original ad

Written Analysis:

Victoria Secret is a brand that exclusively sells undergarments for females.  In the original advertisement, Victoria Secret is promoting a new product line for their women’s undergarment.  The use of attractive looking and slim models is utilized to display the new line of undergarments.  However, the message delivered through this ad is very offensive to a lot viewers and consumers.

As a leading women’s lingerie brand in North America, this advertisement aims to endorse lingerie that are suitable for women with similar body figures to the models and establishes the standard for beauty.  The tagline “The Perfect Body” asserts that claim, Victoria Secret directly states that in order to have a perfect body, viewers must relate to the models used in the advertisement.  Nonetheless, the message being conducted is a negative, disappointing, and offensive to the audience whom do not have familiar bodies as the models used in the advertisements.

Overall, the ad draws upon the perceptions in term of what beauty is regarded in media and society.  Victoria Secret is selling that their ideal image of a girls “perfect body” is that you have to be tall and slim.  The use of the following words and images in this ad are geared towards young female as the target audience. The goal is to establish relationships with female consumers and to get them to think that the perfect body is related to the models that they have used.  At the same time to be able to maintain a model-like figure, it would lead to a very unhealthy lifestyle.

The following issues regarding this ad that I will be addressing with my jamming is that it creates a misconception between the body shapes and beauty of women.  At first glance, it seems like this ad representing its new line of lingerie.  However the ad delivers a controversy message promoting its new product for female consumers.  Furthermore, Victoria Secret is selling the idea that these models have the perfect body and fails to take into consideration of other body shapes and sizes.  Instead this advertisement targets the female audience by making them feel insecure about their body and propels towards the idea that their bodies may not fit into this constricted standard of beauty.

culture jam ad

Written Explanation:

For the jammed version of the ad, I changed several key words in the ad to reveal the true meaning.  I elected to substitute the word “perfect” with “one”, since it reflects the size for the models used in the ad.  In addition, I’ve decided to focus the slogan and blur out most of the models used in the ad to demonstrate that these models do not dictate what the standard of beauty is.  I wanted to match what the ad is trying to sell by initiating that the company only sells “one” size and type of lingerie for women.  This eliminates the message that the original ad sends as it removes the misleading stigma that may affect women with body of different shapes and sizes.

The goal of the jammed version of the original is to remove the misinterpretation of the message Victoria secret is sending the younger females who view this advertisement.  There should not be a particular standard on beauty and body sizes.  The exploitation of using female body as a tool to market a standard of beauty will encourage young women to live an unhealthy lifestyle in order to achieve this “look”.   It should be known that beauty should come in different forms, shapes, colour and sizes.

Unfortunately in this society, women are faced with a lot of pressure to look a certain way and Victoria Secret reinforces these ideology throughout media.  Media and society have placed too much importance on the outer physical beauty and they have become unaware of the damages it causes to one’s emotional well-being.  The so-called “perfect body” is a perfect representation of something that looks great on the outside, but is very toxic to the human mind.

Image Source

Victoria’s Secret slammed for “damaging” lingerie campaign … (n.d.). Retrieved October 20, 2016, from http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/victorias-secret-slammed-damaging-lingerie-4534255