Love your body and be "really" beautiful...the advertising way

I was sitting on the couch last night with my cat and a tub of mint-chocolate chip ice cream watching the Olympics when a commercial caught my eye. Victoria Secret’s new ‘Love Your Body’ campaign for their ‘Body’ line of bras.

                Of course this commercial was of stick-thin VS models parading around in their underwear lovin’ their bodies and bras, which had me stopping mid-spoon in mouth with my ice cream and rethink my life a little bit. I then, of course, did what any normal person does in this day and age. I googled the shit out of this.

                As it turns out, Victoria Secret does offer their product from a 32A right up to a 40DD, which incorporates a wide range of shapes of women; they just don’t advertise to them. Again, we have a huge company who is launching a “body love” campaign of sorts, yet keeping their advertising focused. I realize that Victoria Secret does have an established brand centred around this iconic “Victoria Secret model,” they’re not just going to change their whole image because people are calling for more diverse advertising.

                This is slightly reminiscent of Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign, which went down in a flaming pile of good intentions. Now the Real Beauty campaign still exists, it’s just been kept under the radar since its slow painful death by the hands of the media.

                For those who do not know, Dove’s Real Beauty campaign focused on advertising using “real” women, of all ages, sizes and skin colours. At first the world jumped on this bandwagon and Dove started to work towards empowering women to feel good about their “real beauty”. This didn’t last long, with a casting call for models for the Real Beauty campaign being leaked from Craigslist looking for “real women” who have “beautiful arms and legs and face” with “flawless skin, no tattoos or scars” and “well groomed and clean, nice bodies, naturally fit not too curvy not too athletic.” Needless to say “Real Beauty” was the look they were going for, only if you fit the criteria for really beautiful.

                Another huge issue that cropped up is that Dove’s parent company, Unilever, also owns Axe, whose marketing tactics are known to objectify women with racy ads featuring “hot” women that all the men want to be with. Well the media world blew up! How can you have one company pushing to work against these objectifying ads and another company sticking them right up in your face? Most of the Axe ads don’t even feature a woman’s face; just parts of her body contorted around a man, giving her the semblance of not even being a real person, just an object.

I'm sure they have a great personality....

                The result? If you’ve noticed, both Axe and Dove really have toned down their advertising. Where before you would see commercials and ads everywhere, they’re more and more sparse. Only now has Dove started to bring back the Real Beauty campaign and women’s empowerment endeavours. Trust me, I’m all for promoting healthy self-image and body love for every body type, but there is an issue when companies start to use this as a ploy to create sales. Much like Victoria Secret jumping on the body-love bandwagon to make some $$, Dove also made the mistake of using empowerment to empower sales.

                I think that at this point in time people are so tired of seeing all the things that they cannot be and cannot achieve as advertising. Speaking solely on Canadian stats, the national average size for a Canadian woman is a size 16, yet most clothes are advertised much smaller than that. Media and advertising is so detrimental to the mental health of women unless you fit societies standard for pretty and even then if you are thin you’ve got the other side of this argument shaming you for it.

                A study shows (note: I will add the study link as soon as I find it again), that as a society men like women around a size 12, women on average are around a size 16 and yet on average, most women want to be a size two! A size two! Unless you’re naturally very thin, most women are not built to be a size two; only a small part of the population is naturally that thin! We’ve crafted this perfect cyclone of body shame that doesn’t discriminate against what you look like and only exists to make everyone unhappy with themselves.

The new requirements to be healthy: skinny, pretty and model thin - Thank you modern media!

Something at the very core of my belief system is ending body shame and unreal body images in advertising/ introducing “real” looking body images into the advertising world. I’m not talking about phasing out thin models completely – thin body shapes to exist as well – but introducing other body images.

I think a huge reason that the advertising world is so one-dimensional is because of what we’re forced to believe. Take for example the South Beach Diet Bars commercial. This is a commercial in which a happy looking, thin, blonde woman walks confidently wherever she’s going and is greeted by the catcalls “You go healthy,” “hey there, healthy,” insinuating that she is by all means healthy enough to comment on.  The snack described as “the better snack choice whether you’re on a diet or not,” makes you “push hunger away and make better snack choices…” Ignoring the fact that your choice of snack food is influencing more than your hunger level, let’s focus on just the body image and what this means.

First off the woman is thin and by all societal definitions pretty. The slogan “Healthy Never Looked So Good.,” implies that that is what the definition of healthy is. Increasingly, that’s what you’re seeing now as the masses have demanded a change from beauty to healthy. Instead of bringing about a good amount of real change, they slapped a new word on the same picture; it’s comparable to wrapping a Christmas gift in different wrapping paper and saying “now its birthday gift!”

The reason I’m making such a big deal about this is because they [the media] barely ever portray other body types in the media as being healthy. It’s all size two, tiny, perky, societally beautiful women; and for some people that’s their healthy body type. For others it’s not. Look at the female weightlifters, those women are machines, they are athletes and for all intensive purposes they are healthy. You never, EVER see a female weightlifter being showcased in the kinds of commercials like the South Beach Diet even though I can guarantee protein and fibre play a large part in the diets of weightlifters.

Look at the media fuss over Olympic gold-medal swimmer, Liesel Jones from Australia. She’s training to compete in her, what, fourth Olympics? She’s healthy. She’s in fantastic shape, amazing shape. She’s a hotty to put it bluntly. Is the media splashing her on the front of magazines saying, women of the world; look at this picture of health! Nope! They’re pointing out the fact that she looks like she’s gotten fatter than the last time she competed in 2008.

WHAT! South Beach Diet can hire this actress to get hit on for being healthy in commercials, but this Olympic gold medalist gets splashed across the tabloids as fat and therefore unhealthy?! What is wrong with us?! The poor girl! I have to commend her for standing up to the media and for the support that flocked to her.  She deserves it.

The media defended its stance saying it was solely making an observation. My question to the media is, why don’t you make an observation on the unfair showcasing of the one-dimensional “healthy” body type and call us in the morning.

Please spread the word on this issue, Facebook, Tweet and Tumble this issue until it becomes talked about. #Endbodyshame

Commercial can be viewed at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmCDhQAtbbA - South Beach Diet Commercial