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Abstract
Advertising is one on of the marketing tools of communication used in promoting a product or service in market. Advertising can also be used as a measure of the success of an organization Advertisement is defined as any sponsored, paid message that is communicated in non-personal way. Some adverts are regional while other are based on genera audience globally. Commercial adverts seek to draw consumption of products and services through branding which uses images given certain qualities. On the other hand, noncommercial advertisements are used to promote items that are not consumer product or service like government agencies or interest groups.
This research will seek to look into the impacts of body and image advertising and the development of the activity over the past two decades.
In the modern world, one can argue that it has become virtually impossible to live without advertising. As a fabric making the daily living of individuals, advertising has been bred into our day to day living. Adverts are not only found in newspapers but also magazines, television, the internet, billboards and many more areas. Advertising has an incommensurable effect on the way people conceptualize themselves or perceive they own. (Raymond 29-48)
Advertisements affect the society in such manner that adds the psychological value of product or brand. It also acts as the agent of communication in marketing consumer products, relatively higher than industrial products. As an information transmitter, adverts control how knowledge on a product is circulated. Items or products at clock lower prices in most instances the ones with more advertisements. This is because they are to be kept known to the consumer.
Hopkins argues that there is need to court attention in advertising due to the limited time one is accorded in media.
Image advertising involves attempts to create favorable mental picture of a product or a firm in the mind of a consumer. This image is meant to associate an advertised product with certain lifestyles and or values. Image advertisements serve the purpose of increased awareness, transformation oftheawareness into familiarity and thus into consumer buying the value or product. Body image involves our perception, imagination, emotions and physical sensations about bodies. It is dynamic in sense that it varies across environments, mood and physical experiences. According to Ginsburg (30-37) the controllers of the images control cultures. This imposes ideals in human characters.
The art of body and image advertising is a learned process in different settings of family, peers and general institutions. Rogers in his writing shows that dissatisfaction of one’s has become widely accepted such that it is normal in the society. Teens especially girls are widely deluged by the body shapes depicted in the various media platforms.
In the current sphere, body and image advertising has taken a new dimension in the globe. Women and men have been displaying there bodies to convey certain messages. These image arouse different reaction across different audiences, either negative or positive. Advertising forms very good means of informing individuals of who they really are or what is in them. The consequence of such an advertisement would include the people believing that the advertisement reflects their inner self. Negative advertisements that people come to believe in shows the extent of negative perception of being by the people.
Among women, advertisements do not have a great negative effect on them. A negative advert offers them an opportunity to divulge further into improving themselves. For instance, using slim women in adverts is widely acceptable among women all over the globe and they are working to gain such slim bodies. Though dimensions have changed, many companies are using an average women size in advertising; most companies are still clinging on the slim women images. As a marketing tool, companies apply double image technique to expand market. This is in order to capitalize on the desire for women to emulate the women used in the magazine cover pages.
Body advertising is majorly aligned to beauty and fashion. It is a source of information to peers on the objects of design.
As highlighted in above text, people have been progressing from the thinner to thinner body to print as advertise images. Two decades ago, a model’s weight was approximately 8% of that of an average woman. In today’s world, the models have changed such that they weigh approximately 23% of woman’s average weight (Biocca 34-47)
It is shown that, on average, woman views more than 400 adverts per day. These adverts have shaped the relationships between men and women. Since the fall of 1980, the explicitness of adverts has been on the rise. Women with sexual suggestive dress codes are more prevalent in adverts recently. Men are dressed less proactively as compared to male counterparts in the advertisements. Women are involved more in decorative adverts while men are used in adverts that may be advocating for equality which shows that there is prevalence of gender stereotyping with inequality in roles (Olivardia 56-63)
In television shows, male models’ looks are commented less as compared to females. Commercials aimed at girls are founded on attractiveness while those geared towards boys are geared towards boys are founded on appearance.
Commercials have thus influenced the feeling of the ideal body on women. The exposure on advertisements has reduced women’s attractiveness or satisfaction with their own bodies. With dissatisfaction with body size and shape, girls are showing anxiety and bulimic symptoms after continuous fashion and advertising images exposure. (Carpenter et al 1-25)
Sexual revolutions together with rise of civil movements across the globe in 1960s brought new agenda on women, image and advertising. With freedoms across the globe, laws against such vices as abortion, premarital sex and homosexuality were relaxed. The use of contraception and education into university level brought unprecedented independence. Further boosted by advancements in technology, sex could be enjoyed without the fear of pregnancy as it was in the 1960s.This freedom brought a different kind of oppression. (Philips108-133)
Nichols &Moan (56-73) articulate the introduction of a new dimension of liberalism turn. Whichwaspreviouslyprivate became public property as depicted in the nearly nude adverts. This is a vivid illustration of the development of adverts in the globe, in which women and men, have been given the rights to display their nakedness to market products in a capitalistic world.
With advertisers continuously emphasizing on the sexuality and physical attractiveness of body, it has kept both men and women on heels trying to focus on their appearance. Women compare themselves with those around them. Advertisements make women feel old or unattractive; lowering their self-evaluation. These pressures those to push for a perfect body portrayed in the images used as advertisements for product and service promotion. The pressure has led to what researchers have termed as unhealthy living I bid to keep a perfect shape. According to Nichols, (34-42) men and women have begun putting up with risky habits to achieve well-built media standards.
The advertisements are purposeful in the normalizing slim body’s which creates an unquenchable desire to attain such bodies. This is what motivates the consumption of a product. Hamburg P. (7-16) shows that companies keep reproducing ideals that do not really reflect the real body shapes. It keeps customers with insatiable desire to gain the perfect body shape.In most body image adverts, the target group has been women and girls. There is a recent awareness on men and boys pressuring them to gain more muscles as depicted in the images in media. Body and image advertisements have idealized the standard man who is well-built. There has been an increase in extreme training to gain masculine bodies and use of steroids related with bigger muscles and more stamina in lifting. (Yu Ui-Jeen et al, 45-48)
Grabe (460) shows that men are striving to body build themselves. Shallek-Klein argues that men like women are also developing shame of their bodies and developed pathological disorders. Delving into drug use like steroids, body image and cultural messages, men and boys have nearly in all manner copied their female counterparts in physical dissatisfaction of themselves.
To this extend, body and image has been given a higher value on appearance. Self-worth is judged by the attractiveness of an individual. Those who are deemed unattractive are tages in the daily social living. The kind of advertisements available across media brings about a longing for acceptance in the society. Thus self-esteem in the community has been tied to the confidence that remains after influence from the various advertisements across social media. Conversation in social sites like clubs is based on body appearance. (Halliwell et al, 104)
These adverts thus have come up to ruin the societal setting. Feeding habits have been changed to suit the various appearances in the advertisements. Abnormal feeding patterns are on the rise in the spread of provocative advertisements. People have been trying to emulate the media personalities but remain dissatisfied which keeps a constant need for certain product. The point of lacking that model shape without understanding that the models have only been enhanced to eradicate what would thus be termed as weaknesses.
References
1. Myers, Philip N., and Frank A. Biocca. “The elastic body image: The effect of television advertising and programming on body image distortions in young women.” Journal of communications 42.3(1992): 108-133
2. Pope Jr, Harrison g., et al. “The growing commercial value of the male body: longitudinal Survey of advertising in women’s magazines.” Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics 70.4(2001): 189-192.
3. Halliwell, Emma, and Helga Dittmar. Does Size matter? The impact of model’s body size on women’s body-focused anxiety and advertising effectiveness. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. 23.1 (2004): 104
4. Carpenter, C., & Edison, A., taking it all off again: The Portrayal of Women in Advertising Over the past Forty Years. Conference Papers—International Association, (2005) 1-25.
5. Flamini, Alexander. A semiotic approach to the study of body building: importance of male body image and its indications of masculinity in contemporary western society. Diss. 2009.
6. Grabe, Sherry, L. Monique Ward, and Janet Shibley Hyde. “The role of media in body image concerns among women: a meta-analysis of experimental and correlation studies.” 134.3 (2008) 460.s
7. Yu, Ui-Jeen, Mary L. Damhorst, and Daniel W. Russell. “The impact of body image on consumer’s perception of idealized advertising images and brand attitudes.” Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal 40.1(2011): 58-7
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TITLE
:
NAME
:
PROFESSOR
:
COURSE
:
DATE
:
Abstract
Advertising is one on of the marketing tools of communication used in promoting a product or
service in market. Advertising can also be used as a measure of the success of an organization
Advertisement is
defined as any sponsored,
paid
message that is
communicate
d
in
non
–
personal
way. Some adverts are
regional
while other are based on genera audience globally.
Commercial
adverts seek to draw consumption of products and services
through
branding which uses i
mages
given certain qualities. On the other hand, noncommercial
advertisements
are used to
promote
items that are not consumer product or service like government
agencies
or
interest groups
.
This research will seek to look into the impacts of body and image
advertising and the
development of the activity over the past two decades.
In the modern world, one can argue that it has become
virtually
impossible to live
without
advertising. As a fabric making the daily living of individuals, advertising has been bred into our
day to day living.
Adverts are
not only found in newspapers but also magazines, television, the
internet, billboards and many more areas. Advertising has a
n incommensurable effect on the way
people conceptualize themselves or perceive
they own
. (
Raymond 29
–
48)
