We are constantly inundated by advertisements; they are on our TV, they are in our movies, and across our road ways. You cannot go anywhere or see anything nowadays with out being blasted with 'buy this!' The worst part, for me, is not the ads themselves but the perfection that is pushed through this media and how unrealistic it is. So many men and women compare themselves to these models, and their perfect unrealistic bodies. When did photoshop become sexy? Have we lost touch with what a 'real' woman’s body looks like? Or even a real man's body? All of us have our imperfections but I was taught as a child that those are what make us beautiful.
This has been the topic of conversation many of times between my peers and I, also as discussions in my college courses. I had given up on the media i was so fed up of seeing these women a thin as rails with triple D breasts, until this year when I saw an entire ad campaign from Arie (American Eagles lingerie store) that has banned the use of photoshop on their models!! Hallelujah! The message that Arie is pushing is a wonderful one, especially with a demographic of 18-21 year olds, this is an extremely important one to make to teens and young adults. [1] Seeing such a major ban with such a large company gives me hope, we need to be teaching our younger generations to love the skin that they are in, embrace it! As my mother always told me 'how can someone love you, if you do not love yourself.' this has been my motto for years. It is not an easy thing todo when you constantly have the media telling you what beautiful is.
My second major discovery this month was a man, Daniel Soares who resides in Germany, who has decided to take matters into his own hands and start a graffiti campaign called 'ad-busting', Soares decided to go around Germany and paste stickers onto advertisements. This latest installment 'Hamburg street art campaign' was against H & M's new swimsuit collection. Soares deiced to make stickers of the photoshop tool bar and sick them on the side of massive ads in public places. It went viral in one day! [2] He stated that he was not against the use of overly tan models, which is what H&M had been criticized for with this latest campaign, he wanted to push the use of photoshop and how inappropriate he thinks that it is.
Both of these anti-perfection advertisements or ad-busting make me realize that its not just me who believes that we are putting our youth at such a disadvantage, its not fair. All ads need to show the average man at 5'9” and weighs 180 pounds an the average woman at 5'4” and weighs 152 pounds because these are their actual average sizes. [3] Or At least people who do not look plastic, at what point do these models just exist on a computer or in makeup and not in real life.
[1] Ellie, Krupnick. Huffington Post, "Aerie's Unretouched Ads 'Challenge Supermodel Standards' For Young Women." Last modified January 25, 2014. Accessed January 29, 2014.
[2] Daniel, Soares. "H&M Ad-busting." Last modified January 02, 2014. Accessed January 31, 2014. http://danielsoares.me/H-M-Adbusting.
[3] "Answers.com." Accessed January 31, 2014. http://www.answers.com/topic/in-the-united-states-what-is-the-average-height-and-weight-for-a-man-and-a-woman.
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