In today’s world, mass media, especially magazine and newspaper advertising, have a major impact on people’s daily lives. This paper serves to look into the effects of advertising on the beauty ideals women adopt. The enforcement of an ideal beauty standard as per the society is the most dangerous effect of mass media. In most cases, advertising in cosmetology harms women and young girls. This mode of advertising can harm a person’s physical and mental health, developing depression caused by reduced self-esteem. Besides, women’s understanding of beauty can be distorted by the mass media. Consumers see various celebrities as role models. This can lead the consumers to take measures that are drastic, for example, cosmetic surgery, to achieve that ideal. Victims of cosmetology, especially adolescents, can hardly distinguish between reality and fantasy.
Therefore, advertising can greatly manipulate people’s conscience, waste money, and force them to buy unwanted products. There are a few examples of attractive advertisements that don’t humiliate or control a woman’s thoughts, but they can be harmful nonetheless. Therefore, advertising creates unattainable standards of beauty, attracts awareness of women, and influences women’s choices. Advertising harms the lives of women, and this issue needs to be addressed.
Currently, marketing by the media affects clients in several aspects. For instance, advertising in cosmetology can harm your physical and mental health. Therefore, advertising can damage people’s self-esteem, which can lead to frustration and anxiety. Advertising usually creates unrealistic beauty images. Various women feel insecure concerning their appearance and bodies due to those images. It seems that the mass media has created a tendency to lose weight and is a good example of female emulation. Therefore, when young girls and women watch commercials in modern media with thin models, those who do not meet this ideal by their idols end up torturing themselves with a diet or even starving.
Additionally, this type of advertising supports low self-confidence and low self-esteem formation for a lot of women (Britton, 6). This can be explained by the consideration of celebrities and magazine models with the perfect body, which teenage girls aim to achieve. “About 50% of girls and students are dissatisfied with their bodies” (Grabe et al., 460). Thereby, women pay more attention to their appearance than to their profession or personality.
Cosmetology advertising is closely linked to anxiety. For example, displaying models’ pictures in ad products, including perfumes, cosmetics, shoes, and clothes, to young girls and women cause the development of feelings of body dissatisfaction and less attractiveness (Trampe et al., 1039). Therefore, advertising in cosmetology harms a woman’s self-image.
At the same time, advertising can lead to the development of anorexia nervosa and depression. When thin bodies are showcased on TV, women use those virtual pictures as an example of perfection. The main target of this type of advertising is girls who are young, who are inexperienced clients. This can be attributed to the fact that young people are only beginning to learn their roles and values and to develop their self-esteem.
All teens can be affected by the messages sent by the advertisements, and the product can deliver what they want. Therefore, cans of beer and cigarettes are a symbol of independence, and fashionable jeans and shoes symbolize class (Kilbourne, 129). Younger girls generally take it as a norm when looking at images of women in an unrealistic range as to what criteria they should meet when they mature.
Girls are very sensitive to pictures displayed in ads; therefore, they are most likely to suffer from eating disorders, self-esteem, and depression, according to a report by the American Psychological Association (Aneja, 25). Girls can suffer from many illnesses early on, including anorexia.
Anorexia nervosa is a potentially fatal and dangerous disease. One example is denying eating food to have the appropriate weight. People with anorexia are scared of adding on weight, which can lead to depression. “A quarter of people are dissatisfied with their bodies. In a recent study, almost half of girls think the pressure to look good is the worst part of women.” (Grabe et al., 460). Cosmetology ads provoke the appearance of diseases in young girls and women.
Additionally, cosmetology advertising can mislead women, give them a false image of cosmetology and force them to look perfect. Cosmetic surgery merchandise featured in cosmetic ads significantly increases the frequency of beauty surgery processes. The model’s flawless body, skin, and hair arouse the consumer’s desire for rapid wound repair. As a result, many women pay more attention to their appearance and therefore undergo cosmetic surgery to make them younger and sexually attractive (Kilbourne, 72).
Most importantly, these advertisements affect a woman’s perception of herself. Compared to an ad’s ideal image, the ad makes consumers find themselves quite unattractive. Therefore, advertising uses an example of a woman that is generally out of reach. Therefore, women would lack confidence or happiness in their appearance or shape as of the daily concepts of cosmetology established in cosmetology advertising, speculating other ideals of beauty in which they do not fit into.
The perfect size and shape cause women to feel abandoned and miserable. Additionally, older women face immense pressure of cosmetology advertising when they show a slim and young 20-year-old model. Sadly, women understand little that the ad model has to fake in photos to have a stereotypical aesthetic standard. Therefore, women ignore the natural landscape of their years and make unsuccessful attempts to look like the models in the advertisements (Aneja, 22). Advertising has increased consumer interest in cosmetology products, but it has reduced self-esteem and forced them to consider bad and dangerous behavior.
Cosmetology advertising manipulates people’s consciousness and forces people to buy unwanted products. Commercial advertising influences people’s tastes, choices, and identified requirements. The occurrence of cosmetology ads on television and in magazines shapes how individuals perceive a particular product. Also, advertising allows clients to recognize and recall the brand.
Consequently, although a woman does not require another sweater or lipstick, she shall buy it due to the image generated by the ad on her mind. Severally, commercial advertising seeks to influence a woman’s emotions rather than simply presenting a beneficial rational argument for a particular product. Under emotional leadership, women make purchases that are unnecessary more. In 2008 Beauty at All Costs determined that “The YWMCA reported that $ 7 billion is spent on cosmetics each year” (Britton, 17).
Most cosmetology ads use female bodies, sexual behavior, and attractive images to get male attention. Also, models and celebrities portrayed sexually in advertisements are seen as ideals that a younger girl cannot match. Therefore, such commercial advertising promotes the need to appear sexy for women. To achieve higher attractive scales, women misuse capital on products they don’t require. As a result, advertising influences the thinking and attitudes of women, achieving their main goal of making more money by selling certain products.
The above discussion shows that advertising has a detrimental effect on the physical and mental health of women, but counter-argument evidence can be established for the positive effects of advertising. For instance, some people believe that the economy is improved by advertising. Today, individuals can see advertisements in several places: on the Internet, in movies and magazines, and on the streets. Therefore, as the advertising industry becomes more successful, more money is brought to the country’s economy. Besides, advertising makes certain products cheaper and provides information and detailed ideas concerning them. In contrast, too many cosmetic ads in magazines and newspapers may be ultimately risky.
Advertising can be very harmful though it promotes image, worth, wealth, beauty, and a vision of love and sexuality. Therefore, cosmetology ads illustrate to individuals the way they ought to look and which clothes they ought to wear to be assimilated into contemporary society. In other instances, advertising can lead to addictive behaviors, causing many problems for consumers.
Also, people pay a lot of money for advertising and take health risks. At the same time, the revenues of advertising agencies have increased in recent years. Commercial advertising has funded several billion dollars in various industries worldwide.
Advertising promotes certain products to people, but most of them turn out hazardous. After seeing several ads, individuals turn out to demand much of what they don’t require or cannot manage to pay for (Britton, 9). Too many cosmetology ads can make people uncomfortable when they don’t have what they want. Advertising brings financial prosperity to the market, but it reflects negative impacts on viewers.
Simultaneously, there are ads depicting women average in size. For instance, about 10 years ago, the “Dove Real Beauty” campaign featured women of different sizes and races to showcase their beauty. This particular ad doesn’t have the manipulation or pressure that other ads normally have. The existences of digitally processed pictures of very slender models that can make women feel obese or unattractive are nil.
Therefore, the campaigns aim to give clients confidence. The ad features women of different ages, faces that are natural and of average, and they are happy with how they look. The fact that is refuted in this objection is that the campaign is more damaging to women and girls than traditional advertising. Women have been taught by adverts to judge themselves against the ideal illustrations they have recently seen, which then can cause the women to compare themselves to real images of women in this advertisement (Trampe et al., 1037). The campaign and its audience are still under threat in this regard. Therefore, the advertisement somehow affects a woman’s self-esteem and the force to compare with the body and appearance of the woman presented.
Therefore, advertising has created a fantasy and dreamy world where everyone is slim, beautiful, and perfect. Cosmetology advertisements pose many problems of self-esteem through the set standards by cosmetic advertising for women and young girls every other day.
A world with all people as perfect, beautiful, and thin is dreamlike and unreal and is what advertising creates. Commercials on beauty illustrate how people ought to appear and bring forth many troubles. Every other day, women and young girls have to face these troublesome ideals sold by cosmetic adverts. Advertising creates a holistic perspective and compels women to take actions that they can never do in other situations. To benefit from its products, companies cite advertisements that continue to have a detrimental effect on women’s self-esteem. Commercial advertising makes women feel unattractive, need to undergo cosmetic surgery, torment themselves with diets, and use a lot of capital on unwanted purchases. Besides, women and young girls are at risk of stress and depression because of their outlook. Other advertisements aim to reveal errors in beauty stereotypes, but they do not prohibit consumers from following the images they represent. Therefore, advertising in cosmetology negatively affects a woman’s self-esteem, health, body, and personality.
Works Cited
Aneja, Neeraj. “Ethics in Advertisement and impact on Women and Children.” IMPACT: International Journal of Research in Business Management (IMPACT: IJRBM) ISSN (E) (2014).
Britton, Ann Marie. “The beauty industry’s influence on women in society.” (2012).
Grabe, Shelly, L. Monique Ward, and Janet Shibley Hyde. “The role of the media in body image concerns among women: a meta-analysis of experimental and correlational studies.” Psychological bulletin 134.3 (2008): 460.
Kilbourne, Jean. Can’t buy my love: How advertising changes the way we think and feel. Simon and Schuster, 2012.
Trampe, Debra, Diederik A. Stapel, and Frans W. Siero. “Retracted: The self-activation effect of advertisements: Ads can affect whether and how consumers think about the self.” Journal of Consumer Research 37.6 (2011): 1030-1045.
