Fairlife is a company that sells milk. Although children and youth are expected to be the two main groups of target customers, this particular advertisement seems to be targeting men instead. It features an ideal female figure that wears make-up, high heels and a short close-fitting dress that is broken off around her butt. The broken off part may imply to the audience that women are easy to approach and they do not need to be respected. Milk is dripping off on the woman’s body and some of the milk is on the ground, which may lead audience to think that the woman will soon be naked if they keep looking at the advertisement.
Although using milk to make the woman’s dress might emphasis on milk’s smoothness and the silky texture, it also has sexual implications as the slogan says “drink what she is wearing”. It is an imperative and directive sentence and it is capitalized and uses a bigger font than the line underneath it, “milk with 50% more protein & calcium”, which seems more important and relevant to the milk product itself, from my perspective. Furthermore, the woman featured in the advertisement stands on a weight scale in a sexy posture with her butt being up high. It stresses the importance for women to be in shape and lures men’s attention. In my opinion, this kind of advertisement should be deemed inappropriate for children and youth as they may be easily misled. Instead of associating milk consuming with a healthy living style, children and youth may associate milk consuming with sexism.
To subvert the original advertisement and highlight its absurdity, I added two males to both sides of the woman. Both of them are doing what the slogan tells them to do, which is “drink what she’s wearing”. One drinks the milk on the ground with a straw; another one drinks from the woman’s butt area where the dress breaks off. Both of them seem to enjoy the drinking process. The man’s straw points to the weight scale the woman stands on, which emphasizes that women are expected to be light-weighted and fit.
Unfortunately, there are still many women who are discriminated because of their body shapes in the modern society. For example, many Chinese employers request female applicants to send in photos before they may be interviewed. In Asian countries, it is very common for overweight women to encounter various difficulties in securing employments even if they meet the qualifications, which is extremely unfair. Men are not expected to be in perfect shape in general, but women may have to get slimmer and stay slim for various reasons. I think the social expectation of women’s body shape should be abolished. Even if it cannot be abolished in any time soon, children and youth’s understanding and perception should not be shaped by such advertisements from a young age. If children and youth only see women with the perfect body shape on various advertisements, they may take the perfect body shape as the standard. When they grow up and look for partners, they may be influenced by the perception and look down upon the women who do not possess the perfect body shape. Such unfair expectations should not be conveyed through advertisements that are designed for all age groups to see.