Media has gotten their point across to everyone and that is why a lot of younger girls are confused. Because of these ads, young girls are becoming more confused about their identity because of what is portrayed as sexy or beautiful. In the video "Killing us Softly" by Jean Kilbourn, I like when it showed and explained how alot of women want this so called "perfect" body, but there is really no such thing. The advertisers are using 4-5 different women by taking pieces of their body that they think is sexy and putting it together to make one "sexy" lady. Or they will crop some of the models body to make it the way they want it to be. So women are trying to get themselves to a place that is not real.
Me being a woman is bothered by this because it is very degrading to us women and we accept it into this society and don't try to make a difference.
"If we looked at only advertising images, this would be a bleak world for females" (Dines & Humez, (259). I think this is very true for both males and females. Females wont have the exposure to be who they really are, and males won't know what real women are really consisted of. The images that they show in advertisements are not even the woman who we see it is to be. So if we (the women) were only advertisements we arent who we are as a person and this world would be lost and confused.
Dines, G., & Humez, J.(2003) Gender, Race, and Class In Media. Sage Publications
Ashton, this topic is one that very much bothers me too. I think that it is one that needs to be combated. I love that Dove is making a great effort to change this with their advertising campaign now. They are including "real women" in their ads and have informative ads about young girls and media influences. I hope more companies see the need here for positive images of women that send healthy and non-judgmental messages. I know that many girls struggle with these issues. I definitely did when I was a girl. Young girls unfortunately do not know their value or that what they have to offer from their heart and heads are much more important than their bodies. Education on the topic is a great start.
ReplyDeleteI find this topic extremely important as well. However what bothers me the most is the problem with media and adds like these being taken as something normal. Society and our culture has been so saturated with pictures like these that it does not even shock us. I believe that we have a problem since many women do not realize this until they are provided these types of information that we were in class. We were able to look at series of adds and saw the particular message to be present in all of them. I believe that if women were more aware of this situation and the message that is underlying in all of these adds they would be able to help their daughters to look at it and help them through the struggles we know every women goes through.
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