Every ad you see today usually has a person that is good looking and seems “perfect” trying to sell a product. All of the ads in the movie Killing Us Softly showed people using their sex appeal to sell their products. These kind of ads are seen everywhere today because statistics show that sex sells. With the technology we have today every ad is airbrushed and cut and pasted to make them look perfect so what people are striving for is impossible. As I have been writing I have the TV playing in the background and every commercial has shown good looking people trying to sell a product and every other commercial is advertising a diet supplement or workout equipment. I mean I’m all for working out and being healthy, but I think it’s crazy when people strive for perfection. In America today people are increasingly getting larger and larger and because obesity is a large issue going on in our culture the media shows extremely thin people hoping to make the public strive to be thin. Also if they show obese people in advertising nobody will buy the products especially if it is for a food place. I learned a lot about bulimia and anorexia from the article An Insatiable Emptiness it really is a disease, something you can get addicted to I think that this is also true for people that overeat that it’s something they get can get addicted to and become obese.
Shea, Maureen E. and Pritchard, Mary E. "Is self-esteem the primary predictor of disordered eating?" Personality and Individual Differences. Vol 42 (8) June 2007 pp. 1527-1537. PsycINFO. Western Libraries, Bellingham. 1 June 2008.
2 comments:
qYour post reminded me of a study I learned about in my Anthropology class last year. I can't recall the exact details but an anthropologist brought media in the form of television to a remote village that had never been exposed to it before. Prior to bringing in the media the women of the village had appreciated their full figures, but afterwards alot of the women developed anorexia and bulimia. When you said they are real diseases I agree, but it is scarry to think that they are diseases that can be created by the media.
I find it very odd that the media claims to have this huge influence on everyone in America and yet it seems that the skinnier the advertisement models get, the higher the rate of obesity climbs. I'm in no way saying that many people are negatively effected by these ads, but it seems that there is no postive effect at all.
Post a Comment