Advertising is the communication relayed from companies to persuade an audience to purchase their products or services (http://mashable.com/category/advertising/). Yet, since the orientation of advertising is commercials, an advertising agency or company often leads audience perspective to merely sell their products or services. It becomes harmful when the value or perspective of the ads is ingrained in our mind. One thing that is considered pretty harmful is almost every ads cultivate some values in women unconsciously which have big effects in women’s life. Ads value result in two main problems in women: self confidence and self esteem.
Every time we watch television, see billboards on the streets, or see the cover of products, we may see many of advertisements using a figure of women. Those women seem to have common appearances such as white skin, pretty smile, black and long hair, slim body, etc. The point is they’re looked beautiful and there is no doubt about that. The question is ‘what is the meaning of beautiful?’, ‘who says that they are beautiful?’, ’Are they really beautiful?’. For a long time, our society believe in anything that they have seen uncritically. They take it for granted. As a result, the figure of beautiful woman has been cultivated in our mind, especially in woman. Many of women feel that they are not as beautiful or slim as in what they believe in or as in the ads said. They are trying too hard to imitate the woman figure in the ads. Women tend to feel not perfect unless they have white skin, black and long hair, red lips, rosy cheek, etc. So they buy the products offered by the ads in order to imitate the models. Even, until this modern era most women didn’t realize that they are just target market of certain product. All they know is they are neither beautiful nor slim and they feel uncomfortable to be like that. Then they are trapped in the ideas of figure of beautiful women in ads. In short, advertising typically shows kind of perfect figure about women which leads them to have low self-confidence.
Every problem about low self-confidence may lead to low self-esteem in women. As we know that every single women want to feel beauty and flawless. They will do anything to have a perfect look. They are too care about everyone opinions which is impossible to make all of them love us because people opinion about beauty and perfection are each different. Yet, the society had constructed common opinion about woman figure because their interaction with many advertisement in whole of their life's. That imaginary figure cause lots of women lose their self-esteem every time they failed to imitate. First, they tend to underestimate themselves and think that they are too fat, too thin, too short, too tall, too pale, too ugly, too weird, etc. Second, women often feel insecure about their appearance. This also may lead women to have hard times even just to make a friend with someone. One article from New York Times said “...40 percent of bullies are women... The women appear to prefer their own kind, choosing other women as targets more than 70 percent of the time” (Mickey Meese, Backlash: Women Bullying Women at Work, 2009). Such studies about bullying cause many women to be more insecure. They are too afraid if their appearance is not as expected to be in the group. Third, it is not rare for now to find women who feel stress or despair and then they have eating disorder like bulimia or in extreme case, anorexia. As cited from Perilaku Makan Menyimpang Pada Remaja di Jakarta by Trulyana and Ahmad Syafiq, the quantitative research shows that using Sarafino questionnaire, there are 37.3% adolescents who have a tendency toward eating disorders. Using the Stice and Telch questionnaire, there are 11.6% adolescents that have a tendency towards anorexia nervosa, and 27.0% adolescents that have a tendency towards bulimia nervosa. (http://jurnalkesmas.ui.ac.id/index.php/kesmas/article/view/245). Women do that because they think that it is a must to have an excessive weight loss until they satisfy to have slim body like a model.
The point is the ideal figure of women that has been constructed in society is actually comes from many advertising which contain certain values. Too many ads that cultivate values about ideal figure of women which shame women into buying things and make them try to imitate the imaginary woman in ads. Ads put this kind of value explicitly and massively through the audio visual media until society completely believe and adore that ideal figure. Women would do almost anything to copy their imaginary idols although that might harm themselves.
In short, women have less self-confidence and low self-esteem that might lead into greater problems in their lives.
by Sofi Isnaeni Haqi
References :
(http://mashable.com/category/advertising/
New York Times: Meese, Mickey. 2009. Backlash: Women Bullying Women at Work
http://jurnalkesmas.ui.ac.id/index.php/kesmas/article/view/245
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