I found this cool article about body image with some interesting statistics.
Did you know that every year an adolescent sees 5,260 advertisements about attractiveness? In light of our lecture on advertising, isn't it an interesting tactic to play on people's insecurities to sell them things?
Did you know that 4 out of 5 women are dissatisfied with their appearance? Probably because the average woman in the US is 5'4" and weighs 166 lbs., while the average model is 5'11" and weighs 117 lbs. In one study, 69% of the girls surveyed said that seeing models in magazines influences their idea of the perfect body shape. A study done by people magazine said that 80% of women surveyed said that seeing images of pretty actresses in the movies and on TV made them feel insecure.
All these skinny pretty models are trying to sell us clothes, perfume, cars, and just about everything else. But what are they doing to society? In the US, 10 million women have eating disorders, and 20% of people with eating disorders die due to complications relating to their illness.
What would the world look like if we had advertising that made us feel good about ourselves instead of make us beat ourselves up? Do you think targeting people positively instead of negatively would make for better advertising? How about seeing some normal looking women in our magazines, do you think that advertising would be as effective?
I say let's feed the models and start having realistic representations of women on TV, movies, and magazines.
If you want more interesting statistics, I got mine from this article: http://www.upworthy.com/5-reasons-why-my-girlfriend-thinks-shes-not-beautiful-enough-no-matter-what-anyone-tells-her-5?g=2&c=ufb1
This is super interesting and totally true! I think that as we grow up we learn to love our bodies more but I think we will always struggle to feel like we are beautiful enough. It would be awesome to see an advertisement that showed women as they really are and as beautiful.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that advertising that makes people feel good about themselves as they are, means advertising that is saying they don't need what it is that you have to sell them. Though I'm hopefully wrong, I'm thinking “simply” pushing for normal looking women in magazines, and for similar things such as removing sexual content from advertising, will have little or limited success. While we certainly shouldn't ignore other tactics or abandon them all, I think it good to point out that the most successful tactic, I believe, is to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Sellers are going to sell whatever sells if they don't have strong moral codes to guide them; buyers are going to buy and demand carnal things if they don't have strong moral codes to guide them. Changing others' morals to align with what Heavenly Father wants (through the Power of the Holy Ghost) is the way to go! :)
ReplyDeleteFighting on other fronts like you've suggested here is also part of “the way” to go. :)
Thank you for writing about this! Those are super telling and powerful statistics and this presents such an important reminder to be kind and respect ourselves for the way we were created.
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