We live in a world of stick thin models and emaciated celebrities. Magazine covers tout “Best and Worst Beach Bodies” and “Too Thin for TV.” Weekly tabloids feature stories on who has lost the most weight and who needs to cover up. Television ads celebrate the greatness of diet pills; energy drinks can speed up your metabolism, and the newest Master Cleanse diet will help you lose ten pounds in two days. The idea that thin is in is everywhere, and is hardly escapable from the advertising industry. And although the messages are damaging and often untrue, women everywhere are suffering the consequences of constant exposure to overly thin models and movie stars.
Stats about Models
The average woman has a 7 percent chance that she will be as slim as a catwalk model and a 1 percent chance of being as thin as a supermodel, according to Web site healthyplace.com. There is a disturbing trend that has gotten progressively worse in fashion advertising over the past several years. Healthyplace.com also notes that the average woman sees between 400 and 600 ads a day—these ads often promote beauty and thinness. These ads do not encourage women to embrace their own shapes, but rather to work hard to attain a low weight and toned body. There are a few ads that try to honor ‘normal’ looking women—the most notable was Dove’s recent ad campaign that featured everyday women in their underwear. But there is no way that after seeing skinny models over and over again, one company can really make a difference in how women feel about their bodies. More needs to be done to cancel out the hundreds of ads women see everyday that basically tell them they are not good enough.
Why We Can Never Measure Up
An assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Paul Hamburg, writes that the advertising industry reproduces “ideals that are absurdly out of line with what real bodies really do look like…the market perpetuates a market for frustration and disappointment. Its customers will never disappear.” Because diet products (a market that brings in over $33 billion annually), slimming clothes and magazines touting weight loss are so prevalent in our society, young girls and women have little chance of escaping messages that promote a negative body image. Ads often subconsciously slip into our minds—the advertising industry does not need to come out and openly condone unhealthy body images…their representation of the female ideal as less than 100 pounds speaks louder than any direct ad campaign could.
Dieting Culture
More and more horrific facts come up when one researches the effects of overly thin models in advertising. According to Healthyplace.com, over 80 percent of 10-year-old girls have dieted,and currently, 50 percent of women are presently dieting in America. Women everywhere are exhibiting signs of hatred towards their body, continually fueled by being exposed to ads featuring bodies they can never obtain. Young women are extremely vulnerable to developing eating disorders—millions are suffering from illnesses like anorexia or bulimia, and their quest for the thinnest bodies are only furthered by ads with 90-pound models. The hardest part is that these ads are everywhere—even if women avoided magazine ads, the message to be thin is broadcast on television, radio, the Internet, and outdoor billboards.
Living in an Ad Society
A study was conducted (found on questia.com) called “The Elastic Body Image: The Effect of Television Advertising and Programming on Body Image Distortions in Young Women,” and the results showed that “actual body size is in conflict with a mediated ideal body image and an unstable self-perceived body image…results of the study suggest that watching even 30 minutes worth of television programming and advertising can alter a women’s perception of the shape of her body.” This is an especially troubling fact because the amount of television women watch directly correlates to the ads they see everyday.
The advertising industry is very much responsible for the continued bombardment of images of sickly thin models. While the fashion industry has taken minimal steps in using healthy models, not much action has actually taken place. Overly thin models were banned from catwalks in Brazil in 2006, but the outrage that took place from models that are ‘naturally thin’ dissuaded many designers from featuring healthier models in their shows. The United States has tried to encourage the industry to use plus size models (usually the still-thin size 4 or 6) or average looking women; however, there still hasn’t been much of a change. Magazines like Vogue and Elle have tried to showcase healthy models, but no matter how many stories they do about wanting to change negative body image, the ads that run alongside the articles still display extremely gaunt models.
What Can We Do
There needs to be direct action taken by the advertising industry to show women that being too thin is dangerous for individuals and for society as a whole. Products should be boycotted or held accountable for their advertisements. Maybe if money was withheld, companies would start to realize that they should be celebrating their consumers, not denigrating them by insisting they are far from perfect. Because this is a billion-dollar industry, change would most likely be a long time in coming. But it is a necessary change that our culture needs to go through…women’s lives are at stake.
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