Blog #3

The purpose of advertisement can be seen as cut and dry: To convince people to purchase products. However, according to LinkedIn, advertising can be broken down into 12 major advantages for business, seen here. Second on this list is expansion of the market, simply meaning a wider reach for the business. In the modern age, social media has the widest reach as nearly all people have at least one form of a social media account. Moving away from traditional advertisements on television or billboards, social media is able to reach consumers any time of day. Of these consumers, women are more likely to be targeted simply because of the new age of self care being an industry-- An industry which for whatever reason seems to not cater to men as much. This isn’t to say that men aren’t advertised to, just that in 1 hour of watching cable television in my personal experience ⅘ of the ads were geared towards women.

No matter how strong an individual thinks their willpower is, they have at one point bought something because a certain celebrity uses it. The beauty industry for example has existed long before cable television was created. Makeup has always been something a majority of women are drawn to. However with advertisement being so easily accessible through technology and social media, the makeup industry is thriving. According to the reading titled The More You Subtract, The More You Add, teenage girls alone spend 4 billion dollars a year on cosmetics. This statistic excludes adult women which should be noted. Teenage girls are a vulnerable class of consumers.

High School is a difficult time for both boys and girls as this is a particularly confusing time in terms of identity. For girls especially, wanting to fit in can be dangerous. As stated in the reading, “Mass media is a form of national peer pressure”. Teenage girls find the time during puberty to be especially challenging as they are beginning to transition into womanhood. Images of the ideal women are strongly enforced by media and advertisement; thinness is key. Thin white women take centerfold in fashion magazines. And these magazines have an effect on young girls. Research by Brigham and Women’s Health has found a link between time spent reading magazines and the likelihood of a girl to diet . One survey even mentioned how 63% of high school girls are on a diet. (The More You Subtract, The More You Add). But what drives this need to diet and be conformist?

Women are independent thinkers but when they are told that men will find them more attractive if they look a certain way, this can mess with their self image. In today’s advertisements women can be just the right amount of powerful in terms of their career but they’ll still need a husband at the end of the day. Modern women have careers of their own now, and their own money. However, they will still inevitably fall trap to marketing that makes them buy products to make them more beautiful. As Body Messages and Body Meanings states, “women are buying their gender”.

In addition to the way they view themselves, the way men view women is crucial in how women perceive beauty in themselves and other women. For a woman of color, beauty is set up in favor of white women. In Bell Hook’s segment The Oppositional Gaze she mentions a character called Sapphire who is described as “-someone to be tricked, someone the white and black audience could hate”. Having vaguely heard of the term "sapphire" before, she is a caricature within the virgin/ whore dichotomy that specifically demonizes black women for their sexuality. This dichotomy is always used to categorize women, black or otherwise. The following ad from American Apparel shows how the two categories clashing can be unsettling.  In this ad for their back to school sale, the upskirt shot associated with voyeurism is a stark contrast between the pleated skirt usually worn by school aged girls. Drawing back to skewed body image as an effect of advertisement, this girl is clearly small. Smallness being a metaphor for her fragility. Small women need protecting (much like children) and adding this layer of sexuality, this image taps into the disturbing, albeit historical need to have women be smaller, therefore weaker than men.

Writing about women’s media through a male perspective has been an interesting lens. Clothing brand RipNDip caters towards skater culture, based originally in Florida and now California. The brand’s site does not have a women's/ men's section. Their clothing sometimes features pastel colors which might be deemed feminine, and thus this approach blurs the lines of gender. Sites like Vice and Genius also fit into this millennial/ Gen Z idea of gender blur too. However there is a racial component at play; for the most part, the owners of these brands are white and serve a form of sterilized diversity that will be accepted as actual diversity. Brands like Urban Outfitters take bits and pieces of “urban” culture and make it more palatable to white audiences. One influencer I follow on social media, @snitchery is a perfect example of branding racial neutrality. She is a mixed race (black and white) fashion and beauty YouTuber who has done many brand deals as she represents the blurred lines brands want to have when it comes to race. Overall, the media I consume is not blatantly problematic, but there is definitely room for improvement.