The Perfect Woman
There are so many commercials out there that make you question yourself or convince
you to look more ‘typical’ in the eyes of society. We are programmed to think a certain standard
must be pursued or it is the only one that is acceptable. I know when I see products on TV they
are usually movie stars; familiar faces of beautiful people. We have seen them numerous times
and this is who many of us want to become. The lure of these commercials or magazine ads pulls
on the standard society has set, giving us the feel that we need to look or dress a certain way.
I looked around my high school and found this abuse of advertising and social norms
completely disgusting. There I found bulimic and anorexic girls, thinking what they were doing
to themselves was beautiful. To look back at the way they used to appear, and to see them so
brainwashed that they needed to totally reform their body, it almost made you sick. I have been
victim of feeling like I wasn’t good enough, like I didn’t wear the right clothes or I wasn’t thin
enough. There is so much pressure in society for a girl today,* and it may drive her to go to
horrible extremes or completely change her personality just to fit in. Sexism and thin, lean
models in advertising cause young girls to strive for an unrealistic and unhealthy body, causing
them to have a harmful lifestyle such as bulimia or the need for bigger boobs.
Barbie’s body is so unrealistic that is she were human she would fall right over. Her
physical body is sending the wrong message to children that large breasts, blonde hair, and a
very skinny body is what you should look like. Prager says, “If it’s true that a woman didn’t
design Barbie, you don’t know how much saner that makes me feel” (172). What woman would
design Barbie with a body that few women have? It was definitely not a woman, but a man by
the name of Jack Ryan. Who knows why he created Barbie the way he did, but we have been
stuck in this obsession with her and that figure ever since she was made. What happened to the
days when “…American dolls were flatfooted and breastless…”? (173). Why weren’t we happy
with dolls that were closer to portraying normal people? Maybe we should tweek the features of
Barbie to make her just a little more accurate. Barbie’s are not the only marketing tool this
industry had used to train our minds to what a woman should look like.
Sexism is everywhere. Women are constantly exploited by the media through magazines,
television, or maybe even billboards. We see the same commercials everyday or maybe pass by
the same billboards showing sexism, and we may not even realize or it may never cross our
minds. There are various hidden agendas in the media and most of the time we pass by the
underlying meaning. As Sadiq says: Who can forget the gorgeous blonde standing next to the
green Geo Storm, proudly exclaiming, “A man likes a woman who knows how to drive a stick!”
(Sadiq 161)? These types of ads are depicted everywhere and most people just graze over them
because they are so used to seeing them they don’t even realize how unfair it is. I, myself, have
fallen victim, by the exploitation of women, and not noticing these very sexist interpretations of
simple things: the line that woman says standing next to that Geo Storm. We glance right over
these messages, but they are forever embedded in the back of our minds. Our society has become
so insensitive to women and the gender gap, that we are blinded by what we want and do not
recognize the impact it has on others. “Advertisers need to take responsibility for their actions
and end this type of exploitation” (Sadiq 162). There needs to be a movement to let girls know
that they can be who they are, no matter what they look like, because women are too precious to
feel like they cannot be themselves.
I hate the beer commercial where the two girls are fighting about beer-about whether it is
smooth or light-and then it almost turns into pornography for the guys watching it. They fall into
a pond of water and start ripping each others clothes off and the scene becomes slower and more
sexual. That is so degrading to women and this is just one of many commercials out there that
exploits women. Sadiq says:
Watching a football game, you can usually find and attractive young lady being
swept off her feet by a less than attractive man after he opens the beer of his
choice. Or, if you are lucky, you can witness several young women materializing
on a desert island with the male drinker after, of course, he opens his can of beer.
(161)
He goes on to state, “These advertisements present women as a goal, a trophy if you will, that
can only be attained with the proper beverage. These women seldom have anything to say
besides “Yes,” making them seem like unintelligent sex objects. (161) Beer commercials are not
the only advertisements that are portraying women in the standard they have been stuck in for
decades.
Take a look around. America is a very obese country, but have we stopped to look who is
really overweight. I bet if you surveyed young girls in junior high and high school most would be
very skinny and think nothing of it. Abercrombie and Hollister- huge manufactures of teen
clothing- make their sizes smaller and smaller. Every time I go in there their tops look like they
could fit an infant, and the sizes that used to fit me-don’t. One weekend I went home and went
shopping with my mom and sister. Of course, Abercrombie kids is the new place for young girls
and boys and my sister, who is twelve, wanted to go in. Those clothes are almost fourty dollars a
shirt and sixty dollars for a pair of jeans! My sister Nicole and I take a walk around the store and
find some really cute shirts, which once again, look like they could fit on my one arm there so
small. She maybe weighs eighty pounds, is a very in shape soccer player, and has almost no fat
on her. She tried on all mediums in the fitting room, and they all looked so small. When I
suggested she get a large, she yelled at me because she didn’t want the large- just for the fact is
was a LARGE! I could not believe my adorable, skinny little sister was worried about the size
she was wearing. When I walk in that store all I see is pretty people, so thin there clothes are
almost falling off them. This was so upsetting that companies like this are so influential and are
brainwashing these kids into thinking they need to wear the smallest size and be bone thin. Is this
what we want for the next generations-to feel they need to be a certain size and look a certain
way?
My best friend suffered from bulimia and I never want to see that happen to anyone else I
love. She hid this disease from me for so long and we could never truly tell if she ever stopped.
She would barely eat, usually only cereal, water, or tuna fish, and then work out like crazy. She
was always bigger as a little kid and often ridiculed by other people. All of her friends were
pretty skinny and she hated being the odd one out. Her friend showed her how to do it and she
did it because emotionally it also made her feel better. She is healthy now but it is so scary to
think of what people can do to themselves when they are not happy with their body. As she
looked around I know she saw so many beautiful, skinny girls, because I also saw them. I never
took myself to that limit and I don’t think I ever could. She still works out all the time and is
really never satisfied. I know advertising has had an affect maybe not on her but the other
women she sees who directly affect the way she feels about her body.
I have seen many examples right in front of my eyes, from beer commercials to my sister
feeling she was too fat, of women either portrayed as stupid or maybe too fat. “There are
millions of women who are subliminally sure that a thirty-nine-inch bust and a twenty-three-inch
waist are the epitome of lovability” (Prager 172). This should definitely not be in the back of
women’s minds; that what they look like is what makes them lovable. This is exactly-as a
society- what we need to steer away from. Women don’t give themselves enough credit for the
beauty that’s one the inside. Many times they look perfectly fine on the outside but society and
advertising is telling and showing them differently. Sexism in advertising needs to be stopped
because too many young girls are hurting themselves at the cost of it. Bulimia and Anorexia are
now common names which are taken way too lightly, and people rarely heard of ten years ago. I
have seen both of these diseases destroy young women and there needs to be an end to it. We
need to make women feel beautiful no matter what body type they have and stop advertising
them in demeaning ways.
Works Cited
Prager, Emily. “Our Barbies, Ourselves.” The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers 6th ed.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003. 171-173.
Sadiq, Shafeeq. “Racism and Sexism in Advertising.” The Compact Reader: Short Essays by
Method and Theme. 7th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2003. 160-162.