women in advertising

 

When thinking about body image you often go back to what ads tell us. I mean of course they’re portraying the “typical body” and we’re supposed to love the “typical body” we all are supposed to have. But times have changed and things are supposed to be better for women in ads. The average body isn’t a size zero, have average size breast and wonderful skin. But as we see in this Victoria Secret ad we have pretty models with nice bodies as well as nice faces and nice skin. That’s nice to see sometimes but does Victoria Secret know that not EVERYONE looks like that? Does the advertising department know that the average size of an American woman isn’t a size zero; yet here they are using models that are probably wearing pants that are a small size. I’m defiantly not the average size of these women at all. To see them say love your body and show one type just tells me that they’re pretty narrow minded in what they think everyone looks like. I can love my body even though I wear a size large in a shirt. Victoria secret literally tells me that I can’t love myself and no one will love me if I don’t look like that. They tried to portray a wonderful message of “love your body” but completely failed at it because they only used one size. With this 50s ad it’s a bit different if you look at it you can see it’s about how being skinny isn’t okay. The tag line says “Men wouldn’t look at me when I was skinny but since I gained 10 pounds this new, easy way I have all the dates I want!” This ad is for a yeast supplement called Ironized Yeast; these are tablets that make you gain some weight. This tablet will give you good health, nice curves and nice skin. Back then you would have thought that they would actually prefer the skinny girls. But you can see that these girls do have some meat on them. This to me is what an ideal woman would look like; one that has all around curves and some weight on the side where the bones are hidden.

The difference between these two ads is mind blowing. One ad promotes that having curves is okay but the other one is promoting to love our bodies yet they have one size and not a variety. At times I find it hard to believe that it has come to this. How at one point in time it was okay for a woman to show off her curves and to the point where it’s not okay, because they see ads like Victoria Secret and they see the skinny models and then some women think that since I don’t look like this I’m not sufficient enough to be the average woman.

Being in the fashion field I don’t want anyone to feel that they aren’t fit for high end apparel or any apparel for that matter, just because they see a skinny model they can’t feel just as beautiful as them. It’s my personal goal for woman to be comfortable in their skin. I want them to feel like because they have curves they can get anyone they want in whatever clothes they were to buy. Woman and MEN of any size have every opportunity to love themselves and to be loved whether they are big, small, light skinned, dark skinned; we should all love who we are an embrace it.