Beauty advertising is a monster living among humans. For decades now, beauty products companies have made fortunes out of mainstream advertising. It is a pivot to their marketing campaigns as it makes their products more visible to the target market. They send messages through the media to the target audience to woo their long-term patronage. The consumers have maintained their loyalty to the brands that appeal to them for a straightforward reason; the products make them achieve the “perfect body.” At least that’s how the advertising messages recommend.
However, humanity has turned a blind eye on the ramification of beauty advertising. Various credible researches done previously, have pointed out that beauty advertising is silently killing the youth. Children are often vulnerable to negative advertising. In their age, they have not developed the appropriate analytical skills to enable them to overcome negative advertising. Beauty advertising sets the threshold for beauty and body image. This fact perhaps emphasizes n the ability of the advertising industry to turn mundane objects into products of desire.
Advertising messages have inadvertently controlled the way people think and imagine. According to the University of Chicago Press Journal, after being exposed to the advertising messages of beauty enhancements, consumers were doomed to feel about themselves more than they previously saw those products out of their advertisements. This observation is alarming in every respect (Benowitz-Fredericks et al. 2012). Expressed, upon being exposed to these messages, the audience was bound to think of themselves negatively in a way that only the products could make them achieve a perfect body.
This very wrong in every sense. Adolescents are the most adversely affected by this reckless advertising. Other renowned researches have credibly established that beauty advertising has profound effects on teenagers more so adolescents. Slater et al. (2012) corroborate that beauty advertising reduced their self-assurance. Such messages set unrealistic standards as well as expectations on them through the application of idealized models. Such an observation indicates that without proper guidance, teens are likely to sink into depression as a result of these messages. Regardless of whether these teenagers have a negative perspective about their bodies, these messages have been found to aggravate the situation.
Beauty is exhibited in a way that triggers negative thinking in the target audience, mostly teenagers, in instances when they do not achieve the perfect body (Benowitz-Fredericks et al. 2012). They present images of models that are difficult to replicate. In cases where the consumer fails to attain such images, they become depressed and see themselves as inappropriate. Important to note is the fact that many of these models are below the appropriate net body weight; thus, trying to emulate them will result in severe health complications. In other words, women are encouraged to lead unhealthy lives to achieve the portrayed image.
Using these observations, it is understandable why parents are mostly urged to guide their young ones on how they consumer advertising messages. However, that alone is not enough remedy. It is worrying how these companies have been given the leeway to lie to the consumers are continue to make billions of dollars while they take a massive toll on the consumers. With this in mind, as a responsible parent, it is good to keep your children off the media for the meantime.
References
- Benowitz-Fredericks, C. A., Garcia, K., Massey, M., Vasagar, B., & Borzekowski, D. L. (2012). Body image, eating disorders, and the relationship to adolescent media use. Pediatric Clinics of North America, 59(3), 693.
- Slater, A., Tiggemann, M., Hawkins, K., & Werchon, D. (2012). Just one click: A content analysis of advertisements on teen web sites. Journal of Adolescent Health, 50(4), 339-345.
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