How Fashion Advertisements Alter Purchases

Whether it be in a clothing store or in a magazine, we see fashion ads everywhere. The fashion industry has taken over in the last century. Fashion and staying in style, that used to be irrelevant has become extremely important. There are even shows about fashion such as What Not To Wear, on HGTV. Everyone has to wear clothing and go shopping, therefore this topic can apply to anyone. Fashion advertisement and body image are huge in today's society. Teenagers can easily relate fashion advertisement to the way they feel about themselves. Fashion is a multi-billion-dollar industry that has considerable impact on the way ordinary people clothe themselves.

In today's society, the fashion industry employs thousands of people. It influences what people buy and what they wear. There are many jobs that involve fashion advertisement such as marketing. Fashion marketers are the people that figure out how to get consumers to buy. Fashion marketers know that people want to feel young, sexy, and pretty and they have to help create a perfect image that will sell clothing to buyers. Fashion marketers get buyers more interested in fashion and help show people what is in style and what is not. Another career that you can have that involves fashion advertisement is working in advertising and public relations. These people prepare advertisements for companies and design campaigns to promote the interests and image of their clients. Advertisers have to know a lot about the people they are promoting too in order to make the ad sell to the clients. The advertising and public relations services industry employed 425,000 workers in 2004. There are many careers involved in this field. Another job that promotes advertisement are people that work in clothing stores, such as Abercrombie and Fitch. The people in the stores have to wear their stores clothing. People, for example, may like what one of the workers is wearing and will buy it for themselves. This not only helps out the consumers by making them look good, but helps the store as well.

Fashion advertisement does not only give people careers, but it informs people as to what is in style this season and what is not. Fashion advertisements give consumers an instant appeal. People look to fashion magazines to see what the models are wearing. I'm sure you have all picked up a magazine and been like "wow I like that shirt, I want to go buy it." I know I look to fashion ad's to give me tips and ideas on what to buy. If I see something I like out of a certain magazine, I usually want to run out to the store and get it. If there were no such thing as fashion and advertisements, people wouldn't have a clue as what to buy. Fashion advertisements show creativity in each individual ad. I believe that fashion ad's help people create their own unique sense of style.

Fashion advertisement has helped the economy by making money and the community by looking good, but fashion advertisement has caused a negative impact as well on society. People look to fashion ad's and see only very thin models wearing the clothing. People get this idea that they need to have the "perfect" body, but there is no such thing as that. This has caused many women and men to have issues with food. Eating disorders are prevalent in so many people in society these days. Advertisers like to emphasize the importance of physical attractiveness in order to sell products. If someone looks good, then people are more likely to buy that product. In a recent survey from Teen people magazine, 27% of the girls felt that the media pressures them to have the perfect body. Fashion advertisement's today show unrealistically skinny body's. Most fashion models weigh 23% less than the average female. A study has shown that the number 1 wish for girls ages 11 to 17 is to be thinner. People compare their bodies to those they see around them, and comparing their bodies to other very skinny figures lowers people's satisfaction with themselves. Women think they need to be thin in order to be beautiful. These fashion ad's promote the wrong image to society.

Not just females feel the need to be thin, but many males these days feel the need to achieve a well-built standard shown by many of the men on ad's. Men and boys feel the need to be muscular and have six packs. Advertisements keep raising the standard and idealize well-built men. Research has found men an alarming increase in males going to the gym and taking steroids in order to fit these body images portrayed by fashion ad's. Have you ever compared yourself to someone on a fashion ad? Have you ever felt like she was more pretty than you or he had better abs than you? I'm sure we all have. Many of these ad's are airbrushed to make the models look perfect, and this is just not real life.

Another con to fashion advertisement has to do with the bad messages that articles of clothing can give off. Have you ever walked into an Abercrombie store and seen a shirt saying "My boyfriend is hotter than yours?" Or "My boyfriend thinks I'm studying." Or a shirt that says searching for....aspiring....details from last night....my pants." There are also shirts that say "Two wongs can make it white" and "Wok-n-Bowl." "Two wongs can make it white," can be extremely racist to people of asian-american decent. The other shirts can give people the wrong impression of you. These items of clothes are advertised everywhere whether it be someone marketing it to you or it be in a fashion magazine. They are making people's self-image of you different by just seeing you wear one of these shirts.

Fashion these days likes to use sexuality as a target to get people to buy their stuff. Advertisers like to use blatant sexuality, obsession, the bizarre, and snob appeal to sell their products. Exposing the body in advertisements is very common today. Tons of ad's feature nude women or women with a deep neckline and just them wearing their undergarments. Men have even started to become sexually portrayed in many advertisements. The intention is to shock people. Advertisers want to come up with very perverse advertisements to get the public's attention. Children of younger and younger ages want to dress more provocatively and begin to think sex is okay at a young age. Look at the Obsession ads, Guess Jeans ads, etc. There are women and men in very raunchy positions exposing a lot of their bodies. Our society's definitions of appropriate and of nudity are changing. But is that okay? Many parents think their children are getting sent the wrong messages. Parents don't want their 10 year old child seeing these ad campaigns on t.v. or the stores they go into. Children are getting overexposed to campaigns like this too much. As a whole it turns women into objects, and it gives off the idea that sex is okay, when that definitely is not the case in many situations.

Fashion advertisement has greatly changed over the years.

I Fashion advertisements have had a huge impact on our society in the last century. The impacts have both been good and bad but have helped shaped our society into what it is today. Fashion advertising is a way to get people to make money and get careers and to inform people what is in style and what is not. It gives people ideas on what to wear. Fashion advertisement gives consumers an instant appeal and makes people want to go out and buy things. On the other hand, fashion can cause people to become very self-conscious about their bodies. Their has been a huge rise in eating disorders in the past years. A lot of young women and men compare themselves to this extremely thin or well-built models they see on these ads and they feel that they need to look that way. Fashion ad's can also send out a negative message to people. Many people in clothing stores like to wear their clothes and tell the public that its okay to wear these clothes with this language on it. They are basically saying its okay and you should wear it because we are. So many articles of clothing these days have racist and derogatory comments on them. People may take one look and you and get the wrong impression just based on what you are wearing. The fashion industries should not be influencing people to wear these pieces of clothing.