In this space I will be going into more depth about how companies objectify women and their bodies based off of how they are advertising. This is a space to reflect on what society is advertising, how that effects our daily lives, and being able open up about how we feel in certain types of situations. Hopefully all of your thoughts and questions are answered here, if not feel free to contact me below!
What is Victoria’s Secret?
I encourage you to watch the video above if you have not already, but I am sure most of you have seen this ad or any ad that Victoria’s Secret has put out there. I think most of the world knows by now that Victoria’s Secret has a body image problem. Let’s start with the “Angels”, this concept was conceived in the 90s, and the models were white women that had to be reed thin while simultaneously top heavy (Elphick, paragraph 2). This concept has still not changed decades later. Victoria’s Secret has had countless PR disasters that they have tried and failed to come back from. Such as their chief marketing officer telling Vogue that people don’t want transgender and plus size models, and the cancellation of the famous fashion show. One other being their ‘The Perfect Body” campaign. This campaign showed three stick thin women in a bra and panties with the slogan ‘The Perfect “Body”’ flung over them. They received a lot of back lash from this ad in particular because most normal people in the world do not look like that or are even slightly the same as what they are claiming the perfect body to be. This company makes it seem that you have to have the same body type the models do in order to shop in their store and they will not accept anyone else. If you start to really think about it, their whole company is messed up. Based on the ads and the motto that Victoria’s Secret stands behind, I know for a fact I cannot step foot in their store because I don’t look like the women in their advertisements. In the ad above, it is implying that women are waiting in lingerie for the super bowl game to end and then the “real” games will begin, meaning sex, if you didn’t catch the reference. This ad is less than appealing to the people that are meant to actually wear the product (Poggi, 2018). This company is not in any hurry to diversify their ad campaigns or change their motto.
| https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/victorias-secret-has-a-body-image-problem-20141119-11pyqh.html
| https://adage.com/article/special-report-super-bowl/most-sexist-super-bowl-ads/311835
Edgewell is Not Doing Very Well.
The ad above leaves little to the imagination, there are three women standing in front of a little tree that is covering their crotch area. The bushes are supposed to be perceived as women’s pubic area. Two of the women proceed to cut the bushes with scissors and the last women is shaping hers into a heart using the Schick razor. The two other women stand amazed by what she has done. The advertisement gives the impression that they are trimming and shaping their pubic area because of how the trees are placed (One Million Moms, paragraph 1). Most of the time these advertisements are on at night when little children are watching tv. The company isn’t directly targeting the ad for young children, more so for young women who groom themselves down there. But if this ad is on when young children are watching tv they start to question things, they start to wonder if they are supposed to be doing the same thing as these women, they question how they look down there. This is problematic because young children should not have to worry about this when they are that young or be thinking about how to “solve” this problem. Not only does the ad portrait stick thin women in bikinis but it makes it seem that your area needs to be kept very nice and neat. Women have hair down there and it does not have be kept in tip top shape if you don’t want it to be.
| https://onemillionmoms.com/current-campaigns/schick-trimstyle-ad-leaves-little-to-the-imagination/
BILLIE!
Billie is a female first shaving brand. I absolutely love what they stand for and how they put their message on the market while selling their products. This brand was co-founded by Georgina Gooley. Gooley launched the brand in November 2017 because she wanted to take on the pink tax.
Gooley and her co-founder, Jason Bravman said they are combating the pink tax because the idea that women should pay more for something purely because of their gender is absurd (Gooley, 2018). I cannot agree more, a lot of women end up using men’s shavers because they cannot afford to pay for women’s razors. The ad above was launched on October 29, 2019 and gives off an amazing message. In the ad they are stating that women have had to go through so much and use so many different products to get rid of their mustaches. Since women have been shaving their mustaches since the beginning of time, I don’t think men even knew/know that we had/have them. I seriously think that is so funny. Billie is letting the whole world know that women have mustaches too and we don’t have to shave/wax them off just to please people. They aren’t even selling anything in the video but the fact that they are sending a message like this out to the world gives them mad respect. Not only do they put out this great message, but they also include real, diverse models. They also have another ad about their shavers. In the shaver ad they explain how other shaving ads from other companies show women shaving their bodies, and their bodies have no hair on them…BEFORE they even start shaving them. In Billie’s ad they show women that actually have hair on their bodies, they also state that women do not have to shave their bodies but if or when they do Billie is going to be there for them.
| https://mybillie.com/pages/about
| https://time.com/5336199/billie-founder-disrupt-shaving-industry/
Aerie’s Spark
Aerie. The most popular place for gals 15-to-25-years-old to go shopping for intimates and sleepwear. Unlike a lot of companies, Aerie has realized for a while now that it is cool to be body-accepting. They started their no airbrushing, “Aerie Real” campaign using regular/normal- looking models in 2014 (Rasool, 2018). They have had huge success over the past years with their new motto, in 2018 Aerie was valued at $500 million, up $200 million from the year before. They are now estimating $1 billion valuation over the next few years (Elle, 2018). Aerie has shown that they are a real threat to other stores including Victoria’s Secret. Aerie has continued to show diversity in their ad campaigns, starting with all shapes and sizes of real women, along with different ethnicities, people with (dis)abilities and tattoos. I believe the reason this company is growing so much and is so important to females, is because women are so self-conscious about their body and what people think about it and Aerie is here to tell us that it doesn’t matter what we look like, we just need to be ourselves. With new technology it is hard to not see ads that companies put out there advertising a product using stick thin white women. These ads make young women feel self-conscious about their body along with lowering their self-esteem. When women continue to see unrealistic bodies in advertisements, they start to think that they are supposed to look the same way, that there is something wrong with them. When women start to think like this, it is very likely they will end up having mental health issues, thinking that they are not good enough, that people won’t love them because they are not stick thin, drop death gorgeous white women. I think the best thing that Aerie is doing right now has to deal with their models. They have real models that have a specific part in the company, they are not just seen as models, they are people that have a purpose in the company. Aerie did not want to have people that were models to model their clothes, they wanted real people from the actual world to model their clothes such as Iskra who is a Body Positivity Activist (Elle, 2018), and Brenna Huckaby who is a Paralympic Medalist.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/22/aerie-is-a-standout-with-body-positive-ads-and-real-models.html
| https://www.teenvogue.com/story/aerie-stores-body-positivity
Avon. What are you (Avon) doing?
The ads above were released in January 2019 to promote ‘Naked Proof’, a cellulite reducing cream, by Avon. Once the ads were released, they received a ton of backlash from many people over Twitter. Many people were saying how every single person on the planet has cellulite and it is so ridiculous that companies are trying to “fix a problem” that is natural. Avon quickly responded and released an apology over twitter that said, “We realize that we missed the mark with this messaging. We have removed this messaging from all future marketing materials. We fully support our community in loving their bodies and feel confident in their own skin,” (Deabler, 2019). It is funny to me because if this company really supported women in all of their natural beauty, they would have never even THOUGHT of making an ad like this. The thing that I will never understand about companies is how they think of these kinds of ads to present products for their company. I would think that when they are developing clever ideas on how to promote a product, they would take a step back and look at the ad from an outsider perspective and reevaluate the situation. There is not a single person that has not thought about their body and how they want to change it. When younger girls are hitting puberty many of them start to wonder if their body is ‘normal’, if their body looks the ‘right’ way, and these thoughts originate because of certain ad campaigns that are put out there. Your body is your body, and there is no right or wrong way it should look, it is unique, and no one should tell you any different.
| http://madamemunki.com/body-positivity/shame-on-you-avon-for-body-shaming/
My Experience…
I was always a heavier kid in 4-9 grade, and younger kids are mean, so I was bullied a lot. I didn’t understand why I was being bullied because of my appearance, I thought there was something wrong with me. I was always trying to change my appearance to make myself look like the other kids. I thought if I did, I would be liked by the “popular” kids. When I got into 8th or 9th grade I started to play sports, I started going to the weight room, trying to change my body any way that I could. I also had really bad acne, and my “friends” would always comment on it, so I became self conscious. I would buy so many different acne creams and treatments, but none of them worked. When I look back on my younger years, It makes me sad to think that I was bullied for the stupidest reason and did so many things to change who I was just to “fit” in. I think when you grow up you start to realize that you can’t change some things about your appearance due to genetics, puberty, and hormones. No women should be degraded based on what they look like, and no person or advertisement should have the power to make us think that we are any less human because we don’t “fit” their criteria.
Let’s build something together.
Email: Stockm6663@my.uwstout.edu | Phone: 507.993.1514
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