“Good Body” in Advertisement

As is the case with many things in modern society, the issue of beauty has become a hot topic among the people, especially among the youth. It is not unusual to see many companies use advertisement to promote a kind of concept “beauty” and they have set a high standard for what can be considered a “good body.” As like Protein World use a sexy young model to promote the weight loss collection. Pozner affirms the flattering message encouraging women to spend to correct perceived body flaws is contradicted by insisting that women should be comfortable in their natural body sizes. It seems that people themselves always tend to embrace a more variety of good body types. Therefore, because people have different preferences over a “good body” and the model adopted incurred more attention on complaints than on the effectiveness of the product; Protein World should change the advertisement’s model.For instance, Dove’s “Real Beauty” can use healthy and attractive women since it is almost impossible for shoppers to ignore the images and messages of such campaigns. Furthermore, portraying women in figures that are realistic traditionally can be essential in attracting customers since people are able to relate with the adverts in the normal working encounters.

“Good body” is the word needing further explanation. The use of the phrase “good body” creates the impression that there are body shapes that are ideal, satisfactory, and therefore desirable. This phrasing elicited most of the received complaints as viewers of the advert felt demeaned if they did not satisfy the criteria the portrayed ideal body shape. This type of advertisement usually uses attractive images to be realistic, which may interact with audiences’ mental activities. Especially for women watching the unattainable thin body in the advertisement, it can affect their self-esteem, eating patterns and emotional stability. As like Julie M. Sparhawk stated that “in a case-control experiment study, found that viewing adverts of attractive women affected the self-esteem of people who perceived themselves as physically less attractive. In addition, the viewing of images presented by the media generally affected the study population’s perception of its physical. The results of the independent sample t-tests were satisfactory and statistically significant.

If we take a closer look at the evolvement of people’s notion of beauty, we can have interesting observations that in turn give us good reasons to convince readers of the importance of having a balanced view of beauty’s value. Today, we are acquainted with pressure to conform and adopt an artificially created standard of beauty and the idolization of the perfect female body.When we enjoy the artworks of the body, we can clearly find out that over quite a long period in history, people tend to consider a plump body more favorable. Nowadays, large bosom, rounded shoulders, and smooth necks are still preferred by a significant section of the population. Therefore, no general principles for “good body” exist. Everybody is different and we observe varying body shapes in the collective reality of daily living. Pozner implies that the media’s portrayal of the ideal body shape is not a universally accepted concept or principle. There exist differences in opinions regarding what qualifies as the perfect, ideal or beautiful body.

One  assumption underlying the analysis of the advertisement, maybe “beach body” can be referred to “good body”, if we turn to interpreting the image and words of the campaign directly. Beach body always casts some imagination on beach related settings, like sunshine, sand, sea waves, perfectly tanned skin, curved figure, which in some people’s eyes, constitute the defining elements of a “good body”.

A “beach body” also refers to some beach related activities, where people usually take them as kind of workouts, and some golden leisure time. Getting close to the beach may activate your inner desire for joining others having some type of good figure, which is classified as “good” mainly owing to the “herd mentality”: when most of the others own a specific feature, the seemly good option should be in accordance with them. So that somehow comes to a self-convincing logic, beach activity can help people obtain the same type of figure curves as the model, or rather, people have such type of body gather around the beach. Then, newcomers will feel stressed out if they fail to have that type of figure, and thus they will turn to devoting time, money, and efforts to acquire it. Finally, “beach body” represents a specific type of figure accepted as the “good body,” but except within this group, opinions vary from one to another.

Pozner behavior has broken away from traditional style, and displayed women with realistic figures and faces, more like normal people we may encounter every day. Her thoughts on inclusive ideas of female beauty put more emphasis on telling ordinary girls and women to feel good about their bodies. Moreover, those fantasy babes like the one shown in this advertisement, are not necessarily the persons on the billboards or ads shot. Not the mention that all people do not like such type of figure, and have their own definitions of beauty. In effect, those photos are not always the right choice in the advertisement, because those impossible-to-reach figures may mislead people not to believe the product can help them obtain such type of figure, and thus cause some negative effects on the product sales. What is worse, it may cause some controversial debates on the rightness of the figure put here. In a word, Pozner thought roughly was consistent with the open mind on beauty discussed here.

The company’s current policy is belligerent and Protein World proceeded to run the campaign despite being the ASA intervening regarding the inappropriateness and insensitivity of the company’s advert. The company said the advertisement served only to ascertain people’s perception of what the ideal body shapes should be and never made any recommendations regarding what is the ideal body figure, shape, or size.People who have taken the opportunity of demeaning the body of “Dove” girls should not glorify obesity, as this is detrimental to the attitudes of millions of females in the United States. In order to respond to these counter arguments, I would like to point out the setbacks within the premise. An advertisement is designed for all the target consumer groups that are comprised of people with various backgrounds in life, education, religion, and ideologies. When the company offers some evidence coming from their sample survey, it has a weak base on which their claims are made. Firstly, the size of the sample is limited. Owing to the constraints on time or funding, sample study always lacks an objectively sufficient size of the sample to study. For example, sample sizes should be inclusive of different ages, genders and social backgrounds. Secondly, the sample selected may fail to be randomized enough so that obvious issues like selection bias happen. The selection bias may lead to the selected sample fail to offer powerful evidence on the researched question. Here, the question is “is the figure desired and should you have it?” It is a serious problem when the company cannot offer more details along with their claims on their survey, and their claims become less convincing in that case.

Additionally, Protein World’s position was legally sound in that its contractor, Exterion Media, had consulted the Committee for Advertising (CA) prior to launching the advertisement. Controversy in this dispute arose from the interpretation made by the ASA regarding the phrase “beach body.” The ASA insisted that the phrase contained within it a message inciting the public wearing of swimsuits because of the adverts portrayal of what it regards as the ideal body. However, Protein World’s definition of the ideal body is not a universally acknowledged concept hence alienates the viewer of the advert. Consequently, the individual is confused and disturbed by the message portrayed by the advert by creating internal turmoil and uncertainty. Sparhawk argues that a watchdog cleared the accusations leveled against Protein World that its adverts entitled ‘beach body ready are aimed at objectifying women. Studies have also shown that Protein World’s advert called beach world have not objectified women, and it is safe to mention that complaints and offenses can be reported in order to avoid controversies,

Regarding this argument, it seems to be a safe statement because it mentioned both parts of the controversial issue. The most important information in their claim may point to the fact that the image in the advertisement has a strong and positive relationship with the desired figure it wants to sell to the public. The drawbacks within the advertisement can be accepted as explicitly stated by the ASA, and the connotation is the most important part in this case. Because advertising is aimed to dispense information via connotations, when the connotations are controversial, it can be concluded that the advertisement is a failure. Though the ASA declares there will not be widespread offense and complaints, they do not offer a solid foundation of their argument.