The Iron Maiden: How Advertising Portrays Women

Advertising often portrays women as beautiful, flawless, tall, and thin. This could be described as ‘perfect’ by some. When reading this selection I realized that most of these pictures are retouched. Each image is painstakingly worked over: teeth are brightened, wrinkles are taken away, stretch marks and cellulite are removed. These women are not perfect, but their pictures present them that way. Some pictures even use certain body parts from different women to create a ‘perfect’ model.
Many women are getting plastic surgery and facelifts so they can look younger and feel better about themselves and a lot of this is brought on by the advertisements we see every day on TV commercials, magazines, and even billboards. Even young girls worry about their looks which is crazy. Marketers are targeting towards teens with beauty product ads. Girls are wearing make up at younger ages and worrying about their weight when it is unnecessary to worry about. Women are even following celebrity diets so they will be thinner. Women are even taking diet pills, using liquid diet drinks, diuretics, fasting, using laxatives, starving themselves, and even turning to purging to be a few pounds lighter. What kind of message is this sending to younger girls?
One comment made about these advertisements stated that ads that are effective make the viewer self-conscious. Some advertisers do everything they can to create images that discontent customers. Why? For money. Every advertisement has some kind of message to women that they have to be perfect and flawless to be beautiful, which is so not true.
Men are even feeling that pressure from advertisements. Men have to be muscular and sexy to get the girl. Also, men sometimes judge their wife or girlfriend based on ads of women who seem perfect.