The Power Of Personal Image Essays - Body Shape, Human Appearance

The Power of Personal Image The Power of Personal Image A young woman stands in front of the mirror and is disgusted by the reflection that only she can see. Thunder thighs, flabby arms, and a pot belly obstruct her view of the beautiful, smart, and loving woman who stares back at her. This is exactly the type of person the advertisement agencies and the media prey upon, someone who is self-conscious and ashamed of her body, someone who is willing to go to any length or pay any price to have the "perfect" body. In her essay, "Narcissism as Liberation", Susan Douglas wrote about the power and influence that the advertisement industry has in America. The advertisement agencies and the media do not just prey upon self-hating persons, they help to create them. "When an image is presented..., the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of learnt assumptions. Assumptions concerning: Beauty, Truth, Status, Taste, etc. (Berger 53)." We learn from a very early age all about assumptions concerning body image. Television commercials and magazine advertisements teach us that we must look like model and surround ourselves with beautiful things in order to live a worth while life. We are constantly bombarded with images of"beauty" every time we turn on the television set or flip through the pages of magazines. Day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, our minds are being filled with images of "beautiful people" endorsing products that they claim will make us beautiful as well. We believe what these advertisements claim, and we buy the products. After using the product, we begin to compare ourselves to the so called "beautiful people" in the advertisement and soon realize that we do not measure up. We learn from a very early age that it seems our bodies are inferior to the rest of the world's. The advertisement industry and the media have the power to influence our opinion on what we see as being beautiful. Advertisements dictate what we must look like in order to be accepted in a world so obsessed with body image. They tell us that it is no longer sexy to have a normal body with a little fat on your bones. The hour glass figure is out of style, while the stick figure is in style. In order to be considered sexy and beautiful in today's world women must have the tanned body of a half starved adolescent girl. The advertisement industry and the media created this bizarre body image, and millions of American women buy into buy. A hand cream advertisement ran in Good Housekeeping, a magazine that is mostly read for middle aged housewives. The advertisement shows the right hand of a young women, probably in her twenty's, with a freshly done manicure and no wrinkles or veins in sight. This Neutrogena New Hands cream promises to "visibly reduce the sings of aging on your hands." This little wonder "reduces the look of age spots" and gives your hands "a more youthful tone and texture." I can see it now, all the housewives flipping through the pages of Good Housekeeping trying to find new recipes, then they come to this advertisement and compare the youthful hand on the page in the magazine. We all want to have the "perfect" body, but we do not want to have to go to the gym and work out for hours to get it. We want it right away with no work involved. We see an advertisement in our favorite magazine for a new product called Dior Svelte Prefect. This new product is "quick, powerful, and effective in controlling cellulite." It promises visible results in only one week. The advertisement shows one side of a women's firm buttock and toned thigh. This new product seems to be the answer to everyone's prayers, it's a miracle in a bottle. Magazine advertisements are not the only things that help create inferiority complexes in women, the magazines themselves do as well. Cosmopolitan, a popular women's magazine, plays a major role in making women feel insecure about their bodies. Supermodel, Claudia Schiffer, graced the cover of Cosmopolitan's July 1997 issue. She was photographed wearing a beautiful, yellow, long dress by Calvin Klein. Her flawless skin, toned arms, perky breast, and svelte body is thrown in the faces of American women and mock them. Cosmopolitan magazine puts this super model, and others like her, on the cover to show it's readers what they should look like but never will. Cosmopolitan does not just put Claudia Schiffer on the cover, they also