perfected images
Throughout society we are made to think that we need to fit the perfect image of whatever gender we are. Men are supposed to be strong and women are supposed to be slim and elegant. Advertisers have created and maintained these ideas through their ads and use it to their advantage to capture our attention. We want to fit in with everybody else so they give us what we want. It fits with the basic appeals advertisers use to sell us their product. In the above ad, for example, it uses our need for aesthetic sensations(attracting us to beauty making us feel enhanced), need for attention(we want people to notice us) and our physiological needs(we need to drink.) Although practically none of these needs have anything to do with the skinny Pepsi can, advertisers make it seem like it is, making us want the product. The advertiser wants us to feel skinny-so by drinking their product, we can achieve this goal. The advertisers target young, stylish women by using a model who is young and stylish- having the perfect makeup and appearance. It seems like a simple drink, like diet Pepsi, is gendered toward women so they can achieve a skinny appearance and feed into societies standards of who and what we are supposed to be like. Although drinking diet Pepsi wont do anything to help our health, and rather harms it with all the artificial sweeteners and chemicals, they want to make us think that it will help us. It feeds into the everlasting stereotype of women, that they are supposed to be thin and perfect. Although the thin can is clever on Pepsi's part, with the thin can along a diet product with zero calories, the message itself is wrong because it makes people think they are be exactly like this model who has the perfect makeup and lighting to enhance her appearances. This type of advertising can lead to many problems with the targeted audiences, as young girls then think they have to achieve this look of perfection by having diet products or possibly nothing at all to be skinny. As long as we continue to be drawn towards these ads and idolize models who have the 'perfect' features, we will continue to have problems with facing stereotypes and having girls feel like they aren't 'perfect' enough.
I agree with you. A lot of these kinds of commercials make me mad because of what they think we want. They seduce us with false facts and don’t tell us the reality of it. The thing is though, we sometimes believe them, and we buy their product. This can be good for them, but can also be bad for us, the consumers.
ReplyDeleteAnother point is that this probably is not the original model. She has most likely been retouched to make her even more perfect. This is troubling because of the point you bring up in your article, how women especially are told to be the ideal, to reach the ideal. But the craziest part is, the ideals that we want to reach, are not even the ideals that the other people have themselves. No one has that perfect skin. No one has that perfect body. No one has (insert photoshopped feature). It's all just really messed up.
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