Print and commercial advertising impact young girls perception of self-esteem and body image.

Advertising from the 50's, 80's and 21st century.

     Over the years advertising has severely changed in how women are perceived. In the 50’s women were shown as submissive housewives who stayed at home to cook and clean. In the 80’s women were shown on billboards, magazine covers, and commercials in bathing suits. At the change of the 21^st century advertising towards women became that of displaying women as sex objects. They are barely clothed (sometimes even naked) with layers of makeup and a size 2 waist. Due to this “perfect” image the media has constructed over the years young girls have become more self-conscious about their body image and suffer from a loss of self-esteem. All because the media has this idea of what a girl/women should look like to be “perfect”, when perfection comes in many shapes and sizes.

 

 The changes in advertising over the decades have more negative effects than good.

      In the 1950’s the only advertising that included women had to do with the kitchen. Advertising consisted of either what to buy your lady for Christmas (a vacuum), her standing in front of a well-stocked fridge, or the husband saying “Don’t worry darling, you didn’t burn the beer”. The very first Barbie was introduced in March 1959 in a bathing suit, with an hour glass figure, makeup, and in either blonde or brunette. Not too long after did Barbie receive a dream house and a nice floral housewife dress to please Ken. Afterwards that’s all you saw women wearing, make-up and swim suits in the 1980’s. Just about every ad that a women was in during that time were either advertising make-up or some other product but none the less still wearing a swim suit. Nowadays in the 21^st century all advertising is skinny, beautiful women seductively staring at the camera, barely clothed and covering their body. 

    One advertisement that made a huge outrage was the Marc Jacobs perfume ad with Dakota Fanning that was banned in Britain because it was “sexualizing a child”. Fanning at the time was only 17 and she own with an over-sized perfume bottle between her legs. This caused a storm of outrage from parents causing the ban to take place. Just in the last 60 years advertising has only fallen negatively to portray the image of women. Every decade that goes by women are shown with less clothes and more make-up. Everyone knows the term “sex sells” which was originally used to sell dull objects to attract the viewer to actually read the ad. While this may have worked for quite some time, over the years it is starting to dissipate and no longer be the case.

In the most recent generation young girls have shown an increased rate in body image issues.

    Nowadays girls have shown that they are dissatisfied with their bodies at age 9 and would like to be thinner at the age of 7. This is a scary statistic that is only becoming more prominent in the last few years.
Advertising does a good job in reinforcing these unrealistic ideas of beauty that are leading to the main cause in eating disorders, low self-esteem and even depression in young girls. In recent studies as many as 10-15% of the population suffers from eating disorders. Also, as little as 2% of women globally consider themselves to be beautiful. In order to avoid this it is extremely important to explain to young children that all these images and commercials they see are not real.


Time Magazine did a study that showed that nearly 80% of children have been on a diet by the time they are in fourth grade with the fear that children will only get younger and younger. Instructor Jessica Vooris with the Women Studies Department at the University of Maryland, College Park explains her opinion on why she thinks the media purposefully uses this "perfect" body image. I can even recall growing up I always thought my thighs were too large, because of the images I was always exposed to of these tiny models.

 

Many people and companies have recently tried to stop or educate these negative issues.

    Dove recently did a commercial showing how an average looking model has make-up put on and her hair done. They then set a fan to blow on her and take pictures which they then Photoshop and edit. This commercial is a prime example of the false advertising that our youth is exposed to everyday. You’ll hear little girls say all the time how they want to look like that, but how can they look like something that doesn’t even exist, but instead computer generated. Body image specialist and consultant for the Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty", Dr. Carla Rice, states that "Girls have their self-esteem undermined every day in our culture." which just goes to show you how badly advertising effects young girls.

     One amazing actress who is standing up to the media and refuses to lose weight to no longer appear as a “fat actress” is Jennifer Lawrence. Jennifer did an interview with Elle magazine and stated "I’m never going to starve myself for a part… I don’t want little girls to be like, 'Oh, I want to look like Katniss, so I’m going to skip dinner.’” The actress has repeatedly had to speak out on behalf of her weight and being considered obese for Hollywood. However, most models if weighed would be considered anorexic by being below 15% of their normal weight which is unattainable for about 99% of women.

    Over the years women’s images in advertising have only gotten worse contributing to a huge problem that is very prominent nowadays. Although this is now an important issue that we should address and fix too many people are willing to ignore it and act as if it’s not a thing. Ask yourself if your own body image and how you perceive yourself has been influenced from the advertising you have been exposed to over the years, even as a man, as Jessica Vooris does. Would you want your younger siblings or future children to have to go through the same thing? With an increasing population of young adults with eating disorders we have no one else to blame, but the main reason why, print and commercial advertising.

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