When we were assigned this blog, I was not sure what I was going to write about. Fortunately, when I came home from class last week, I had the new subscription of the Victoria's Secret catalog sitting on my desk. Of course, like all of their magazines, there was a half naked, 6 foot model on the front cover. The more I looked at the cover I knew something looked unnatural. Of course she was skinny, tall and made-up, but her body looked alien-like. Her body was so photoshopped and contorted that if she were to put her arms straight down, her fingertips wouldn't even fall past her belly button. In other words, they photoshopped her body so that she would look taller and thinner when in reality, that body type is not even humanly possible.
What's the problem with that? Victoria's Secret is the most popular underwear and bathing suit chain among girls of all ages. When they see models wearing the underwear or bathing suits that they want, they also want to look like what the models look like in them. Therefore, these girls will go to desperate, deadly, measures to be skinny because of these false advertisements.
In Bordo's article, "The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity," she talks about anorexia and the powerless image this body type gives off because it makes the female look almost literally invisible. She explains," The rules for this construction of femininity (and I speak here in a language both symbolic and literal) require that women learn to feed others, not the self, and to construe any desires for self nurturance and self feeding as greedy and excessive." So, not only does the girl on the cover of the Victoria's Secret magazine make readers want to be so skinny that it is deadly, it portrays an inaccurate sense of reality that degrades women on a much deeper level than just physical. Consequently, this can cause mental and physical harm to girls in general and especially to the girls who idealize the Victoria's Secret models.
Lastly, this harmful photoshop job gives men the wrong idea of what "sexy" is. As a result of this, men want their women to look like these models,and when they do not, the men are unsatisfied. This puts unnecessary pressure on women making them want to achieve a body that is unattainable in order the please males.
Maya-Your post really hit home for me, because I feel the same way about Victoria's Secret. I mean I shop there and love the products they sell, but if you really do analyze their ads, its so sad. When I took a graphics class for the first time, I finally learned just how easy it is to distort images-make a woman look tanner, slimmer in the legs and arms, rounded to emphasis the curves already there. It's almost like Victoria's Secret is almost selling more than their actual products (swimsuits, underwear, lingerie) and selling the model themselves-and selling the image of "reality" to the viewers. Viewers can look at the magazine, and not purchase anything, but still remember the models' bodies and begin to feel that the image is "normal and healthy". I also agree that it ties in with Bordos article about anorexia and how many viewers, unfortuneately could view the Victoria's Secret catalogue and develop an eating disorder in order to "fit the norm".
ReplyDeleteI agree with your post 100%. I also received the catalog recently too. As I was looking at the different swim suits, I started to remind myself that Memorial Day weekend is coming up in a few months and I have some work to do before I go to Hilton Head. I am an extremely confident girl, but I still told myself that I needed to strive to look like the models. Shortly after, I came back to reality and realized that I haven't grown since I was 12 years old and am only about five feet tall. I quickly remembered that i will never look like that, and I honestly wasn't upset. It then hit me that the models don't look perfect all the time either since their photos have been digitally enhanced. Photoshopped and airbrushed advertisements put a lot of pressure on average girls to try to look a certain way.
ReplyDeleteI think that since a lot of us will never look like the models in advertisements, we tend to compare ourselves to the women that we know. One night over break, I was surrounded by girls who were searching facebook and stumbled upon photos of girls they went to high school with. They then began commenting on the weight a lot of them have gained since college. I think that women tend to analyze the bodies of females that they know to try to compare themselves to the people that they see on a daily basis. We are subconsciously competing with each other to try to look the best, and fit in with society's standards of beauty.