June 9, 2011

Ideal Beauty in Advertising-Realizing Myth from Reality

A friend of mine put an interesting clip of a video from Jean Kilbourne on her Facebook page. Kilbourne, for those of you not familiar with her work, is an internationally recognized author, speaker, and filmmaker who has been credited with the idea of educating about media literacy as a way to prevent problems associated with mass media advertising campaigns. As I watched the video, I was reminded of how advertising shapes our world, our values, our concept, our version of beauty, and indeed even our concept of normalcy. In the fast-paced world of today, we are bombarded with these images. And pretty pictures sell products.

I’ll admit it….I like looking at pretty pictures. In advertising, when you see a picture of a woman, she is the ideal beauty, flawless.  The problems arise when we compare ourselves and our lives to these pictures. Flawless, while it looks good in pictures, it does not exist in reality. Even supermodel Cindy Crawford has said she wished she looked like Cindy Crawford. If you’ve ever been to a photo shoot, you know it takes an army of people to get a good picture. It used to be done through airbrushing and cosmetics, but now I doubt that any photo that is used hasn’t been photo shopped. Photo shop now makes it possible to have ideal beauty, but it isn’t real.

It is important that we know, and that we teach our kids, that ads are meant to sell products. The image we see is the same as taking a ride on Space Mountain at Disneyland. All smoke and mirrors! Nice to enjoy, but isn’t a reality. Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hibyAJOSW8U&feature=related which was put together from Dove to help promote healthy self -image, especially to young girls who are more likely to feel insecurities on their looks.

We will be seeing more images of ideal beauty….enjoy it for what it is worth…..a pretty picture. Ideal beauty will change constantly, real beauty does not! Your self –worth comes from within, not from comparing yourself to a photo that was manufactured. As my friend Renee (who started modeling at 12 by the way) said “the embodied full woman self is much more dynamic, real and empowered than what the media would like us to buy into”.  Be the best you can be!  Real beauty triumphs over ideal beauty any day!

For the Jean Kilbourne clip see http://front.moveon.org/kate-winslet-i-dont-look-like-that-and-i-dont-desire-to-look-like-that/?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4de124d5c427b1e3,1

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