiful women and the tag line says "HERE"S THE SKINNY" and in small letters at the bottom it says "Slim is in. Sleek is chic... And all that's skinny. The Super Skinny". They advertisement is using the fact that society loves all that is slim and skinny to sell their product. They know that woman love the idea of being able to apply the term "skinny" to themselves even if for their hair.

So what happens when women realize that aren't as thin and perfect as they supposedly need to be? They develop warped self images which usually lead to some form of an eating disorder. Women's extreme desires to look like fashion models and actresses have caused them to do unhealthy things in order to loose weight. One specific set of magazine advertisements is the Victoria Secret ads. The models in the Victoria Secret ads have become a standard of beauty most women desire to achieve. "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" (Bissell 1). We as Americans have become a society that is Gallo 3 obsessed with the superficial aspects of life. Our degree of success is measured by how much money we have, what car we drive, and how young and beautiful we look. So it is not that surprising that women are doing unhealthy things to achieve this level of aesthetic success. But regardless of whether or not it surprises anyone it is still extremely harmful to them. Over the years the number of eating disorders among females has grown tremendously.

Many studies report that most of these women think that their disorders stem from the fact that they think they need to be thin in order to be found attractive. Allot of women even admit that the reason they become so obsessed with their bodies is because of the constant images in fashion magazines and on billboards. And once woman start on the viscous cycle of poor self image and eating disorders it becomes extremely difficult to break away from that mentality. Advertising is a very powerful tool, we are practically raised by the media, and it shapes most of the aspects in our lives.

Whatever images and ideals advertisers choose to set forth will, therefore, directly influence how we think. We constantly see young beautiful men and women in these advertisements and we are led to believe that is how we should look. When we fail to meet these standards, we often cannot cope, and it often results in low self-esteem and eating disorders. "Through magazines, billboards, television, and radio, advertising decimates words and images throughout the public domain, thus blurring the distinction between the public displays of standards of success and self esteem and what, in the words of our students, are our 'personal' or private needs Gallo 4 to 'feel good about ourselves' " (Andrew 2).

It becomes extremely hard for woman to separate the images they see in magazines and how things should be in our daily lives. In advertising things tend to look perfect and we often can't help but try to carry that idea over to our own lives. But we need to learn the difference between real life and the captivating world of advertising and not let advertisements dictate who we are and what we need to look like.