Frustration...

Reading through so much information on gender roles and stereotypes in advertising has been such a frustrating evening. It is not that what I have read is new information, or lessons I had not considered, rather the knowledge and openness to the blatant distortion of women's bodies in advertising. I find it extremely disturbing.

I have found article after article where people have struggled with ad exec's, because they will not change what works for them. Which is sadly, sex. The woman has become a commodity, no longer a human being. Allow me to illustrate, this excerpt is taken from Gender, Race and Class in Media: "...Ads sell a great deal more than its products. They sell values, images and concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy. They tell us who we are and who we should be." (G. Dines, J. Humez, 1995 pp. 121)

It doesn't take more than a few minutes of browsing through a woman's magazine (Cosmopolitan, InStyle, Glamour, Self) to realize the advertisements are aimed at shaping consumer mindsets. The goal is perfection, the product claims to give perfection, and the consumer should be looking for perfection. There is no disclaimer to mention that the images shown are airbrushed and touched up by professionals.

No wonder girls have such distorted body images.






I will leave you with a short narrative....

I am taken back to a friend who I will call B. She majored in fashion at a small, liberal arts college, where she would often get into political arguments. There she insisted that she was a feminist to the core. After four years of these arguments, I chose not to fight with her. In our senior year, she was voted director of the annual fashion show. In this scene, she took her place very seriously. The model casting call was my last meaningful encounter with her. After she spoke about the size of the models over dinner, and dramatically chose the thinnest models so that the clothes would 'hang' properly, I was done. I am so fed up with the fashion industry, and the anorexic image that has become something young girls aim for. It makes me sick to think that people I loved and cared about had such negative body images, and promoted that for others to compare with. What an opportunity for change wasted.