Sickening The Image of Advertisements Magazines are a gold mine for advertisers. It seems every page consists of an ad of some sort and the same product every three pages. What makes advertisements so appealing to their consumers? Perhaps the way their ad is portrayed in words, vibrant colors, and beautiful people claiming anyone who uses this product can be beautiful too. Cover Girl conveys their models to look more beautiful than average, so their consumers will buy their products to look beautiful too. Since Cover Girl targets teens into early twentys, the advertisers should depict images to relate to that age group. A super model is most often someone that a teenage girl looks up to. Nikki Taylor, for example, is a well known model for Cover Girl. She is wearing a lipstick that gives her lips a plump, moisturized, glossy lip color. Most female teenagers will look at this ad and begin to judge their own lips for not having the same affect. This initiates a low self-esteem and the girl will look for anything to enhance their looks. Fifteen year old Haley says, "I first saw the ,,Venus Razor commercial three or four months ago. It was the one with at least twenty beautiful, slender, women lying on a tropical beach all in bikinis. The first thought that plopped into my head as I lay on the couch was, ,,I wish I looked like that" (http://www.snn-rdr.ca/snn/2002nov/ advertising.html). Even though girls look for anything to enhance their looks, not even their own friends or family can change how they feel, "a result the girls may feel that they are not trendy and when they go out with their friends they may have less confidence in their appearance" (http://www.coursework.info/i/7347.html). They look down on themselves and think of the thin, nicely dressed model they saw with the full, lush lips featured in the
Cover Girl ad. This view of themselves over powers their friends point of view. In present day society, the image of thin being beautiful is plastered in magazines and billboards everyday. There is no way out of being constantly bombarded with messages that all that matters is her appearance. It seems only thin actresses and models are displayed making it harder for young women to overcome their obsession of being beautifully thin like their so called role model. These role models may also result in girls believing that in order to be famous you have to be thin. Jib Fowles states, "For females in ads, appearance was most commonly the totality of their persona, Andren determined; if any character trait shone through pictures of women, it was most likely to be ,,niceness or ,,tenderness" (216). This simply is not the case. This author has the complete wrong idea. Sure in their life time or own life it was probably thought out beautiful people in ads enhanced ones own sense of feeling. Times have changed and one is valued by how one looks today. One will not say "I feel niceness for myself today because I saw a slender girl in an ad with shimmering lipstick on." That is too weird in todays America. Girls nowadays will likely feel jealousy and anger towards that model for having the perfect body with the perfect lips. To push consumers to buy products, the advertisers must make the one looking at the ad believe their products will make them beautiful just like the model. Many spend hundreds of dollars on products of every brand because of the belief it will create a new person or enhance their looks. Companies produce a new product all the time that can be same the idea but with an added vitamin to rid of wrinkles, stretch marks or nothing at all. They can say there was an added ingredient but truly, to save money, not be. Then in come the advertisers with a new youthful model and new convincing words to advertise.
Even so if the product bought should fail, women can turn to a cosmetic surgery. The fact that in todays American society, a lot of issues deal with how thinness and beauty is associated with attracting male attention, success, wealth and social status. Women begin to compare themselves to other women walking the streets, at the shopping mall and even their own friends. Either they see a flaw to make them feel better or find something more attractive to their own. Their mind wanders back to the "perfect" model they saw. Average women are turning into their role models who also eye each others looks to make sure they are not fatter or classier then other actresses or models. "This obsession with thinness seems to be a sort of domino effect. One actress looses weight to please the media; next all her co-stars are loosing weight to keep up" (http://www.new faces.com/magazine/thin-obsessed.php). Although models may have the perfect look in an advertisement, what if they did not have the looks in real life? Models go through hours of heavy make-up to cover up any imperfections. Then after their photos are taken, in comes the airbrushing to cover up any extra flab they may have hanging off the side of their bathing suit. Underneath it all, they have pimples, blotches, freckles etc. just like the rest of us. It is all fiction made real. Perhaps it is not the model women should be hateful for. Maybe it is the media. The media is looking for perfection. A 511" 110 woman with potty lips may seem like the perfect type model. When she takes a walk into an advertisers office to be seen and turned away one may think why? Her flaw can be as simple as her ears being too big. This models self-image could plummet or not. If it has, she can go through serious changes with her appearance. Lets just say she got her ears reduced and went back to the
advertisement office. Still she is turned down because now she is too fat. Models go through the same difficulty regular people go through. It is a tough world in the media. Self-image is not a just a visual image. Neither is it based on one image. There are many images about how one feels inside and advertisers are the ones who trigger it. One can image how they think they look. The images are not only physical but emotional and mental parts of ones life. Everyone, especially the youth, are searching for their perfect identity. They see different types everyday in advertisements, so they are constantly changing appearance to please themselves and others. People want to feel accepted not judged by what others think. They want to live like their perfect Cover Girl role model. Every day people are over and over again given ways to be and look. They are given examples on how they should look in order to be beautiful, happy and be accepted in this world. Advertisers have one goal in mind; to invest and invest they shall if they continue brainwashing their consumers with thoughts of perfection. Advertisers can keep using words, vibrant colors, and beautiful people in their ads, but is it really worth obsessing about ones weight or looks when true beauty is within oneself? When one feels good about themselves, they enjoy life more. Maybe one day it will finally click in advertisers minds.