Advertising & How It Affects Women

Stopping to think about this has always lead me to the same thought, why in the world do we as women look at one ad, either on TV or in some fashion magazine and think that we need to look more like the woman in it who looks more plastic then real? I know that I have try a few of the products but after using them I find that I wasn't truly happy with how they turn out. So anyway, back to the plastic 'beautiful' women in the magazines, on TV, or on some billboard. Nearly all of them are not real to begin with. The pictures for magazines or some billboard had been crop either the same person to make her more beautiful, or several pictures of several different women had been toss together and 'fix' together to make one more beautiful, but very unreal person. It's like taking several different puzzles pieces, throwing them altogether and trying to create a whole new but very different puzzle.

We really don't take the time to think about how advertisement has affected us. In 2008, I took a class that was for those going into retail business. This class involve having to chose two 'bad' commercials or ads, and two 'good' commercials or ads and explain why we decided on those. This lead to taking more noticed of how advertising affected the world and how to get more people's interest. Of course, this wouldn't help me out now since I'm going though a career change but it still has me thinking about it every time that I see a billboard, an ad in a favorite magazine, an ad on Facebook or some other website, and TV. I had not really pay much attention to how advertisement seem to 'cut' us women down and make us seem more like objects then people.

Why do they do it? That seems like a good question. I believe that it targets women to cause them to buy the products and tried to be more like the 'plastic' or 'computerize' women in magazines. And then there are those ads that make women appear as a beer bottle or women doing impossible things that involves some of them bending backwards or appearing as a mermaid. This also affects young girls by making them appear shy, mysterious, or having them believing that they will look like this when they grow up.

While this doesn't appear to affect the male counterparts of our world, it does. Men and boys are also lead to believe that this is how women and girls should look or behave. Many pictures of men in magazines appeared to the 'strong' and silent' type and many magazines I have seen with men in them, has many of them either shirtless and with six pack, or either with some kind of new truck or beer. In this world today, we need to take the time to think about what is real and what is not when it comes to ads as well as do we really need what they are selling to look like this?