bathtub mermaid

Since its mass inception in the mid eighteen hundreds, advertising has been inextricably bound to the reproducible image, particularly with regards to the photograph. From the invention of colour printing (Stein 155) to the development of computer-oriented post-production software (Kilborne 122), marketing has been a propellant force behind the advancement of photographic technology. However, advertising is not merely just a medium for consumerist advancement. Jean Baulldriard argues that the process of socialization can, “be measured by the exposure of media messages” (80). That is to say, the Western sense of cultural identity and social interaction is built upon the objectives of advertising and predominant media. There is no sector that asserts the notion of social manipulation through advertising as well as that of women’s media. Not only does it define and consequently transform the nature of gender roles (as seen in War-time advertisements) but also the very shape of the physical feminine body.  A historical analysis of the progressive nature of advertising provides shocking insight into the psychological power it holds over the female, and in turn, its omniscient manifestations on the physical body.

Without question the reproducible image was responsible for creating a widespread, hegemonic ideal of beauty. Feminist Naomi Wolf asserts this point in her book, The Beauty Myth, stating, “For the first time new technologies could reproduce- in fashion plates, daguerreotypes, tintypes, and rotogravures – images of how women should look” (15).  Prior to the invention of photography, the circulation of images remained relatively limited, and subsequently a universal standardized ideal of the feminine figure could not be promoted. Dr. Michael Levine and Dr. Linda Smolak comment that the seemingly benign media images superficially, “both promote and reflect body shapes, styles of clothing”, however, psychologically they, “symbolize complex themes of gender, race, class, beauty, identity, desire, success and self-control in post-industrial societies” (236).  Thus, the imagery that has come to permeate every facet of society becomes a signifier for cultural values and ideologies as dictated by the constructers of advertisements and other mass mediums.

No example is more indicative of the power of advertising influence over the dictation of the feminine role than that of the transformative advertising that arose during and after the Second World War. For the first time, women were welcomed into the male arena of physical labor under the solidarity of the war effort, and convinced to do so largely through advertising (see Fig. 1).  War Historian and gender analysist, John Costello, asserts the reliance on advertising in his book Virtue Under Fire, explaining that “massive Ministry of Labor advertising campaigns launched in 1941 persuade[d] British women to leave the clean comfort of their homes for the production battle” (164), and in America,  “the War Manpower Commission then turned to…Madison Avenue to boost its national campaign to attract first-time women workers” (181). According to estimates by the Ministry of Labor, over 80% of all single women between the ages of fourteen and forty-five joined the labor force

(Costello 157), transforming the stereotypical housewife into a denim- clad, machine-wielding heroine. However, once the war had ended, the media returned to old conventions. Former writer for the Ladies’ HomeJournal, Betty Freidan explains that the transition from workingwoman back to domesticated housewife was, “reflected in the pages of women’s magazines [and] was sharply visible in 1949 and progressive through the fifties”(92). The stark contrast between the powerful Wartime heroine to housewife is beautifully demonstrated by an advertisement for Pep Vitamins (Fig. 2), appearing only two years after the war had ended. It is testament to the exaggerated push for both patriarchy and domesticity that was widely circulated contemporaneously.

The late 1960s saw a sudden shift in the beauty canon- which had previously valued curvaceousness as an appealing female sexual characteristic- as waif-like models like Twiggy began to dominate the world of fashion (Bordo 102).  Foucauldian Feminist, Dr. Susan Bordo, asserts that the, “emergence of such rigid and highly moralized restrictions on female appetite and eating are, arguably, part of a 19^th century cultural ideological counter-offensive against the new woman and her challenge to prevailing gender arrangement and their constraints on women” (115-116). Empirical data from psychological studies have supported this notion, as studies by Levine and Smolak have demonstrated that, “historical changes in direct and indirect media messages about the importance of slenderness in the definition of ideal femininity during the 20^th century reveal a strong positive correlation between periods of message intensification following women’s political activism (eg., during the 1920s and in the 1970s and 1980s) and an increased incidence in eating disorders” (238).

It is easily concluded that the introduction of a widespread contemporary zeitgeist for thinness is not accidental, but a calculated strategy to control the female body, and in turn, her mind. It is estimated that over the past thirty years the weight of the average model has plummeted from 8% thinner than the average female to a staggering 23% (Kilborne 129). In seeming contradiction, rates of obesity in North America have sky rocketed (Garner DM et al 47), creating an ever-increasing discrepancy between the weight that is idealized and that which is common. However, though opposing, the two are not mutually exclusive. Media theorist, Jean Kilborne explains stating that the diet and so-called “junk food” industries, “depend on each

other … in order to be profitable, both these industries require that people be hooked on unhealthy and mostly unsatisfying food; high in fat and sugar. In addition, the diet industry depends upon a rigid cultural mandate for women to be thin” (122). Weight Watchers, one of North America’s leadingweight-loss firms, for instance, often depicts decadent food, devoid of nutritional value, filled with calories and fat, and glaringly in contradiction to their apparent doctrine (see Fig. 3).   The subsequent internal struggle that arises from these opposing forces creates a perpetual cycle between weight gain and weight loss; creating the ideal consumer who buys the highly processed food, and then pays in an attempt to lose the weight (Kilborne 123). One need only look at the burgeoning diet industry, which has more than tripled in recent years (Kilborne 123) to see evidence of the desperation of the modern woman to control her body. Consequently, fat becomes not merely about weight, shape or size, but is considered deviant, abnormal and becomes deeply imbued with morality. Further, it incubates an environment for self-hatred and body-dissatisfaction in the individual body.

It is semantic knowledge that images featured in advertising and magazines in contemporaneity are highly mediated and manipulated in post-production, through digital programs such as Photoshop in which the body can be completely transformed and perfected. However, it is not the production we experience, but rather the final result: the image itself. Bordo comments that the spectator is “unable to cast a shadow of doubt over the dazzling, compelling, authoritative images”(104), she continues that it, “is the created image that has the hold on our most vibrant, immediate sense of what is, what matters, of what we must pursue for ourselves”(104). Jean Baudrillard explains the notion that contrary to representation, which, “stems from the principle of the sign and the real” (6), simulations (that is, mediated imagery), “stem from the utopia … from the radical negation of the sign as a value, from the sign as the revision, and [become the] death sentence of every reference” (6).  As a result, the mediated, constructed image is, “artificially resurrected under the auspices of the real” (Baudrillard 8), and deceptively experienced as an objective reality.  The perception of the simulation as reality has startling physical repercussions, for as Baudrillard explains, the manipulated medium subsequently, “transforms the real” (82), creating a dangerous index for the individual body to strive to attain (see Fig. 4). The contemporary standard for body shape is a veritable fun-house mirror; there is little semblance to reality left in the exaggerated images the media bombards us with on a daily basis. Jean Kilborne draws correlations between the manipulated images depicted in the media and “resulting eating problems, which range from bulimia to compulsive overeating to simply being obsessed with controlling one’s appetite” (135). Prior to the nineteen-seventies, eating disorders were virtually unheard of, however, today have reached epidemic proportions (Bordo 168).  Certainly there are biological predispositions and genetic characteristics that influence the development of eating disorders (Levine and Smolak 248), however, the sociocultural factors such as the current media climate and its narrow range of representation play a pivotal role.

The effects of advertising on the female are blatantly demonstrated through its historical incarnations and the subsequent transformation of contemporaneous gender roles. The emergence of a hegemonic mandate for slenderness has created warfare against the feminine body. With technological advancements, simulations have helped create a dangerous, unattainable standard for weight and shape; breeding body-contempt in the individual and consequently assisting in the creation of a cultural environment in which fatal eating disorders- ranging from obesity to Anorexia Nervosa- can flourish.

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Works Cited

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight. Berkley, California: University of California Press, 1995.

Costello, John. Virtue Under Fire: How World War II Changed Our Social and Sexual Attitudes. New York: Fromm International Publishing Corporation, 1987.

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997.

Garner DM, Garfinkel P, Schwartz D, Thompson M. Cultural expectations of thinness in women. Psychological Reports, 1980.  484–491.

Kilborne, Jean. Can’t Buy My Love. New York: Touchstone, 1999.

Levine, Michael P. and Linda Smolak. “Media as a Context of Disordered Eating,” The Developmental Psychopathology of Eating Disorders: Implications for Research, Prevention and Treatment. New Jersey: Lawrence Eribaumm and Associates, 1996. 235- 257.

Stein, Sally. “The Graphic Ordering of Desire: Modernization of a Middle Class Housewife, 1914-1939,” The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography, Ed. Richard Bolton Boston: Massacheusits Institute of Technology, 1992. 141-162.

Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. Toronto: Random House Canada, 1990.