Alex Feder
Integrative Seminar, Eric Wilson
3/15/16
How far has society taken the statement Sex Sells, and how much has it affected us? As a society, we have taken simple means of marketing every day products and managed to change these common advertisements into playing a large part in twisting the way women are viewed. Advertisements have made women look like objects and seem nothing more than something to look at. This affects the confidence and body image of women of all ages everywhere and is becoming a quiet yet powerful epidemic. At the same time, feminists are gasping for air, tired of feeling like second class citizens, and desperately ready to break through the surface of equality and trying to make a change. By calling for this equality, modesty has and continues to slip through the cracks of what is important. Modesty has been believed to hold feminism back, and acts as another tool used to oppress women. But does modesty truly play a bigger and more important role in actually achieving the equality we so badly deserve and desire?
Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat are three of the many apps one can use to access social media. They have become household names, with accounts ranging from all ages. We have become a society craving the acceptance of our peers and even of people who we do not know. For some, getting a like on Facebook or Instagram has become a legitimate way of keeping up a relationship. While trying to get the love and approval of the people around us, the people from our past and of people who we hope to see in our futures, we lose a little bit of the appreciation that we should have for ourselves. Being so worried about captions, filters and other minute details on our pictures has transformed into being self conscious about other meaningless, irrelevant things. In these two very conflicting standards of embracing oneself and wanting to get other people to embrace us, we are getting lost in what is truly important, our insides.
We have become lost and confused in terms of what our values are. We want to embrace ourselves yet we need to feel embraced by others. In this confusion we have become easily influenced by what is right in front of us: what we see on TV, in magazines or on Instagram. This has subconsciously, and even consciously affected the way we want to be seen. As the Mediatrician, Michael Rich says in his article on Self esteem and body image, “As an example, look at teen magazines which contain articles such as ‘Thin Thighs in 30 Days’. These articles start with the implication that the reader’s thighs are not thin enough and then go onto offer the products that can help make them meet a perceived ideal. The ideal, whether it be thinner thighs or more kissable lips, is by design both objectifying and unattainable, so that readers will always feel inadequate and seek additional advice and products.” (1) Houston we have a problem. We are causing so much deeply rooted self consciousness, and it may not be able to be dug up.
Commonly used advertisements include scantily dressed women selling things that are completely unrelated to way the woman is dressed. One advertisement that has always made me skip by nervously because I felt like I was looking at something inappropriate is the Flowerbomb perfume advertisement by Viktor and Rolf. (2) A woman is spraying herself with the Flowerbomb perfume and the mist is coming out onto all over the woman’s head, which is supposed to look like the petals of a flower. Her naked body is supposed to represent the stem. Relating back to the ideas of Michael Rich, while this ad is not explicitly saying that if one is not skinny and perky like this women than you are not perfect, but it IS implying to women and girls that this is the ideal way to look- naked, perky and perfect. The lack of modesty which we have become accustomed has become detrimental in our own developments of our healthy self image. Not only is this ad negative to the healthy self image of women of all types who will be comparing themselves to this woman, but it also goes against everything that feminism and modesty stands for. Both looking to be empowered by more than our outsides. We should be feeling empowered by things that make us who we are, and not what we look like. We should be sharing our dreams instead of our legs, and our intelligence instead our our chests. By showing the woman in the advertisement dress like she is, one can not simply see past her as more than just a beautiful woman. Her intelligence, desires and passions are not showing, yet so many people will still want to be like her which is pretty frightening. Her body being the flower’s stem, makes me think that her body actually looks like a stem: long, thin and elegant. This woman being compared to a flower makes her seem like an object, a beautiful looking object that is only there to be looked at, smelled, desired and enjoyed.
As a society we have taken many steps to the left which have been for the better and which have had positive impacts on our environment. In recent times, equality has become very important and personal to each and every individual who desires it. Real equality is near and the American people are just itching for it to come faster. In this ongoing fight, we are being taught to embrace and love each other, and simultaneously we are learning to do the same for ourselves. Yet through the lack of modesty around us, in advertisements and social media, instead of becoming empowered by our actions, abilities and thoughts, we have become accustomed to feeling empowered by our bodies which is so much less than our true selves.
A lack of modesty has been associated with feminism, yet [amongst other things such as social media] all it has been doing is hurting the way people look at themselves and a lack of being able to embrace oneself, which is in truth, is the opposite of feminism. Through covering up more one can soon learn to embrace more than whats on the surface. How far are we willing to go to be looked at as more than an object and instead as someone who has deep, incredible thoughts, dreams and desires. Would we go as far as modesty?
1. Michael Rich MD MPH, “Ask the Mediatrician: How does social media affect body image?”
Boston Children’s Hospital’s Pediatric Health Blog, June 8, 2015, accessed March 17, 2016, http://thriving.childrenshospital.org/ask-mediatrician-social-media-affect-body-image/
2. Flowerbomb Perfume. Flowerbomb Perfume by Viktor & Rolf (EDP) 22 July 2005: n. pag. Print.
