The other day I got a call from a friend crying her eyes out while she stood in front of the mirror and stared at herself. She had grown up watching the advertisers on television depicting size two models as what is desirable. She, like most people, doesn’t look like the models on television. She told me about how she hated certain things about her body and had always been taught to feel like those were the parts of herself that she needed to hide. Advertisements set such an unrealistic standard for beauty that no woman can ever feel like she will be enough. Advertisements that claim to be empowering women are the very thing that is causing women to view themselves as less than desirable.
One company that shows the strongest sense of women being empowered in their advertisements is Victoria’s Secret. These women walk around half-naked in heels and angel wings with all of the confidence in the world. The purpose of Victoria’s Secret commercials is to sell lingerie, but who are these commercials really selling to? One could say that the advertisers are promoting a woman being confident, but one could also say that the advertisement sends the message that women have to look a certain way to be perceived as desirable by men.
I used to do work as a freelance makeup artist. It would never fail that the request would always be to look like a Victoria’s Secret model or a Kardashian. When I would ask why they wanted that look the reply would usually involve something about how that was what the men in their life found attractive when they looked on the television; they would tell me how it was their night to look like the girls on all of the advertisements. An advertisement for perfume will show a girl who probably works out four hours a day and is wearing a ton of makeup because that is what they want to be associated with the perfume; they want a perfume to be associated with being sexy. On the other hand advertisers showing women always looking like they are ready to walk the red carpet promotes the mindset that women are not viewed as desirable unless they look like something fake.
Most females go through a point where they sit in front of a mirror and knit pick their body. They think that if they are not a certain height or weight then they must not be desirable. The “perfect body” is all that women see associated with a woman being sexy. It isn’t possible to have a woman feel entirely comfortable in her own skin with a world full of companies that use advertising to make real women feel inadequate. Advertisers depict such an unrealistic standard that real life women will never be able to live up to.
I am a female who doesn’t live up to societies standards of beauty. I know that I am more than how I look in yoga pants while wearing a smokey eye. Advertisers should not get to make me feel like I am not as desirable as a woman because I do not look a certain way. Advertisers should not get to make women feel like they have to do a single thing for a man to find her desirable. Advertisers should not get to show women off like a piece of meat and think that is okay. If the advertising world would start depicting women as modest and successful, maybe that is what women would become. Advertisers depict women as some unattainable standard of beauty by showing that they have to look a certain way to be viewed as desirable by guys. This is the root of all women’s problems.
