Painter

Ruby Rivera

WGSS ***

Response * (Ads)

In an ideal world ads would represent realistic women of all shapes and skin colors Women would be encouraged to have a strong sense of self and confidence in their own physical appearance, no matter what that may be for each individual. All women would be considered beautiful just the way they are. That is why I believe that today’s current ads reflect only society’s ideal image of beauty. A society’s unwritten norm for beauty is defined as being a skinny, light skinned, physically attractive women. When I look around at all sorts of advertisement on social media, billboards, commercials, busses, poster they are all saying to us women that we have to look like that image to be defined as beautiful ourselves. All the women on ads today are nothing but an altered image. Not even the original model looks like the women on the final ad. So why are we forced to hold yourself to that unrealistic image of beauty that society has placed on all us women? That unrealistic image has been drilled into our mind since we were young girls. And if we don't look like the women in the ads then we are not considered beautiful in society’s standard, and then we fall into believing it ourselves. Growing up we are exposed to ads only representing unrealistic ideals of a beautiful women. Subconsciously we compare our own physical image to ads when we look in the mirror daily. We question why we don’t fit society’s ideal image of beauty and that only affects us by hurting our self esteem, our ability to see ourselve as beautiful for whom we are.

Overall this damages women’s image of self, physical health, emotional health, and mental health. Ads only pressure women to fit to society’s image of an ideal women. That way they can sell to us a small opportunity to become those women in the ads. Different items are marketed to women from diets, diet pills, exercise equipment, gym memberships, clothing, etc. They encourage us to become the thin, and we fall into society’s trap. Which leads to eating disorders just to try to obtain that physical look. That only affects women negatively because then women feel less, inferior to society’s ideal image of women. This causes issues with self consciousness. Making me feel wrong to be in the body that I am in. I believe society only hurts woman's ability to see themselves as beautiful. Society’s ideal image of a women is unrealistic and unattainable. Only a small portion of women in the world look like that. I believe we are in a time that women should be seen for who they are, what they have achieved and not be defined by society’s idea of women. Society only uses ads to hurt women’s image of self. Ads need to reflect realistic modern women, which are of all shapes and skin colors. We should be all be seen as beautiful for whom we are, and not treated as an object that society can define.