If you are a woman reading this editorial and you are wearing glasses, no man will ever want to dance with you. At least, that's what Acuvue brand contact lenses wants you to think. If you look across the board at advertisements, many of them have a tendency to produce some sort of society ideal to get you to buy into something. You can see these advertisements everywhere, and there is nothing considered unusual or out of the ordinary to come across this sort of ad.
Many of the advertisements I see bother me, but the ones I find within the pages of Seventeen or CosmoGirl, for example, make me the most irritated. Females are being taught through these advertisements at ages as young as 11 and 12 that they have certain ideals they need to meet. These campaigns seem to want to exploit the insecurities of young adults in order to make a profit. What a dirty and dangerous game.
I may sound like I am making a big deal out of nothing, but I cannot understand how these sorts of advertisements are supposed to do anything but make a girl feel horrible about herself. Let's go back to the original advertisement that sparked this editorial. The advertisement spans across two pages and is set at a high school dance. On the left side, there is a girl in a party dress, wearing thick blackframed glasses. She is standing alone and looking sad. There are people in the back being social, but she is clearly left out of that social circle. On the right side there are boys and girls at the dance, all without glasses, having a fantastic time together. The text "1 Day he'll be begging me to dance with him" appears on the right. The text at the bottom reads, "When you feel your best, the world takes notice."
Because, of course, plastic frames resting on your nose means you shouldn't feel your best about yourself and no man will want to dance with you. It's corrective eye wear, for goodness sakes. Whether you have glasses, contacts or perfect vision (naturally or laser given), none of it affects a single thing except how clear you see the world. To make a girl think her desirability is based on the sharpness of her vision is ridiculous. Typically, young children are confident. There are studies that show children at younger ages are starting to be more self conscious and more worried about how they look, but overall young children in early elementary school tend to have a more carefree approach to their life and how they feel about themselves. It is when they get to lateelementary school and especially middle school that the switch flips, and they begin questioning their bodies.
We live in a society in which we are taught what to think. There is nothing that instantly goes off in your brain, telling you that bulge on your tummy or that blemish on your forehead makes you ugly or less worthy. You are taught to come up with those ideas about yourself and, more often than not, that education is coming from media such as movies, television, magazines and other outlets. This advertisement is teaching young girls they should feel negatively about their image if they do wear glasses, and they need to purchase Acuvue contact lenses to achieve that goal of "being your best."
The University of Washington put out a report entitled "Teen Health and the Media" that discussed a report on how popular media has had an increasing effect on young adults and their body image. They cited a survey from the National Institute on Media and the Family that found that 40 percent of girls of ages nine and 10 have tried to lose weight. They also reported that by the age of 13, 53 percent of girls in the United States are "unhappy with their bodies." That number spikes to 78 percent of girls age 17 feeling the same.
The university also shared a study Nancy Signorielli did through the Kaiser Foundation. 37 percent of teen magazines include articles that focus on appearance and 50 percent of the advertisements featured within those magazines use the approach of trying to make girls strive for a certain level of beauty to sell their product. A total of 56 percent of the commercials running on television shows popular with this age group used the same tactic to sell magazines.
I am disappointed in Acuvue for using this advertisement, but I am also disappointed in Seventeen magazine for printing it. The Rotunda also thrives on advertisements, and I understand the debate between editorial and advertising. Seventeen magazine needs money to function. At the same time, they have an obligation to their readers. They run articles on a regular basis about being healthy, confident and feeling good about yourself. They contradict all of those positive pieces by running an advertisement that makes their readers have a negative self image. The media has a lot of power. I hope that one day soon, they start taking that power seriously and take a stand to produce more positive forms of media.
