Original:
For my advertisement, I chose to examine this 2011 Aminostar ad to address the many issues that supplements’ advertising still does to this day. Firstly, for consumers, it is misleading to project this imagery of this muscular huge man as if that is the direct result of the supplements arranged before him. This propagating of idealized body image and setting masculine standards has many potential negative mental health issues such as body dysmorphia.
As an active young male, I know that there is so much more to building muscle than just taking protein powders or these supplements. On the contrary, supplements are necessary for only specific situations and are useless if one maintains a healthy balanced diet. It takes hours of consistent training, a plan, and proper dieting before one may begin to see results, and certainly nothing so impressive. There are no shortcuts and dietary supplements are not the sole solution.
As well, the use of this attractive woman supporting this man is both objectifying and furthering this display of what I would consider being toxic masculinity. This suggests that the way to “get” attractive women is to be large, muscular and take Aminostars’ supplements is obviously untrue. Furthermore, only using a “strong” man and not a woman as well exacerbates the idea that women cannot or should not also be lifting weights and building muscle.
Finally, the idea of healthism is the concept that your health is entirely your own responsibility. This ignores external factors such as environment or health disorders that may make staying in shape much harder for some people. Mainstream advertising of supplements only displays extremely fit individuals and fails to recognize the more general populace.
Working out and weightlifting goals should be about personal health and wellbeing. Instead, this ad pushes unrealistic body standards and the objectification of women to push products to unwary consumers.
Jamming:
For the jamming of the advertisement, I chose to address some of the issues that I previously touched on. In hopes of subverting the thematic issues of overly fit individuals, I chose to remove both from the ad. I tangled with the idea of leaving the man in and reducing his size to more “normal” proportions but felt that the body-image issue wouldn’t be properly addressed. The focus on the ad should not be on supplements for body image goals but instead the health and wellness of the general population and individuals. Removing the people entirely subverts the toxic masculinity and unhealthy idealization of body image.
As the main advertisement goal is still to push muscle gain supplements, I added images of a dumbbell, planner agenda, a Fitbit and an array of vegetables. The dumbbell is to symbolize the lifting of weights and resistance training. The planner symbolizes a schedule and daily organization for the conscious goal of improving one’s health. The vegetables represent a healthy balanced diet gaining all-natural vitamins and minerals – micronutrients to support a healthy metabolism. The fit bit has been used to help people with their everyday activities, such as step-count, calorie burn, etc. With all these additions, I was trying to push the advertising to acknowledge that supplements should only be additions to a healthy foundation and are not themselves healthy. The added slogan, albeit cheesy, further emphasizes this ideology. Health should not be about body image or muscles but instead an everyday conscious objective for people to pursue.