Culture Jam Assignment
Original Ad
The original ad is from MAC’s strength campaign, which features Serbian bodybuilder Jelena Abbou as the main focus. MAC is notoriously known for being a make-up company, one that has garnered a lot of popularity and attention over the year, so it’s no surprise that their campaign is about promoting make-up. The tagline of the ad is “strike a powerful pose, stand out and redefine the notion of beauty in a colour collection too irresistible to ignore,” but the attention of the ad is not actually on the make-up, it’s more on Jelena herself, who is showcasing her muscles and wearing what looks like an unbearably tight dress.
The purpose of this ad is to demonstrate that wearing MAC’s makeup will give you strength or make you look as strong as Jelena, which is not the case at all. Not only does the ad promote false narratives, but they are also untruthful about the depiction of their model and the way her body has been altered through digital means, which can result in unrealistic body expectations for young girls, leading them to develop a toxic mentality about how they should appear. Jelena’s muscles are not because of her wearing MAC make-up at all, they are a result of her intensive training as a bodybuilder and all of the work that she has put into her physical training and diets. Her waist is exceptionally small in the ad as well, probably due to her having to wear a corset in the photoshoot and digital altering that happens after in production as well. These changes and alterations do not promote a truthful depiction of women and it certainly cannot be credited to wearing MAC make-up; instead, these alterations promote unrealistic images for young girls and women to look up to, especially those who are in MAC’s enormous audience.
Jammed Ad
The jammed version of this ad seeks to bring awareness of the alterations and changes that Jelena’s body had to endure through digital means, such as photoshop and physical means, such as wearing a corset. The jammed version of this ad also brings to attention the falseness of this ad’s tagline and how wearing MAC’s make-up will not give you muscles such as Jelena’s or an unrealistic waistline.
To do this, I decided to add text to the ad to draw attention to certain aspects of it, most predominantly, Jelena’s waist. In an interview with shape, Jelena mentions that she had to wear a corset underneath her dress, which was uncomfortable. The corset would definitely add to the illusion of having an extremely small waist. Furthermore, the ad was faced with backlash, in which many people claimed that the ad was photoshopped and unnatural, thus not being a true celebration of women and their different body shapes. In the same interview, Jelena admitted that the ad was in fact photoshopped and claims “Because it’s an ad, it’s supposed to look perfect!” which further contributes to the false narratives of ads and how they uphold unrealistic expectations. The notion of ads and particularly, women in ads, having to be perfect is toxic because it contributes to the mentality that women must look perfect at all times, that they must have a small waist, because how else would they be able to promote the company’s products?
In addition to the added text of the jammed ad, I also decided to take the liberty of crossing “MAC” out of “MAC strength” because MAC truly does not have anything to do with the strength that is depicted in this ad. MAC did not give Jelena her physique nor did wearing their make-up contribute to her talents as a bodybuilder, so instead, i decided to add “a bodybuilder’s” in place of MAC, so that the ad would read “a bodybuilder’s strength.” I think it’s important to note that while MAC is a make-up brand and promotes make-up, the ad does not actually use make-up as its forefront, but rather, Jelena and her body.
Sources:
Andersen, Charlotte Hilton. “Who Is the Female Bodybuilder in the MAC Ads?”
Shape, www.shape.com/celebrities/interviews/
who-female-bodybuilder-mac-ads.
Sauers, Jenna. “MAC Put A Female Bodybuilder In A Makeup Ad And It’s Beautiful.”
Jezebel, jezebel.com/
mac-put-a-female-bodybuilder-in-a-makeup-ad-and-its-bea-5973202.