Tuesday, April 26, 2011

More Media and Body Image

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charlotte-hilton-andersen/karl-lagerfield-rachel-bilson-ad_b_853616.html

Sorry for the double post, both on the same subject, but I came across this article and thought it was too relevant to our discussions about the role of the media and body image not to add. [Disclaimer: I do like the brand of ice cream that is being advertised in these commercials, which is how I stumbled upon this article in the first place. It was often a treat while I lived in Spain and I was excited to recently see it in the United States.] The author of the article, Charlotte Hilton Andersen, does a great job in the intro of listing the many different ways women might react to a campaign like this one and none of them are positive. Indeed the whole article is a fantastic analysis of the dichotomy of advertising: pretty, skinny people eating foods they can't possibly eat on a regular basis and stay skinny. How is the general public supposed to interpret this? And how much more shame and guilt does it cause women to feel about their bodies because they can’t eat certain foods and maintain a certain weight?

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