Looking upon what my fellow classmates had to say about ads they looked at my first thought was "My, my, lots of makeup/hygiene product ads were looked at." With my last blog having been about a hygiene product ad as well, I started thinking about how aware everyone seems to be about the whole body image thing, and using these company made products to look like the "ideal male", or the "ideal female". While it's no secret that we as human beings can be quite vain at heart, and constantly desire means to attract a significant other, you'd think with all of this self awareness about how shallow and unfair these ideals of beauty forced upon us by these companies can be, they would not be making as much money off of these products as they do, and their commercials would not be as successful.
Adam Tusim's blog talked about the popular Old spice ad from 3 years ago where the male model essentially targets women and tells them that their man is not good enough. Subversively, it tells male viewers that they simply aren't attractive enough. Adam talks about how it would make an "average joe" want to use the product just to have something in common with the model, or as he puts it : "the male model 'identity' represents what the average joe would want to feel like after using the product."
There was a similar effect in the ad I looked at in my previous blog, which was about the average looking guy at a bar attracting some female attention and then drawing them in with slick dance moves. Both mine and Adam's ads basically said how their product would allow average looking men to attract above average looking females. This doesn't look good for the male demographic as it portrays anyone who commonly appears below average as desperate to the point of spending money that could be used on more essential things just to make them attractive. I feel these representations are inaccurate. Think of Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler. He's a pretty freaky looking fellow, yet he's attracted a whole host of women. What most average joes may lack in appearance, they more than make up for it with personality.
Madison Bygrave looked at a revlon ad and talked about the ad's view on how women can't be fabulous unless they wear revlon made mascara. In the same way Old spice and Axe pressured men into using their product to appear "ideal", revlon does the same thing, following the unwritten social laws of society and telling women they aren't beautiful, or as Madison so nicely phrased: "We are not considered beautiful women, unless we apply makeup and look appealing to the opposite sex."
Now being a man, I can't really speak from experience to how effective the ad is on the female demographic. One thing I can say from experience however, and this ties in with the ad I looked at, and the one Adam looked at is how shallow ads like the revlon ad makes out our age demographic as a whole. I can say for a fact that this is quite inaccurate because there's the whole concept of inner beauty or the "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" line that is so famous today. The fact that many of the blog posts I read ripped on makeup/hygiene ads and their narrow views of beauty tells me I'm right. At the same time however, people still buy these products. We are vain to varying degrees, but most are definitely not as shallow as these ads would make us out to be.
The last blog I want to bring up is Christine Merril's blog. She looked at another revlon ad featuring Jessica Alba. She essentially described how the ad looked quite comical due to how unrealistic it looked. She brought up photoshop and how it was used to improve the image. Another excellent point she makes is: "girls will often form an ideology of expectation to look the same way as girls are that are advertised in the pictures." This brings up the the whole issue with images of women that are photoshopped to look real but in reality the proportions are unreal, and yet girls seeing these strive to look the same way.
Overall it looks as though ads like the aforementioned just generally portray young adults as shallow and egotistical, concerned only about their looks. While looking good can be an important factor in many ways and is a good thing to strive for, the extent to which these ads go too far and make people think worse of themselves if they don't look good when compared to the model examples used in said ads. As for why companies have made so much money off of their products, it's because there are so many people in the world and as such there will always be a large number of people who get pulled in either by personal desire, mindless consumerism or because the ads actually managed to cause them insecurities. My honest opinion, if you want to look good, look in the mirror and instead of seeing everything you don't like, see the things you do like, and remember that true beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Adam's blog: http://at12nk.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/what-the-hail/
Madison's blog: http://mb12qe.wordpress.com/2013/11/07/what-the-hail/
Christine's blog: http://christinemerrill2.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/what-in-the-hail/
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