In White Hands

There are many ways in which ads and images affect the way we perceive the human body. Whether it pertains to color, social class, race, age, gender, sexuality...the list goes on and on. The 21st century is cluttered with imagery which hinders the consumer more than it aids them. Most of the things we see and watch are meant to make us feel. The media’s main goal is to attract new consumers who are gonna tune in to watch or buy their products. We the consumer have the future of every company in our hands, we are the demand. Yet the media seems to not be interested in all of us. Due to the history of the United States most of the power fell and has remained within the white male heterosexual hands, and for many companies these are the hands that matter.

Advertising and the media often plays with what our society places values on. Advertisements that sell products which our society needs often choose the path of positive reinforcement and humor because it only needs to sway us slightly. Most ads play our sense of morality, we see that doing the right thing earns you a reward, this reward is often the item being sold. Take this Liberty Mutual advertisement for example, we see there is a chain of events of good deeds which the majority of the public would agree with, and in the end of the commercial “doing the right thing” is also buying Liberty Mutual insurance. Showing how all these people felt good after doing the right thing makes you feel, like you’ll feel good for getting their insurance. It is a direct psychological manipulation this ad is trying to achieve. It is trying to shape our sense of morality, and even though it might be for the better, it is still a way which advertising controls the masses. Now, what happens when the item being sold, unlike insurance,  is not viewed as an necessity in our society like insurance? How do you make people spend money on things they might not think they want? The answer is simple. You convince the public they need what they want.

Tom Ford supplying the Heterosexual Male Gaze

They prey on our primal instincts like sex, but just heterosexual sex or girl on girl action that which is pleasing to the male gaze. There are countless ads which feature women dressed  provocatively in instances where there really is no need for it. For the male and female viewer these images propose a reward beyond the item being sold. More often than not ads are made for the male gaze, men are seen as people who don’t shop, to convert them into consumers companies try to grab their attention. Like we have seen throughout history women were taught to be the main consumers, so the tough customers to get were men. Take this Tom Ford ad for example which is trying to sell cologne. The underlying product it is selling, no matter what the men look like, is the promise of women. Not just women, but sexually active women willing to do anything for the Tom Ford man. Ads like these imply that by simply buying their product you will have more sex with hot skinny disposable women. The ad doesn’t care about it’s viewer’s relationship status or sexual orientation, it seeks the heterosexual wealthy male and it simply states: buy this, get sex. The advertisement fails to put the woman’s representation into consideration. The female parts in this ad are dismembered and simply made sex objects. It gives its heterosexual male audience a sense of entitlement and makes women feel like sex is their only purpose and if they are not attractive and willing to put out, men who smell good wont look their way. The sex sells idea often tends to be heteronormative and misogynistic at its core, it does not provide a mutual gain between the objectified and the observer instead it focuses on the need of the consumer.

Advertising seeks to not only change our minds but also our bodies. The United States, besides being a heteronormative white supremacist imperialist capitalist patriarchy, is seen as increasingly overweight. Our country is often mocked about the portions of our food, and the size of

How Americans are Portrayed

our people, therefore it is not unlikely for companies to pick up on this national insecurity and target it. Although all genders are capable of being obese the cis-woman is targeted the most. Women have more body fat than men and also have been victims to society’s by belief that their image is the most important thing in the world. Boys are taught the same, but they are also told that their ideas and strengths are to be more valued than their appearance, while girls are taught that their main focus should be on being beautiful. This makes women, especially at a young age the most vulnerable to advertising. Jean Kilbourne discusses in Beauty and The Beast of Advertising that  

[Adolescents] are in the process of learning their values and roles and developing their self-concepts. Most teenagers are sensitive to peer pressure and find it difficult to resist or even question the dominant cultural messages perpetuated and reinforced by the media. Mass communication has made possible a kind of nationally distributed peer pressure that erodes private and individual values and standards (122).

The worst thing to be when you are a child is to be different, and companies know this. Countless of kids are bullied about their weight and mass media which focuses on the idea of the slender curated self tends to be appealing to teenagers. If a product promises weight loss, reduced acne and popularity, teens are most likely to buy it to fit in. The people we see on magazines, shows, music video and other forms of media are seen as normal. We fail to take into account the rigorous dietary plans most of hollywood is on, the cosmetic surgery which can change any insecurity one might have and the amount of photoshopping and touching up these people a subject to. We consume these images without realizing how harmful they can truly be.

There are several detrimental body images presented in our everyday life. Photoshop, makeup and body placement send harmful messages that the people consume. These images become the beauty standard and because they are so altered, they are impossible to achieve. A result of this altered reality is that people, like The Kardashians, become obsessed with their self image and undergo  many cosmetic procedures to obtain this warped version of beauty. The white and rich females are the main consumers of these images because they are the targeted audience. What we then see is the middle class and the working class trying to imitate the rich. This hierarchical trickle of "glam" then lands on the lowest of the low, young poor people. Young people being at the bottom tend to imitate older all of the above, but those who are not rich and cannot afford cosmetic surgery suffer and turn to self loathing, eating disorders, self mutilation and multiple forms or depression. Kylie Jenner for example has influenced beauty trends which have hindered those who attempt them, most of them being young people. Celebrities have a huge influence on young people. There are celebrities who instead of using their influence to make the masses feel comfortable with their bodies the media and celebrities are the most responsible for making people feel like they are not good enough, and to be good enough they must undergo serious change to become perfect. In Conclusion: Body Massages and Body Meanings Gunther Wykes discusses the way in which young people perceive celebrities “Some one in five American young girls even, articulated a desire to emulate the skinny stars of the mass media world, accepting them as role models not because they were fit but because they were perceived as attractive.” (217). The media, because it is littered with white, straight, skinny, attractive or photoshopped imagery, is teaching kids that their self-worth should rely on how much they look like the people on TV. What happens when the people on tv look nothing like you, and you could never look like them?

Because obviously men must smell a certain way!

The media often dictates gender roles. An example of that is the Old Spice commercial which feature a presumably heterosexual male who is the epitome of masculinity. The old spice man is tall, dark and handsome. He can conquer beast and women alike, and he is in total control. This excludes any deviation from traditional male gender roles.These images distort our self worth as well as our body image. What happens to the woman who might be of a bigger built and of darker complexion? What if she also chooses that she wants to smell like Old Spice? What is she? Since these traits are mandated to be manly she then also becomes masculine due to her appearance. The idea of darkness being associated with masculinity is not a new one and is sure to play on a racist level.

I mean...

Today we see subtle messages which are sometimes miscalculations, but could signify an underlying racist message. This Dove ad features a double meaning, underneath the before feature there stands a black woman, next to her there stands a lighter perhaps tan person, and underneath the after which is the “visibly more beautiful skin” on the RIGHT side stand a white woman. Sure they could argue that the placement of the women don’t matter because they all product of the after, but this precise placing of skin tones reads off as intentional. 

A group that is often interpreted as having high self-esteem and therefore invulnerable to the media are black women. This video, discusses how eating disorders are viewed as a white woman thing and how many black women suffer from overeating. Because of the notion of the curvy black woman loving her curves those who actually do have eating disorders and want to change are never asked about their body image because it is assumed they are happy being curvy. A part of this also stems from the realization that black in the media isn’t deemed beautiful and if you can’t be white you can at least be skinny and those who can’t are in the lowest place in the beauty hierarchy.

Our society cares not for the representation of the people who have been victimized throughout U.S history. It also fails to put into consideration the way this little representation can hinder one’s self image. In a study conducted by the Media Diversity & Social Change Initiative of the University of Southern California, the researchers analyzed the amount of racial representation in major films over 5 years, “Across 100 top-grossing films of 2012, only 10.8% of speaking characters are Black, 4.2% are Hispanic, 5% are Asian, and 3.6% are from other (or mixed race) ethnicities. Just over three-quarters of all speaking characters are White (76.3%).” (Initiative 1).This underrepresentation is a example of how the media supports white supremacy. Since most of the media is targeted toward white young men and women they are often the ones seen leading the narrative. This racist system provides stereotypical roles for PoC or none at all cause a decrease in PoC youth. Since they are not being represented they begin to worship white standards of beauty and dislike their own features.

In the Latino community African or Indigenous traits are also deemed unattractive, the more white passing you are the better. Pelo Malo a film by Francisco Munyoz talks about this topic as well as other aspect of body image. Narrative like this depict how detrimental to one’s self image terms like good hair and bad hair are and how it affect the community. Forms of media like these that are tackling issues are moving forward to bring change. It shows those who suffer from these racist standards of beauty that there are others out there, and that there is a solution. By opening up a discussion we can change our media for the better. Another way of solving this issue is with more representation of different body types, genders, sexualities, disabilities, languages and races. With more and more representation we can wipe away the ignorance which clouds our media. The way we can do this is by hiring more than just white men to represent the masses.

Work Cited:

Bordo, Hunger as Ideology

Gunther Wykes, Conclusion: Body Messages and Body Meanings

Kilbourne Jean, Beauty and The Beast of Advertising

Race/ Ethnicity in 500 Popular Films Research

(Sorry for the different fonts every time I would change a font it would change the placement of the paragraphs for some odd reason)