"Thinspiration"?

In Jean Kilbourne’s “Killing Me Softly”, she focuses a great part of her presentation on advertisements’ specific influence on women. Despite the fact that “everyone in America feels personally exempt from the influence of advertisements” and people tend to underestimate how much the message sent out by advertisements can shape their own lives. But when it comes down to examining statistics like the fact that one in every five women suffer from an eating disorder, I think it is inevitable that correlations will be drawn between such sobering pieces of evidence and the images being portrayed in the media.

For example, the Ralph Lauren ad I came across demonstrates advertisements’ capability of not only selling a certain product but selling certain societal values as well. Ads illustrate that as Kilbourne says, “what’s most important about women is how we look” which is very clear in this ad. The very first thing most people would notice about this ad is how thin the model is, rather than the clothes she’s wearing—the very thing she is trying to sell. Her waist is ridiculously thin as is the rest of her body to the point where her head actually looks unnaturally large on top of such an impossibly skinny body. Even though people seeing this ad are probably aware on some level that this type of body is simply too thin, it also stands out and may even help advertise in the product in the long run as we read about in Chapter 11 of “Mass Communication: Living In A Media World” in that “aggressive tastelessness” often sells because it inspires a more powerful reaction among an audience.

Girls who have been exposed their entire lives to ads featuring models similar to the one in this ad have basically been embedded with the idea that beauty should be equated with thinness. Our images of beauty are thus completely distorted after continually seeing these ads everywhere. An ad like this can cause the absolute worst kind of degradation to women’s self-esteem because as it was later revealed, the model was actually Photoshopped in this ad so women are essentially taught not to try to live up to nearly impossible ideal, but one that is actually unachievable. In response to widespread criticism of the model’s unhealthy appearing thinness, Ralph Lauren was forced to issue a statement admitting that “After further investigation, we have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman's body.” And despite reassurance from the company that they would be more careful about such mistakes with future ads, I think that it is inevitable that the trend of extreme thinness will persist in fashion ads and continue the vicious cycle of reinforcing unhealthy body image.

An alternative I found to the Ralph Lauren ad and its use of thin models to promote both products and the concept of beauty is the various ads that have been recently released by Dove. Known as the “Campaign for Real Beauty”, Dove is seeking to not only portray extraordinarily beautiful and skinny women as the ideal type of person in their ads and instead using more ordinary women with various body shapes and physical appearances that are more representative of actual women audience members exposed to this ad are likely to known in real life. From the Dove Website, their ads, which features not only thin, Caucasian women, who typically are seen more frequently in media, but women of different color. This kind of advertising strategy helps break down a commonly illustrated concept in advertisements according to Kilbourne—that women of color should be silenced. This idea is one of the most degrading aspects of women’s advertisements, in my opinion and Dove’s dedication to using diverse models can possibly repeal some of the negative effects of less open-minded advertising.

I think that the approach Dove is taking with their advertising can produce some sort of damage control to end the longstanding destruction of women’s self-esteem perpetuated by the common advertisement strategy of objectifying women’s unrealistically thin bodies. On Dove’s website, the company makes a commitment to “realistically portray women by accurately depicting their natural shape, size, skin color, and age.” With slogans like “Love the skin you’re in”, Dove is both selling their product but also managing to present a positive message about tolerance and body acceptance. Advertisements play such an influential role in spreading ideas of what “normalcy” should look like and yet most of the time, what we see in ads is nothing like what we usually see in real life, causing an unbridgeable gap between what we are and what we think we should be. Perhaps if companies like Ralph Lauren chose not to manipulate their advertisements to present unattainable standards of beauty and use shock and awe methods to sell their product, the dehumanizing influence that advertisements have on women that Kilbourne discusses can gradually decrease and instead employ the realistic and diversity-friendly approach of companies like Dove.

Works Cited
1. Kilbourne, Jean. "Killing Us Softly 3." 1999.
2. Dove Website

Photo Sources
1. Ralph Lauren Ad
2. Dove Ad