Whether it is at a local coffee shop
or on Pandora, we as Americans are constantly surrounded by advertisements. For
some reason, just this past weekend I began to notice the abundance of ads in
my community and began to think about the reasoning behind these
advertisements.
On Friday I was at a coffee shop in
downtown Evanston with my sister. As I walked into the bathroom, I saw a
strange ad (pictured below). Pictured is a tan women in a bikini. The
advertisement reads, "If you got it, FLAUNT IT! If you don't, visit Bally
Total Fitness." In this sentence, the word flaunt really stood out to me.
The definition of flaunt is, "to display something ostentatiously,
especially in order to provoke envy or admiration or to show defiance".
The ad is telling all the women that go into the bathroom that they should
conspicuously show themselves off instead of being modest. It is also suggesting that they shouldn't be shy about it. The ad wants the women to confront the world with their looks.
For the women that don't "got it", they
can't flaunt it. Instead, according to this ad, they have to go get it. I think
that this shows a prominent American value. We try to normalize everyone, and
make everyone the same as us. Where did this coveted idea/self image sprout from?
The
American definition of beauty is also displayed by the way that we recognize and appraise
women with the perfect beach body and super tan skin. I found it interesting
that in the picture they completely cut off the woman's head. It's almost as if
the personality, intelligence and thoughts of this women don't matter one bit.
Only her looks. All of this makes me wonder how the advertisements differ in
the men's room.
What do
y'all think about the role that advertisements play in our society? How do the these things that we see every day change what we think and want for ourselves?
3 comments:
I think this is an extremely interesting advertisement and a good topic! The most interesting thing to me was that the ad makes people think that if they don't have the body of the woman pictured, they should change because you only look good when you look like her. Even women who are in shape would feel intimidated by a photo like this and couldn't help but feel insecure.
This ad is quite interesting to me as well- I particularly like your comment about her head being cut out of the picture, as if only her body is what matters. I completely agree with you, these ads are degrading to women and are basically telling them they have to look like this to be able to "flaunt" their body, and ultimately be considered beautiful. The word "flaunt" stood out to me as well- it makes me sad that these companies are telling women that they have to flaunt what they have, all modesty aside, and if they don't have it than they have to achieve it.
Madster,
Nice job blogging overall this term. You've covered a wide breadth of topics.
This post is strong in the way you critically examine your world and in the way you analyze the language of the ad. Apparently the only reason to join a gym is to flaunt yourself when you've "got it."
I only wish you tied this nice observation to an ongoing conversation, one about body image, fitness, your own obesity post? This would have made the analysis even deeper, anchoring it to another text.
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