The Effect of Advertisements on Women in Society
Perhaps "Unrealistic" Media Images Aren't that Bad
Ms Harbin strays at the end of her article on a vandetta against Abercrombia & Fitch, but overall she argues her point well. Many women do try to look like the good looking models they see, and this leads to some women feeling inferior to models and can lead anorexia.
However, I don't buy her premise that this is all bad. Obviously it's bad when this leads to anorexia, but take a look around next time you see people and observe the anorexic to obese ratio. Even among young crowds, obesity is overwhelmingly more common. Perhaps people would be healthier if they a bit tried harder to emulate models. Aneroxia is a significant health problem, but obesity is an even larger health problem.
The mental health problems potentially caused by media images are plausible too. I'm sure women feel bad that they do not look like models. But I'm still not quite convinced that this is bad. I feel inferior to the rich people I see on MTV Cribs, the athletes I see in professional sports, and the genuises I see on Jeopardy. This makes me feel bad sometimes, but it is true. I am inferior to them in some ways. However, seeing these people makes me work harder to be richer, more athletic, and smarter. Is that bad?
I think the stronger criticism of women in the media is not that models are skinnier than the general population (which happens to be generally obese, which makes some statistics that Ms. Harbin sites a bit deceptive), but that they continually become closer and closer to naked. But that's an entirely different topic and deserves a whole other set of articles.
Published by Scott Schlimmer
Keep thinking big and advancing the world's knowledge! View profile
- Buying the Dream: Life Magazine and Depression Advertising, 1936 - 1939 The lure of consumerism as portrayed in Life Magazine in the later period of the Great Depression
- The Rise of Male Vanity In men's advertisement today, many advertisers have noticed a trend towards male vanity.
- Study of Perceptions of Attractiveness Based on Race The purpose of this study is to conclusively determine that there are racial differences in perceptions of what is considered attractive.
- Advertising: On Loyalty and Deception The world of advertising is a world of assumptions and perceptions. These assumptions and perceptions often have a great influence on our lives.
-
How Women's Body Images Are Portrayed by Nip/Tuck
The television series "Nip/Tuck" and the tremendous
amount of plastic surgery in the United States is a
classic "chicken or egg" scenario.
- The Effect of Advertisements on Women in Society
- Advertisements Harm Us
- Please, Do Feed the Models: The Effect of Super-Thin Models in Advertising on Women
- The Effects of Television on American Citizens
- Stanley Kubrick - A Look at the Films of a Genius
- The "Ideal" Female Form
- Advertising's Misuse of Women
|
|
- According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 25% of the people in my state are obese (the equivalent of 30 pounds overweight if you are 5'4").
- I feel inferior to the rich people I see on MTV Cribs
- I feel inferior to thethe athletes I see in professional sports and the genuises I see on Jeopardy
- owever, seeing these people makes me work harder to be richer, more athletic, and smarter.
5 Comments
Post a CommentYou are a complete idiot! I am completely appaled
I am just shocked that you think that a. women are not as badly affected as some claim and b. write with the air of expertise in a field you know nothing about. For your information, you cannot even begin to understand how women are affected and to what extent. This is, I'm sorry to say, a result of you being a man, and an ignorant one at that.
Women are being lied to day in and day out, and it is people like you that are just as responsible as the gatekeepers in media. You seem to be in support of anorexia, a serious and dangerous affliction, which is disgraceful and shocking enough. Furthermore, you don't even mention a healthy diet and exercise, something essential and substantially better than anorexic tendencies you suggest. You should be ashamed, and I would advise against putting your name on this "piece of work".
ne has read your article, and I hope you know that if anyone has, you could have just changed a life FOR THE WORSE. Anorexia is a mental health disease that takes over every aspect of a person's life, and by glorifying models and claiming that stick-thin curve-less lifeless bodies are "healthy" and that a real woman IS inferior to these skeletons, you have just PROVEN the ignorance and d*ckheadedness of society (read: often men) today. please take your article offline so that you don't affect any more lives or cause anyone to enter into a hopeless, tragic cycle of self-hate that could (and DOES) lead to death.
this article is so unbelievable; i hope that you don't actually advocate anorexia and the unhealthy unrealistic bodies of current models. anorexia is just as serious of a health problem as obesity, if not WORSE. in fact, for women from ages 15-24 (the main target of objectivizing advertisements) anorexia causes TWELVE TIMES more fatalities than ANY other cause of death. it is NOT something to be taken lightly, as you so ignorantly have here. i cringed when i read, "Perhaps people would be healthier if they a bit tried harder to emulate models." ABSOLUTELY NOT. Today's top models do not eat--or they eat a rice cake every time they almost pass out. Even the most obese people would suffer greatly from this "healthy solution" you have implied. Even the most obese person needs to lose weight healthily, by eating 1800-2000 calories a day and exercising. If an obese person tried to lose weight using anorexia, they would DIE before even achieving the weight they desired. I hope that no o
but xploitation of women is too bad, it maysatiate the senses of women, but at the same time there is a view that women is only meant to be enjoyment of males, there is no other thing in women is theme of establishment.