A634.5.4.RB_McNerneyLeighAnn

Watching TV this week after reading about ethics and marketing I realized that we are a country bombarded with advertisers who push their products on us every chance they have and predominately the ads tend to shove unrealistic beliefs on us. I cannot even listen to music without hearing advertisements about weight-loss, hair removal or something involving improving your body image. The ads are everywhere and its very disturbing because most of what I have in front of me I would consider unethical, and that is why I feel we need more ethical guidelines in place to develop healthier advertisements for a healthier population. What I mean by healthier is more well-rounded advertisements for all shapes and sizes because what I see today is diet, weight loss, skinny is in and its really frustrating to try and build confidence within oneself when you are constantly being advised on what is the ideal way to look, talk and act is determined by social media. The ideal image is portrayed, as someone with perfect skin, perfect hair, a tiny figure and this is just not the way most people look. We are people made up of all shapes, sizes, colors and we cannot control the way we are made its just who we are and the sooner we can accept the truth of who we are the better off we will be.

An unethical ad I myself have fallen victim to was one by Victoria Secret which is a very influential company marketed to women specifically. This is ad is titled “I Love my Body”

This ad shows a picture of light skinned women with extremely skinny, tall bodies with push up bras and panties on. What this ad says to me is “I love my body because I am skinny, tall and have perfect boobs and I can show the world how beautiful I am in my tiny bra and panties, and if you want to love your body try to look like me.” This is a personal interpretation; however I have had years of confidence and body issues because of ads similar to this one that show me I will not be beautiful until I look like them.

Growing up I used to obsess over Victoria Secret (VS) models, up until last year when I gave birth to a perfect baby girl named Olivia. It wasn’t until I had a child that I realized how debilitating, shallow and detrimental these ads were and my idea of who I was and who I wanted to be was all wrong. Now that I understand the importance of influencing my daughter truly is by setting the example to follow I have begun to change some of these previous behaviors. I am trying to break my negative behaviors prior to Olivia understanding them because I know that they can be just as detrimental as these ads are. I once made my friend so insecure about herself because all I was saying about myself was that I was fat. The reason she became insecure was because she was the same size as I was and by me calling myself fat she felt that she was fat too. Never did I realize how commenting about myself to others could have such a negative impact on their self-esteem. The ironic part was I thought she had an amazing body, but I was to blind to recognize the similarities in our bodies but instead I tore her down. I do not want this type of complex transferring to Olivia.

There was a time in my life I would purposely starve myself to be skinny. I believe the stigma “Nothing tastes as good as being skinny” quoted by a top model named Kate Moss. I would loathe and stare at myself in the mirror and if I didn’t see hipbones I thought I was fat. When I went to the beach and laid out and my bathing suit didn’t sink in I wouldn’t allow myself to eat and this was because I envied the VS models. I wanted to be them I wanted to dress like them and I never missed their annual fashion show. I would cry and do sit-ups every year, and it even got so bad that I would record the show and re-watch it while I worked out to keep myself motivated to keep going even when I was exhausted. I was 8 and a half months pregnant walking on my treadmill crying watching the fashion show and I remember thinking “wow I am disgusting, I hate myself.” This is not a normal acceptable behavior, but the sad thing is I have friends I used to call my “skinny friends” that would empower me to continue to believe this and we would motivate each other to starve. When I wanted to eat I would call a friend and she would reinforce me to just drink some water or drink a soda so that I would have the energy to keep going, but to stay away from eating so I would look skinny and I used to do the same thing for her.

I cannot believe that I developed such a low self-esteem and unhealthy way to live for so many years all because Victoria Secret told me I would love my body too if I could look like these gorgeous models. Moving forward to present day I still purchase Victoria Secret products, but I don’t try to look like the models I try to look like me and I am happy with that. I still suffer from body image issues but who doesn’t in a world where body image is restricted and only ways to fix ourselves is promoted? We need to begin regulating ethical ads that promote acceptance and love. I see many companies embracing this idea, but until the stigmatism is broken nationwide we will remain a superficial unrealistic culture. The media controls what norms are socially acceptable and this is why I feel many track our whereabouts because companies want to track trends and stay current with what people are searching for. If we can develop our children to embrace their differences instead of trying to find ways to fix them then maybe the trends would change and people would start developing healthier diverse products.

Diversity is a necessity in all-working environments it is what all leaders are looking to achieve; a diverse environment as this increases creativity and boundaries are exceeding due to a collaborative result. This exact idea is why if I were a leader my main objective would be to focus on everyone’s differences, and instead of trying to find ways to make them more alike I would find ways to accentuate the good in the differences so that the idea of different would be a desire instead of a fear. This is the general idea many companies fail to see and I feel that this world could be a better place once we start to.