Real vs. Fake

"What kind of representations does advertising produce? It creates a mythical, WASP-oriented world in which no one is ever ugly, overweight, poor, toiling, or physically or mentally disabled..."(Cortese, 52). Cortese continues to explain that advertisements grab our attention because of the visual images of men and women. The question is how do we construct an alternative to these mainstream images? 

It seems that it is always easier said than done. Knowing what is real vs. what is fake is a dangerous concept for advertisers. Their goal is to make money. If we think we have all these problems(because of all the "real" beautiful people we compare ourselves to in ads), advertisement use images to tell us how we can be fix them. If we realized the truth behind the images we see in advertisements, advertisers would be in trouble.


In today's world, we are surrounded by ads, forcing us to look at these visual images that don't seem to be too realistic. If it was mentioned at the end of each commercial advertisement or at the bottom of a visual image advertisement something like, "Hey, this image has been edited through our PhotoShop software, these images in no way reflect how this woman looks in person." They do this for diet pills, pregnancy...etc commercials. They warn the public so people know the risks and maybe by explaining the product, people can understand the "side effects". 

In Jean Kilbourne's, "The More You Subtract, The More You Add", she states on page 132, "Even more destructively, they get the message that this is possible, that, with enough effort and self-sacrifice, they can achieve this ideal. Thus many girls spend enormous amounts of time and energy attempting to achieve something that is not only trivial but also completely unattainable. The glossy images of flawlessly beautiful and extremely thin women that surround us would not have the impact they do if we did not live in a culture that encourages us to believe we can and should remake our bodies into perfect commodities." I put the last sentence in bold because it relates to my point that we need to understand that these visual images aren't real, and not all of us are aware of this.

Jay Smooth's,"A History Lesson For Chris Brown", isn't an alternative to mainstream images and actions but during our class discussion we spoke about advertisements that have to do with violence against women. I think that by Smooth being a man, completely not supporting Chris Brown and letting other men as well as the public know that what he did was not ok is a big deal. Violence in general shouldn't be taken so lightly and especially shouldn't be used to sell products. In the image below, the first thing I noticed was the woman, she looks weak and helpless, like she can't. She is pressed against the wall by P.Diddy with her eyes closed, leaning away from him. His eyes are open and his body surrounds her. "Unforgivable Woman"....wow. The message is loud and clear, not only by the visual image used for the advertisement but the name of the fragrance. How is this ok? I think Jay Smooth does a great job letting other men know that this isn't ok and it is not normal to use violence, especially as a marketing tool, like P.Diddy's "Unforgivable Woman" fragrance. 

This concept of understanding reality and accepting it is not an easy thing to do. If there were to be an alternative to these mainstream images, it would probably have to be ingrained in us at a very young age. At a young age, we are more innocent and are just learning about everything. If we are taught that advertisements have no correlation to reality, maybe it would result in less "side effects."

Sources: 

Anthony Cortese, "Constructed Bodies, Deconstructing Ads: Sexism in Advertisement," Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,1999

Jean Kilbourne, "The More You Subtract, The More You Add,"  DEADLY PERSUASION, The Free Press, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1999

Jay Smooth's, Ill Doctrine. An online video blog featuring Jay Smooth. http://www.illdoctrine.com

Both Images used are from Google.com