Blog 3

In the recent movie that we watched in my Race, Gender and the Media class we discussed how race and gender are portrayed, not only poorly in the media, but in advertising as well. Women have been taught through different advertising ploys that being beautiful is the only way to reach a certain level of success in careers. Not only have women been taught that beauty is the only way to reach the top, they have extended this to many different aspects of women's lives.
Women have been taught through advertising that they must buy this certain product to look this certain way and this, in a way, is a poor area of advertising. They not only have targeted women, they have also targeted young girls that they need to be a certain weight to be accepted in the world.
Ads, such as the new Dove body campaign, have brought their viewers back to reality. They are teaching girls at a young age that they should accept who they are and strive to whom they want to be, but that they can beautiful in their own skin and do not have to strive to be modelesque.
As we saw in the video, advertisers have made the people in their ads so perfect, that women can not feel beautiful in their own skin, ever, because they have placed such a high standard on what an "average" woman should look like.
This is poor advertising and it should be changed. Women shouldn't only be looked at for their beauty, but also for their personality. Women of beauty have been so successful because advertisers make companies standards higher than what a "normal" person could ever achieve.
In saying this, advertisers have placed too many standards on what a woman should do to achieve what they want to look like, smell like, and what these women should wear, putting much emphasis on brand names and make up that is very expensive and not accessible to women in this economic downturn.
Why should we strive for what they want us to be? Why can't we just be who we are, without the standards, and allow all of us to be unique and not a size 0.