In today’s society, both women and men are being heavily influenced by what they see around them in the media. The ad I chose is from Protein World, who are trying to sell a weight loss product to the public. Protein world is portraying health and fitness incorrectly as they seem to say that to be healthy, you have to look a certain way. Which isn’t true because being healthy cannot be observed by just looking at someone. Being healthy is more of a mental state and that cannot be seen.
When I first saw this ad, I noticed that there were multiple problems with it. Not only does it sexualize and objectify women because the model in the advertisement is made to wear a small bikini, this ad also encourages body shaming and promotes an unrealistic body image. Protein World’s ad is trying to convey the message that if you buy their weight loss product and use it, you can too have this “perfect body” just like the model in the ad. It is selling the idea that the model, who is placed on the ad has the “perfect body” which causes both male and female to have unreasonable expectations of the female body. Young women would feel like they have to look like the model in order to be beautiful and wanted and young men would assume that all women are flawless and looks like the model. This “perfect body” that we are being shown is unattainable to most of us because we are all different. The ad doesn’t take into consideration of all the other body types out there instead it casts all other body types as imperfect. This ad forces the ideas like “I’m not perfect”, “I’m not sexy enough” and “I’m not good enough” into people’s heads, which can cause eating disorders, anxiety and depression. These ideas are not healthy for anyone especially for young girls.
Jammed Ad
In my jammed ad, I mostly just changed the words, so viewers can see what the original ad truly meant. I wanted the jammed ad to be blunt and have no hidden messages. Changing the big question “Are you beach body ready?” to “Are you sexy like me?” because even as I find the original question problematic, the ad is really asking the reader if they look like the model, it wants you to compare yourself to the model. The ad uses the model to showcase what the “perfect body” is and what is a “beach body”. It makes the viewer compare themselves to the model and feel inferior. Promoting an unrealistic body image and bringing ones’ self esteem down. Underneath I also added the underlying message from the question in the original ad and that was only people who looked like the model belong at the beach because other body shape should not appear at a public place in a bikini. This shows how the ad is body shaming as it only accepts one type of body. Underneath the big text, I erased the writing and basically summed up how they are recommending to lose weight and that would be starving yourself. I kept it simple with two words to emphasize the method they are using as it is very damaging to a person. I added a measuring tape around the models waist to further emphasize the unhealthy beauty standards and body shaming. Their idea of being beautiful and sexy is to be tall and skinny with a very slim waist but that is unattainable for most women and still we commonly see on the media. I changed the brand name and slogan to Size 0 World and pure discrimination. I replaced the word protein with size 0 because that’s what they believe the world should be filled with. The ideal world for them and what the media constantly shows is that everyone should be a size 0. They put the idea in your head that if you are anything but a size 0, you aren’t fit and you don’t belong. That’s why the new slogan pure discrimination is very fitting because they discriminate against all other sizes. Through this I hope women see that not everyone can be a size 0 and realize you may never be a size 0 because it just isn’t possible and in doing so, may cause more harm to your body. By altering the ad, I aimed to make it clear that the body they promote is unrealistic and all they are doing is body shaming. It’s sad that in today’s society, everyone is subjected to feeling like they need to look a certain way and companies like Protein World reinforce this ideology.