Women's self-esteem is targeted by Advertisers
The advertising world has targeted women by taking advantage of our lack of self-esteem in order to get us buy their products. The bottom line for most ads is, "you are not good enough.....and you can only fix yourself if you buy our product." We have allowed advertisers to target us only because we believe that there is something wrong with us that needs to be fixed. We must stop buying into their attempts to make us feel inferior.
A favorite area of attack by advertisers is our bodies. Due to the negative beliefs about our bodies that we have accepted from society and through the heavy barrage of " you're not good enough" advertising aimed at women, it is no wonder that most of the time we do not love our bodies. How many of us can really say that we love our legs? we have enough trouble to accept our noses and hips. I wonder at what age we learn to equate our self-worth with our bodies. Babies never feel that they are not good enough because of the size of their hips!
As vulnerable teenage girls, we are bombarded with advertising that tries to bring down our self-esteem and to get us to feel that we need this certain product in order to be more attractive or accepted by others. That is why teenage girls in our society, as a group, have the lowest self -esteem. This diminished sense of self-esteem then continues on into our adult years, in many cases. The cosmetic companies love to target teenage girls with their advertising because these companies know that if you take people with self worth and make them addicts, then you have a good chance of creating customers for life. In this connection I recollect a film "Golpo Holeo Satti" by Late Tapan Sinha, a famous film director of India, where a Senior Executive insists his fellow artists to re-draw a design showing semi nude image of women for publicity of ties for men, where ties has no relation to women. Very recently I have viewed an AD where a famous Bollywood actress played model for world renowned software company. How can we allow them to do this to our children?
I heard a three-year-old girl say the other day, "I don't want to wear this dress; it makes me look fat". Ten-year- girls are dieting. We have anorexia and bulimia running rampant in our schools. What are we doing to our children? If you are parent, do show your children how the advertisements are exploiting them. Dissect ads together: Let your children show you what is manipulative in the ads. Teach them early, and give them the power to live their lives through intelligent choices, to act rather than react.
Have you noticed how many women magazines run the latest diets AND recipes for fattening desserts in the same issue? What kind of messages are they giving us? Fatten up, slim down. No wonder so many women are into yo-yo dieting. There is no way we can live up to every advertisement and media message that comes along. Next time you can see an ad in a magazine or on TV, look at it critically. What is the real message that advertisers are giving you? Are they trying to make you feel inferior
or not good enough? Are they showing you an impossible dream to live up to? Beginning to lough at the adds you see no longer gives them power over you. Exploitative ads are another way of controlling and dominating women. We want to do everything we can too take our power back.
I would like to see a campaign started where every time we see an ad in a magazine or TV commercial that really insults the intelligence of women, instead of looking at ourselves and saying,"If only my hips looked like hers," or whatever, that we sit down and send a postcard to the company and say: "How dare you try to exploit me. I will never buy your product again!" If we women would send
postcards to the negative, manipulative advertisers and only buy products from the companies that support women in their advertising, then the ads will begin to change.
We buy so many things just because we feel,"Oh, if I only had that, I'd be okay." Yet our thoughts come back again to the old belief: "We are not good enough." We need to know, really know that we women are good enough EXACTLY the way we are.
Get together with a group of fiends and go through any magazine. Examine the articles and the ADs. Become aware of what you are looking at and what the subliminal messages are. We women need to open our eyes. We need to open our ears. What is really being shown? what is really being said? How are advertisers trying to control us? Let's really give this issue some thought!
http://www.eslarrenterprise.co.in/blog
A favorite area of attack by advertisers is our bodies. Due to the negative beliefs about our bodies that we have accepted from society and through the heavy barrage of " you're not good enough" advertising aimed at women, it is no wonder that most of the time we do not love our bodies. How many of us can really say that we love our legs? we have enough trouble to accept our noses and hips. I wonder at what age we learn to equate our self-worth with our bodies. Babies never feel that they are not good enough because of the size of their hips!
As vulnerable teenage girls, we are bombarded with advertising that tries to bring down our self-esteem and to get us to feel that we need this certain product in order to be more attractive or accepted by others. That is why teenage girls in our society, as a group, have the lowest self -esteem. This diminished sense of self-esteem then continues on into our adult years, in many cases. The cosmetic companies love to target teenage girls with their advertising because these companies know that if you take people with self worth and make them addicts, then you have a good chance of creating customers for life. In this connection I recollect a film "Golpo Holeo Satti" by Late Tapan Sinha, a famous film director of India, where a Senior Executive insists his fellow artists to re-draw a design showing semi nude image of women for publicity of ties for men, where ties has no relation to women. Very recently I have viewed an AD where a famous Bollywood actress played model for world renowned software company. How can we allow them to do this to our children?
I heard a three-year-old girl say the other day, "I don't want to wear this dress; it makes me look fat". Ten-year- girls are dieting. We have anorexia and bulimia running rampant in our schools. What are we doing to our children? If you are parent, do show your children how the advertisements are exploiting them. Dissect ads together: Let your children show you what is manipulative in the ads. Teach them early, and give them the power to live their lives through intelligent choices, to act rather than react.
Have you noticed how many women magazines run the latest diets AND recipes for fattening desserts in the same issue? What kind of messages are they giving us? Fatten up, slim down. No wonder so many women are into yo-yo dieting. There is no way we can live up to every advertisement and media message that comes along. Next time you can see an ad in a magazine or on TV, look at it critically. What is the real message that advertisers are giving you? Are they trying to make you feel inferior
or not good enough? Are they showing you an impossible dream to live up to? Beginning to lough at the adds you see no longer gives them power over you. Exploitative ads are another way of controlling and dominating women. We want to do everything we can too take our power back.
I would like to see a campaign started where every time we see an ad in a magazine or TV commercial that really insults the intelligence of women, instead of looking at ourselves and saying,"If only my hips looked like hers," or whatever, that we sit down and send a postcard to the company and say: "How dare you try to exploit me. I will never buy your product again!" If we women would send
postcards to the negative, manipulative advertisers and only buy products from the companies that support women in their advertising, then the ads will begin to change.
We buy so many things just because we feel,"Oh, if I only had that, I'd be okay." Yet our thoughts come back again to the old belief: "We are not good enough." We need to know, really know that we women are good enough EXACTLY the way we are.
Get together with a group of fiends and go through any magazine. Examine the articles and the ADs. Become aware of what you are looking at and what the subliminal messages are. We women need to open our eyes. We need to open our ears. What is really being shown? what is really being said? How are advertisers trying to control us? Let's really give this issue some thought!
http://www.eslarrenterprise.co.in/blog