Essay about Cultural Myths and Advertisements

In our society today a business is not a business without an advertisement. These advertisements advertise what American’s want and desire in their lives. According to Jack Solomon in his essay, “Master’s of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” Jack Solomon claims: “Because ours is a highly diverse, pluralistic society, various advertisements may say different things depending on their intended audiences, but in every case they say something about America, about the status of our hopes, fears, desires, and beliefs”(Solomon). Advertisers continue to promote the American dream of what a women’s body should look like. They advertise their products in hopes for consumers to buy them, so they can look like the models pictures in the ads. Behind these ads, advertisers tend to picture flawless unrealistic woman with the help of Photoshop. In our society today to look like a model is an American dream and can be the reasons why we fantasizes and buy these products being advertised. “America’s consumer economy runs on desire, and advertising stokes the engines by transforming common objects;signs of all things that Americans covet most”(Solomon).

For centuries, women have found it to be difficult to live up and be the standard “runaway model”. Women have the pressure to fit in to be considered beautiful since ads and media have distorted society in how they view and evaluate beauty. The false representation of models in the beauty commercials have made women want to replicate them even though they don’t know what’s behind the editing. Even though this is a huge matter, companies did not stand back but instead made more commercials that self-degrade women constantly, except one. The Dove Evolution Commercial- “Campaign for Real Beauty” focuses on the way they change women sending a strong message to women about beauty and what it really

     Michael Jordan has star power that bridges age, race, and socioeconomic class. Nike understands this aspect of the popular superstar and decided to give him his own clothing line named Jumpman23. It is the most popular form of sports apparel available and the white logo that adorns each article of apparel is known worldwide. Michael Jordan is arguably the most loved and respected athlete of this generation, thus the ad for this company depicted in ESPN The Magazine takes advantage of his immense popularity. In an attempt to expand the companies influence Jumpman23 uses professional baseball player Derrick Jeter to send its message and promote its apparel. In the essay “Absolution for Sale,” Charity

In “The Fashion Industry: Free to be an Individual” by Hannah Berry, Hannah emphasizes how social media especially advertisements pressure females to use certain product to in order to be considered beautiful. She also acknowledges the current effort of advertisement today to more realistically depicts of women. In addition, these advertisements use the modern women look to advertise products to increase women self-esteem and to encourage women to be comfortable with one’s image.

For women, advertising exemplifies the ideal female body. According to Kilbourne, young girls are taught from a very early age that they need to spend lots of time and money to achieve this “physical perfection.” But realistically this cannot be achieved. The ideal woman’s body is Caucasian, very skinny, big breasts, no flaws, and pretty much no pores. This cannot be achieved because it is physically impossible to look like this; the illusion comes from the secret world of Photoshop. No woman is beautiful enough so they leave it to technology to create perfection. The supermodel Cindy Crawford said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford!” She knew the realities of Photoshop and body image, and more women and girls need to become aware of this as well.

Fashion plays a major role in a person’s life because it is expressing how one looks and feels about one’s self. Clothing, accessories and makeup communicate fashion, which are all successful ways of bringing attention and persuasion to popular fashion brands. However, can also lead consumers to higher standards thinking that they can resemble the professional model posing in the advertisement. Like a Cover Girl advertising fade proof, waterproof, and ignore- proof mascara and new intense eye shadow blast that has a photo of Drew Barrymore behind a light grey background with light blue eye shadow around her entire eye. Likewise, revealing Drew Barrymore’s greenish blue eyes with perfectly curled black eyelashes that one can have from the use of this particular new Cover Girl eye shadow blast and mascara.

Advertisers, especially fragrance advertisers stick to a ‘house style’ and because of these similarities we have expectations of what they will include. The advert I have chosen is Estee Lauder perfume, which features Kendall Jenner. Some of the features we expect on fragrance adverts are glamour, beauty and attractiveness to be shown. It is very common for advertisers to use well-known celebrity such as Kendall Jenner. It is a technique to get people looking at the advert because audiences admire celebrities, success and importantly ‘beauty’. If a ‘normal’ ‘everyday’ woman were to be used for adverts then it would catch less attention, as they are not known and the product would sell less because people assume, if celebrities use the

Advertising uses a lot of different techniques to show the public the perfect female image. Body doubles and computer retouching are two examples of how advertisers are able to “doctor” images. The majority of women we see in magazines, music videos. and movies do not appear in reality, as we perceive them in the media. We may actually believe we are looking at one woman’s body when we are actually looking at sections of three or four women’s bodies, which, when spliced together, shows us the best parts of each women’s body as the final product. Women cannot attain these impossible standards of attractiveness. Young girls learn very quickly that they must spend much time, energy, and money on achieving these standards.

Thesis: The purpose of my speech is to convince you that the perfect body image shown on the media is unrealistic, therefore we shouldn’t praise it.

Brainwashing and Mind Control are “best thought of as a series of techniques that are used over time to shape a person’s perception, cognition, emotions, decision making and behavior to such an extent that they have lost their freedom of choice” (Mind Control Today). These techniques, once in existence within authoritarian and totalitarian governments, are increasingly being practiced by advertising companies and mass media. There are extensive similarities among the political and economic standards that cause negative impacts on society, as a result of adopting these mind control tactics. As Malcom X pointed out, “The media is the most powerful entity on earth, because they control the minds of the masses”.

Since similar standards for beauty have been created by advertisements have been around for so long, women do not know they have been manipulated and now accept them as true. Because of this, this advertisement’s portrayal of a “beautiful” woman is an effective strategy to convince women to buy the Be Delicious perfume.

When my family moved away from the place I grew up I began to have a major problem with my weight; I turned to food to comfort me. I somehow felt secure while eating and because of that psychological reassurance I got from the food, I was soon over weight. I knew I had to do something but that urgency would die when I would be introduced to a new flavor of Brewster’s ice cream or a limited time only supreme large fries that I saw advertised on the television or in a magazine. My self esteem and body-image suffered a great amount during those years of constant struggle. As I looked at pictures of celebrities, athletes, average people, friends, my sister and then myself, I noticed something, all of them were thin except me. After this and

Advertising has been defined as the most powerful, persuasive, and manipulative tool that firms have to control consumers all over the world. It is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. Its impacts created on the society throughout the years has been amazing, especially in this technology age. Influencing people’s habits, creating false needs, distorting the values and priorities of our society with sexism and feminism, advertising has become a poison snake ready to hunt his prey. However, on the other hand, advertising has had a positive effect as a help of the economy and society.

Advertising today focuses on specific targeted demographic groups. There is a direct focus on marketing products to young consumers. This age group sees the commercials, but does not really understand the directed message. This can have an adverse effect on the way children interpret and understand the message being presented to them. 'The average American child sees more than 40,000 commercials a year, and advertisers spend more than $12 billion annually marketing to them?double the amount of 10 years ago.' (APA-1) Children watching television are exposed to every channel running commercials that are sending out a mature message to an immature audience. There needs to be something done to

Advertising has had a major impact on society. Some may be considered positive and some negative. Take a look around, advertisements are placed everywhere, television commercials, billboards, newspapers, and even on the sides of buses. Advertising is the basic form of marketing and trading throughout the world. Today’s society knows it as marketers trying to influence or persuade consumers into buying something. It also serves as a medium for services and businesses. There are many advertising strategies, but television commercials will always remain the number one strategy. Think about it, how much television is watched a day, probably a lot. What better way to advertise a product or service? Advertising has a positive effect on our economy. It does not only influence and persuade consumers, but it also benefits them in many ways. It also benefits manufacturers and their company, and the world as a whole.